Over 50 years after it first flew and almost two decades after it was retired from service with the United States Navy, the military aviation enthusiast community’s love affair with the F-14 still carries on. Is it because of Tom Cruise and the 1986 feature film Top Gun?
F-14 Tomcat. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
As one could see in the second Top Gun film, it isn’t because the aircraft was not—by today’s standards, that is—a technological marvel. It was. The exception is the Tomcat’s Hughes AWG-9 radar, one of the most powerful radars ever until the F-22’s APG-77 appeared decades later.
The AWG-9 radar was one of the strongest points of the aircraft’s combat performance. As a long article about the F-14 details, when this AWG-9 was working in the Track-While-Scan (TWS) mode, its “emissions were difficult to identify for contemporary radar warning receivers, and thus warning of an attack was minimal—if there was any.”
However, the onboard systems of the original F-14A version, in contrast to the robust mission computer systems of an F-16, were like comparing a VW Beetle to a Lamborghini. One colleague who was a US Naval Reserve F-14 pilot in the 1980s described the level of the disparity at the time.
“The F-14 runs on system that is about like a Commodore 64,” he said – for those of you who remember that early, first-generation personal computer system. “The onboard kit can do the job that the aircraft is assigned very well, but do not ask it to be some ‘anything and everything’ multirole fighter.”
F-14 Tomcat: More Combat Experience Than All The Others
But, despite those rather definitively expressed limitations about what the F-14 could and could not do, it ended up seeing more combat than—as one profile of the aircraft states—“than the other ‘teen fighters’—including the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18—combined” and performing numerous missions it was never designed to be utilized for.
Some of the prominent examples:
-During the 1980s, the F-14 saw eight years of intensive combat operations during the Iran-Iraq War, where it scored its first kill ever (a gun kill against an Iraqi Mi-25 attack helicopter).
-In service with the US Navy off Iran (Iran hostage crisis), Libya (two air combats and dozens of ‘close calls’)
-Lebanon, Syria (reconnaissance ‘only’), Somalia (reconnaissance), etc.
-In 1991, the F-14 saw its last conflict, during which it finally served in the role it was originally designed for—as a “pure” interceptor—during the Second Persian Gulf War—Operation Desert Storm.
Later, it was deployed during the Iran-Azerbaijan cross-border tensions in the 1990s, and then—adding in the role as a strike aircraft as well—by the US Navy in Bosnia (1992-1995), over Kosovo (1999), in Afghanistan (2001-2006), and Iraq (2003-2006).
It is an impressive history and a tribute to how a well-designed aircraft combined with the extended reach that advancements in avionics create allowed the F-14 to demonstrate the full range of its combat capabilities.
Enter The F/A-18 Hornet
Once it entered service, the F/A-18—even the earlier versions—showed several advantages that the F-14 pilots gradually learned to appreciate. One was its ability to function as a multirole aircraft that could be dispatched for both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. The F/A-18’s smaller and lighter size made it more maneuverable. Its even smaller maintenance footprint also made it more cost-effective.
One F-14 pilot who later ended up flying both aircraft has given his assessment of which aircraft he felt would have been better for him in a combat situation:
“The Hornet was newer, and newer is often better. I could only pull 6.5g in the Tomcat, but in the Hornet, when I burnt my fuel down a bit, I could go to 7.5g. The F404 engine in the Hornet was far better than the TF-30 that we had in the Tomcat, and I never had to worry about a compressor stall with the F404. I should know as I did a lot of the initial out-of-control flight test on the two-seat Hornet where I would intentionally depart the airplane from controlled flight.
“The engines never even hiccupped at all. The Hornet was far more nimble than the Tomcat, but the Hornet did not have the range, endurance, or speed of a Tomcat. Each was designed for a different mission. I would often say to colleagues that in peacetime, I loved the agile Hornet.
“But were I to go into combat, I would much rather be in the Tomcat. My RIO and I were a great team. Having that extra set of eyes was invaluable. One afternoon, my wingman and I engaged a pair of Libyan MIG23s. During the engagement, I lost sight of one of the MIGs. While I kept my eyes on the Libyan in front of me, I knew my RIO could help me to get my eyes on the other MIG. That extra set of eyes is invaluable when all hell breaks loose.”
One hopes the F/A-XX design team is listening.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
