The F14 vs what we are doing now

W.A. Baker wrote:
In article , John Carrier
wrote:

[...]

By the time the Bug was validating its incredible
maintainability rep in the late eighties, the writing was on the wall for
the Tom. It's maintainability (lack thereof ... you should have seen what
it was like to keep Block 75's up 'n flying) doomed the jet.


John, what percentage of that maintenance load was specific to keeping
the Tom's mission-capable in the fleet air-defense role? I'm thinking
mainly of the avionics for the Sparrows and Phoenixes. Would there
have been a significant savings in maintenance man-hours if the Toms
had been explicitly transitioned into being "cold nose" bomb trucks
dedicated purely to the strike mission?

Strike and cold-nose (i.e., no radar) aren't compatible options anymore.
You need radar ground-mapping modes at a minimum, and realistically
also some air-to-air modes for self-defense. At that point, there's not
a huge amount of unique Sparrow or Phoenix support left in the system.
But you have to ADD distinctive strike capabilities, such as a laser
designator and FLIR (e.g. LANTIRN) to match the A-6's TRAM sensor turret.

OTOH, a ground-up redesign of the F-14 like the Super Hornet (ASF-14,
roughly) might have allowed significant savings.

--
Tom Schoene lid
To email me, replace "invalid" with "net"

Thomas Schoene wrote:
Strike and cold-nose (i.e., no radar) aren't compatible options anymore.
You need radar ground-mapping modes at a minimum, and realistically
also some air-to-air modes for self-defense. At that point, there's not
a huge amount of unique Sparrow or Phoenix support left in the system.
But you have to ADD distinctive strike capabilities, such as a laser
designator and FLIR (e.g. LANTIRN) to match the A-6's TRAM sensor turret.

OTOH, a ground-up redesign of the F-14 like the Super Hornet (ASF-14,
roughly) might have allowed significant savings.

How much of the maintenance issues were related to the swing wing?
Theoretically, do you think a redesign of that scale would have
retained the swinger or was it an outdated solution?

In article .com,
"Typhoon502" wrote:

John Carrier wrote:
Tomcats couldn't even shoot AIM-120.

That's a misleading statement.

There is no inherent reason that F-14's could not carry and shoot AIM-120.
It's just that the Navy decided it wasn't worth it.
The F-14 has a long range missile. Why spend money integrating a new
missile on an airframe that's going to go out of service soon?

The changes that would be needed were largely software and flight test.

Yep. Chump change and the aircraft could have had a vastly superior weapon
than Sparrow for a decade. Also better than Phoenix out to AAMRAM's max
range as well. In hindsight it didn't matter ... largely because the
aircraft was underutilized in Desert Storm, its last opportunity to fight
the good fight.

Maybe the changes were small in scale, but if the service is unwilling
to do the integration, then that still means the F-14 was wholly
incapable of using the DOD's best AAM; the fact that the Navy didn't
incorporate AMRAAM while they were doing the Bombcat work is what's
surprising. I read once a discussion or article about the F-14 and the
Super Hornet and how Grumman kept coming back to the Pentagon with
modernized Tomcats, and kept getting shown the door. At what point did
the Pentagon (or the Navy specifically...it's been a while since I
recalled the particulars) really decide that they didn't want the
Tomcats around? Was it cost & complexity that turned them against the
F-14 in favor of the Super Bug?

Once the F/A-18 demonstrated it's avionics reliability in a production
configuration, the F-14 was doomed.
I do have some insight into this as I worked both the F-18's APG-65 radar
and the F-14's APG-71 radar (on the D). I also participated in several
Tomcat upgrade proposals from the radar side, so I'm pretty familiar with
both sides of the arguement.
The F-14D was a great preforming aircraft, but even after the radar upgrade
it was still a maintenance hog on other systems, about 4X per flight hour
greater than the F/A-18.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur

In article , "W.A. Baker"
wrote:

In article , John Carrier
wrote:

[...]
By the time the Bug was validating its incredible
maintainability rep in the late eighties, the writing was on the wall for
the Tom. It's maintainability (lack thereof ... you should have seen what
it was like to keep Block 75's up 'n flying) doomed the jet.

John, what percentage of that maintenance load was specific to keeping
the Tom's mission-capable in the fleet air-defense role? I'm thinking
mainly of the avionics for the Sparrows and Phoenixes. Would there
have been a significant savings in maintenance man-hours if the Toms
had been explicitly transitioned into being "cold nose" bomb trucks
dedicated purely to the strike mission?

