The F14 vs what we are doing now

"Jason H" wrote in message
news:Mt_Yf.20704$dU3.522@trnddc01...

"DDAY" wrote in message
k.net...
---------
In article ,
(Harry Andreas) wrote:

especially against 9/11 style airliner attacks. It scrambles fast,
transits
fast, and has a long-range missile suited to bringing down large
lumbering targets such as airliners (and bombers).

It would never be used that way. Nobody would ever approve a long-range
shootdown of an airliner.


Yeah, but even at short(er) visual distances having the phoenix can be a
good thing. I can't be sure that a sidewinder or even an AMRAAM would
destroy the airliner enough so that it couldn't still kamikaze its target.
A sidewinder would take out an engine, and the AMRAAM maybe a wing
section, but you better goddamn believe a phoenix would make that airliner
not fly in a big hurry. It's an aerial torpedo... an airpedo! Seriously,
doesn't it have like a 150lb warhead?

135 pounds for the AIM-54. Versus a respectable 44-50 pounds (depending upon
the source) for the AIM-120. I doubt the AIM-54 would be significantly more
lethal than the more accurate AIM-120.

Plus the 90 miles worth of unused fuel? and the
radar would home straight in on the fuselage and just obliterate it.
Especially if you had, say, four or six of them heading toward the liner.

Geeze. If you are going for such overkill, why would not a half dozen
proven-lethal (in real combat, something that the AIM-54 never did in US
hands at least) AIM-120's be just as good?

Or
8 to 12 since they (tomcats) travel in pairs. And, I'd be a heluva lot
more scared of two tomcats off the cockpit than I would be of two hornets.
They just don't look mean.

Jason

can you imagine seeing 12 phoenixes streaking toward you?

Not anymore, being as the aircraft that carried them is going to the
scrapheap.

Brooks