The Great F-14 Tomcat Crisis The Navy Created

Was the F-14 Tomcat Retired Too Soon? The famous two-seater F-14 Tomcat has found a permanent resting place in the hearts and minds of United States Navy personnel and countless other aviation enthusiasts. The airframe became known for its advanced speed and dogfighting ability.

A lesser-known ability of the F-14 is its incredible Mach 2.3 speed, which places it alongside the F-22 as the fastest US fighter jet ever. As a two-seat fighter jet, the aircraft became known for its air-to-air prowess, given that several sets of eyes could monitor relevant targets, enemy maneuvers, and overall combat-zone awareness.

The Aviation Geek Club catalogs the breakthrough technologies woven into the F-14, explaining that the high-speed, dogfighting aircraft brought air combat into a new era well beyond the performance of the Phantom F-4. 

“The Tomcat weapons system introduced a quantum leap in technology and capability that would dominate the outer air battle. Theoretically, two Tomcat divisions could engage and release missiles at over forty targets—well before the merge—with a high probability of kill.

Once targeted, an enemy aircraft would most likely not survive a Phoenix or Sparrow attack by a Tomcat,” the article states. 

Tomcat Technological Breakthrough

Unlike its predecessor, the Phantom, which could only maintain radar lock on a single target, a Tomcat could help defend against a so-called saturation raid of 20 Soviet fighters by simultaneously attacking more than 40 targets. 

“Even if the Tomcat weapons system was only given a fifty percent probability of a kill, far less than models indicated, the Tomcats could splash all twenty attackers before they broke through the outer air defense grid. In short, the Tomcat’s Phoenix and AWG-9 capability greatly reduced the number of fighters needed to defend the fleet and greatly increased the probability that the fleet would survive a saturation raid.” the Aviation Geek Club explained. 

While in flight, a pilot focuses on vectoring and locking in targets for the jet’s weapons; an aviator can simultaneously track additional targets, survey the surrounding area with additional line-of-sight observations, and offer time-sensitive constructive input and instruction to the pilot.

The presence of the aviator lowered the cognitive burden placed upon pilots and allowed for a more focused air combat platform. 

Given its speed, carrier-launch ability, and overall performance parameters, some might question whether the aircraft was retired too soon. Could it be brought back? Would that make any strategic and tactical sense? 

F-14 Tomcat at War

The Tomcat’s performance in combat is well documented, as former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman described the aircraft’s performance against the Libyan Air Force in 1981. 

“The very high-tech F-14s, with their two-hundred-mile radars, were able to maneuver into firing position long before the Libyans ever saw them,” Lehman said, as quoted in the Aviationist. 

The F-14 even received a massive and highly impactful engine upgrade, given that its original TF30 was retired due to performance problems and replaced with General Electric F110-GE-400 engines, which solved the TF30’s performance problems.

This adjustment helped support the aircraft’s propulsion and thrust-to-weight ratio in a manner that helped propel the platform’s successful combat performance in Vietnam, Libya, the Gulf War, and 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom. The aircraft was retired in 2006. 

The Tomcat brought an unprecedented high-speed air-attack platform to aircraft carriers, which had not returned since the F-14’s retirement in 2014. Did the arrival of the F-22 motivate the Pentagon to retire the F-14 too quickly?

It is possible, but the airframe’s departure left Navy carriers without a superior air supremacy platform because the F-22 could only launch from land.

The F-14’s engines were powerful but incredibly problematic, losing as many as 40 Tomcats over the years. The Pratt & Whitney TF30 engines, eventually replaced by General Electric F110-GE-400s, effectively solved all of the TF30’s problems, but many F-14s continued running the old engines well into the 2000s.

The departure of the F-14 raises the key question of whether the airframe’s absence left aircraft carriers far too vulnerable and compromised the US Navy’s ability to project power. The size of the F-22 fleet was truncated, and the Raptor could not take off at sea. Continued upgrades to the F/A-18 have certainly been significant for the Navy’s maritime power, yet the craft lacks the speed and air-to-air maneuverability of an F-14.

About the Author: Kris Osborn 

Kris Osborn is the Military Technology Editor of 19FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.