Forget the F-35: Why America's Military Misses the F-14 Tomcat
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An old aircraft the U.S. Navy really misses.
Dave Majumdar [2]
The F-35C was never designed to be an air superiority fighter. Indeed, naval planners in the mid-1990s wanted the JSF to be a strike-oriented aircraft with only a 6.5G airframe load limit with very limited air-to-air capability, according to one retired U.S. Navy official. Indeed, some naval planners at the time had discussed retiring the F-14 in favor of keeping the Grumman A-6 Intruder in service. During this period, many officials believed air combat to be a relic of the past in the post-Cold War era. They anticipated most future conflicts to be air-to-ground oriented in those years immediately following the Soviet collapse.
While the requirement for a carrier-based long-range strike capability is a frequent subject of discussion around Washington, the U.S. Navy’s need for improved air superiority capabilities is often neglected.
The service has not had a dedicated air-to-air combat aircraft since it retired the Grumman F-14 Tomcat [3] in 2006. But even the Tomcat was adapted into a strike aircraft during its last years in service after the Soviet threat evaporated. Now, as new threats to the carrier emerge and adversaries start to field new fighters that can challenge the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin F-35C Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), attention is starting to shift back to this oft-neglected Navy mission—especially in the Western Pacific.
Source URL (retrieved on February 7, 2017):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/forget-the-f-35-why-americas-military-misses-the-f-14-tomcat-19347
