Do not make claism that are unrealistic

I am working my way down towards the validity of your statements.

First the Su-24 was never caught by the Western fighters simply because it has terrain following radar, this made it too difficult to catch flying a low speed and having swing wings no F-15, F-16 or even F-14 was going to be able to chase it at Mach 1.35 speed and low altitude.

The mentioned aircraft all have look-down radars and can easily follow the aircraft in some altitude. Besides, at deck the Suchoi will hardly hit Mach 1. A continued run at Mach 1 on the deck will let it die on fuel exhaustion.

True the Tornado lost several examples while the Su-24 none in bombing missions, however saying the Tornado did better is not true, the Soviets Su-24 flew very close to Pakistani F-16s and never were destroyed, Iraq never was a first class air force, in 1990 the iraqi air force was a third class air force and destroyed Tornados and F-111s, the West chased MiG-23s and Mirage F1s and destroyed them but the Su-24 were capable enough to elude any persuers.

The main reason why no Suchoi 24 was ever lost in combat was that it never saw combat comparable to the F-111 (Lybia, Iraq) or Tornado (Iraq, Serbia).

Second the Soviets always built more aircraft because their aircraft always used a great degree of standarization and simplicity allowing a same factory built different aircraft faster.

With the little disadvantage that their aircraft needed ages to maturity, the Suchoi 24 entered service over 10 years after design was begun.

The Su-7 , Su-17, Su-22, Su-11 and Su-9 were basicaly the same model, the MiG-23, MiG-29 and MiG-21 had similar cockpits and systems.

That the mainstay of the Soviet air force attack aircraft (Su-17/22) ist “basically the same model” as the first generation supersonic Suchoi 7 is surprising.

The Su-24 was a simple design avoiding over sophistication, in fact the downing of the Tornados showed simply SAMs and cheaper fighters were able to destroy more expensive systems and that was epitomised when a F-117 was destroyed by a simple SA-3 missile.

Stuff your F-117 story. It doesn’t fit here.
The Suchoi 24 was surely no “simple aircraft”. Although I agree that Western aircraft are often over-sophisticated for particular missions, the Suchoi 24 was a complex and expensive bird. Good indicator of its complexity is the long time needed to make it operational. Would be interesting though to compare the avionics capability of a 1975 Fencer “A” versus an F-111F or F-111D.

in General the Su-24 was as good as the F-111 and was simply a design more practical in terms of price and producibility, not less advanced simply more practical.

In general the Suchoi 24 was the F-111 minus advanced engines and about 8 to 10 years later.

By the way F-111 were even offered to Germany and England and they did not buy it, too expensive for smaller air forces in NATO and over priced for third world countries only one nation bought it and they bought no much more than Algeria Su-24s.

The German air force have not procured any American fighter aircraft after the F-4F. Maybe you see a pattern that led from Starfighter over VAK-191 over NKF to Tornado.
Actually, the Australian bought their F-111 in the 1960ies (that is 40 years ago!). And you compare that with the present discount offer to Algeria? Man, you are really twisting reality.

The Su-24 outproduced the F-111, has similar weaponry and the same survability.

Which once again shows that the Soviets considered higher numbers necessary to fulfill the same mission.
Actually, the last F-111 was nearly delivered when the Suchoi 24 was accepted into service. The first truly capable Su-24 (the M) entered service not before the Tornado.

I ask you when has the Su-24 been shot down by western fighters?

Maybe because it never dropped a bomb in anger in an airspace defended by Western fighters?

The Su-24 was made with less range because for the Russians the Tu-22M filled much better the mission the F-111 failed

Maybe they didn’t need it, but still from the technical point view the question how a similarly sized aircraft with roughly similar weights can have such a shortfall in performance.
The answer is on the table: less advanced aerodynamics, less advanced engines, less advanced structures.

The Su-24 was practical and more easy to produce and left the Tu-22M fill the gap between the Tu-160 and the Su-24.

Let say it this way: it was cheaper and more expendable, which lines up favorably with Soviet thinking.

The F-111 at least has 6000 liters more fuel than the Su-24 and some sources say up to 8000 liters.

At roughly similar OEW and size, which let’s room for the question, what the Suchoi engineers did with all the volume? Stuffed it with analogue electronics?

The Su-24 was built in very large numbers and was exported to more countries

Countries that had equal access to Western and Eastern hardware like Iraq, Lybia, Syria and Algeria. Erhh … what a minute … 😉
By the way, when the first -24s were exported in 1988, the F-111 was long out of production and for countries with access to Western markets the Tornado would have been the much much better alternative.

3. If the Navy ordered more F-14Ds and decided to keep them longer

The US Navy would have a more expensive and yet less capable aircraft with a larger logistic footprint in its inventory. Without the AIM-54 missile this aircraft would be equally useless for long range fleet defense, a mission that however doesn’t exist any more.

A 600KM low level intrusion mission seems exactly what it was designed for, parked near the enemy territory flying missions from rough fields. Designed for real use, not being parked on a runway.

Still, the F-111 achieves better radius for similar mission profile.

22300kg was adapted by Wiki, the range is clearly wrong, which should be combat radius.
On internet, which one is more logical and reasonable should be judged by self brain.

After the assessments I did I find the ~2800km ferry range with two drop tanks quite realistic. The mission radius for lo-lo-lo seems very realistic, too. Data-wise, the Wikipedia article on the Su-24MK looks as one of the better ones.

The most unreliable information source is normally the operator of an aircraft.
Most reliable are normally “merged” information sources, like Wikipedia and some other web resources (quite OK is vectorsite).
In general, most “sources” copy from each other. Some include wishful thinking. Sometimes people cannot see the difference between a mission radius and a range, and often the values given are “best” values. A real mission includes lots of reserves and allowances. The 330nm for the Suchoi 24MK in a lo-lo-lo mission profile are not a bad figure, by the way.

Lockheed official web gave the EW data of Rapator as 19700kg, will you believe it?
Aircraft changed, officer lied always;)

It is funny to see how the internet adapts to reality. While Wikipedia quoted the empty weight with something like 14-15t lately, it was changed to close to 20t recently. I am actually surprised Lockheed Martin gives such detailed weight data on its aircraft. Sure it isn’t accurate down to the pound, but it looks as accurate as one would expect.

Up to what i know aircraft not only use the inlet ramp as a way of slowing down the supersonic flow to subsonic speeds they also use the nacelle inlet duct.

The trick with variable geometry intakes is the control of the shockwaves. An intake that works best at Mach 1.3 may encounter severe difficulties at higher Mach numbers. All aircraft that started with variable geometry intakes and later got those fixed lost their Mach 2 capability, so for example the Tornado, the F-14 and the Starfighter, all with similar or more installed static thrust. The Tornado hardly makes it over M1.3 with the inlets fixed.