What are the carrier landing speeds for:

The F-14 Tomcat?

The F-18A Hornet?

The F-18E/F Super Hornet?




I'm working on an article about the Space Shuttle and I want to address the
commonly repeated claim that the shuttle is a "mistake" because its
technology is being abandoned.

I'd like to compare it to swing-wing technology. During the 1960s, the
swing-wing was the rage in new aircraft design and it ended up in quite a
few aircraft such as the F-111, the F-14, the MiG-23, Tu-22, MiG-27, the
B-1, and the Russsian Tu-160. But the Tu-160, designed in the early 1980s,
appears to have been the last swing-wing aircraft.

What I'm trying to explore is why that is. Why was this technology really
popular for a couple of decades and then phased out? I don't think you can
say that better airfoil or wing technology replaced it. It's just that
requirements changed and the swing-wing was a solution that no longer fit
the existing problem set. But I'm willing to be proven wrong.




D