M *@*.* wrote in message ...
Nevertheless, I find Tom's comments on the Iran-Iraq war highly
interesting (I guess I should buy his book... .

Actually, I bought the book last Spring, and trying to wade through
it, I managed to get to the end of the war just last week (though I
guess that's a lot faster than it took to fight...still). If anybody
else on this thread has gotten II/AW:80-88, I was wondering how many
editions there were. Mine has almost no maps nor any index. I could
go back and check, but I don't think there's a single theater-level
map in the whole book. I was wondering whether this was a mistake
given that I did see a review that praised the books use of maps.
Also, it seems that there were some missing footnotes (I think
329-338, or something like that).

It seems that F-14 did influence the design of MiG-31 quite a bit,
and it'd be very interesting to hear comments on how the Soviet
experience with Iranian Tomcats affected the development of MiG-31.

You're probably correct. However, in the hopes of forestalling
unneccessary flaming, might I suggest that future posts linking
development of aircraft based on the experience of other aircraft
actually spell out what that influence is? It's just that just
raising that point without specifying it leads to needlessly
acid-tipped counter-posting, with one side minimizing and the other
overstating the relationship. In its strict sense, one aircraft can
have "an impact" on another based on widely varying sets of
circumstances, such that just saying that there was an impact doesn't
really tell us whether the older plane's experience was really all
that great. Maybe it was minimal, and the response was minimal (do
the canards look different to you?). Maybe it was huge and resulted
in a radical alteration (hey, where did the canards go?) Maybe it was
utterly negligible ("Heinemman wants to meet and talk about the
canards and RCS. He says that he's got intel about how badly IRIAF's
'new' radar performed over Manjnoun last week, and maybe RCS shouldn't
be our big priority." "Well good for him, I only worked overtime three
months confirming that. You can tell Heinemman that he can send me a
goddam memo. He doesn't need me to hang around a glue back on the
canrds he ripped off last month.") Maybe the Russians decided to
radically change the design of the Foxhound, or maybe something (like
the loss of those Foxbats over Tehran in '87) just made them put a tad
more thought than usual. Venik can argue that it was a lot, Tom can
say it was a little (or was it the other way around?) without either
having to admit that there was no impact at all.

Otoh, the primary roles of 31 and 14 are rather different, fleet
defence vs homeland air defence (against cruise missiles in
particular).

I think that the -14's mission makes it suitable for homeland defense,
and obviously taking Tom's book at face value, it performed that more
magnificently than we could imagine. By '87, these things (though
obviously affected by attrition) were still flying. So much for a
plane derided as being a maintenance nightmare. Maybe those "Super
Hornet Playuh Hatuhs" were right, and the USN F-14 did get the bum's
rush. The nature of the F-14 as a fleet defender stems likely from
the fact that Grumman couldn' sell anybody else on the idea of the
F-14 - so fleet defense was all it had. Now, years later, it's
"matured" into a force-multiplier, capable of attacking and
designating targets on the ground. Normally, plane's lose missions
with age - the F-14 is like that actor that finds fame after years of
crummy parts, it's like the Sharon Stone of tac-air.