It's an idle hypothetical now that the Toms are gone from the flight
decks. But I've always wondered if there was an economical option,
around the time the call was made to retire the A-6's, for handing the
the D's over to the strike community for use solely as strike bombers.

After the D upgrade the radar was not a maintenance factor.

I don't have visibility into all the other systems on the a/c but the new
radar was on par with the systems in the F/A-18 and F-15 in terms of
reliability and maintenance hours.

Besides, by that point the writing was on the wall that strike was going to
be heavily focused on PGMs, so why "fix" an aircraft to use dumb iron
when the tide is running the other way? That's just spending scarce
money on a dead end.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur

"Typhoon502" wrote:

:Thomas Schoene wrote:
: Strike and cold-nose (i.e., no radar) aren't compatible options anymore.
: You need radar ground-mapping modes at a minimum, and realistically
: also some air-to-air modes for self-defense. At that point, there's not
: a huge amount of unique Sparrow or Phoenix support left in the system.
: But you have to ADD distinctive strike capabilities, such as a laser
: designator and FLIR (e.g. LANTIRN) to match the A-6's TRAM sensor turret.
:
: OTOH, a ground-up redesign of the F-14 like the Super Hornet (ASF-14,
: roughly) might have allowed significant savings.
:
:How much of the maintenance issues were related to the swing wing?

Very few.

:Theoretically, do you think a redesign of that scale would have
:retained the swinger or was it an outdated solution?

The alternative would be a redesign much more extreme than what was
done with the Super Bug, since the alternative to achieve everything
the swing wing brought to the table would be aerodynamically unstable
flight.

There actually were early Tomcat designs with fixed wings that looked
a lot like those on the F-15. They went with the swing wing instead.

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney

In article , Fred J. McCall
wrote:

"Typhoon502" wrote:

:Thomas Schoene wrote:
: Strike and cold-nose (i.e., no radar) aren't compatible options anymore.
: You need radar ground-mapping modes at a minimum, and realistically
: also some air-to-air modes for self-defense. At that point, there's not
: a huge amount of unique Sparrow or Phoenix support left in the system.
: But you have to ADD distinctive strike capabilities, such as a laser
: designator and FLIR (e.g. LANTIRN) to match the A-6's TRAM sensor turret.
:
: OTOH, a ground-up redesign of the F-14 like the Super Hornet (ASF-14,
: roughly) might have allowed significant savings.
:
:How much of the maintenance issues were related to the swing wing?

Very few.

:Theoretically, do you think a redesign of that scale would have
:retained the swinger or was it an outdated solution?

The alternative would be a redesign much more extreme than what was
done with the Super Bug, since the alternative to achieve everything
the swing wing brought to the table would be aerodynamically unstable
flight.

There actually were early Tomcat designs with fixed wings that looked
a lot like those on the F-15. They went with the swing wing instead.

Fred, was the flight control computing needed to support unstable
designs available at the time of design of the F-14? Do I hear you
saying that once decent flight control systems were available, the
swing wing lost its justification?

In article , "Howard C. Berkowitz"
wrote:

In article , Fred J. McCall
wrote:

"Typhoon502" wrote:

:Thomas Schoene wrote:
: Strike and cold-nose (i.e., no radar) aren't compatible options anymore.
: You need radar ground-mapping modes at a minimum, and realistically
: also some air-to-air modes for self-defense. At that point, there's not
: a huge amount of unique Sparrow or Phoenix support left in the system.
: But you have to ADD distinctive strike capabilities, such as a laser
: designator and FLIR (e.g. LANTIRN) to match the A-6's TRAM sensor turret.
:
: OTOH, a ground-up redesign of the F-14 like the Super Hornet (ASF-14,
: roughly) might have allowed significant savings.
:
:How much of the maintenance issues were related to the swing wing?

Very few.

:Theoretically, do you think a redesign of that scale would have
:retained the swinger or was it an outdated solution?

The alternative would be a redesign much more extreme than what was
done with the Super Bug, since the alternative to achieve everything
the swing wing brought to the table would be aerodynamically unstable
flight.

There actually were early Tomcat designs with fixed wings that looked
a lot like those on the F-15. They went with the swing wing instead.

Fred, was the flight control computing needed to support unstable
designs available at the time of design of the F-14? Do I hear you
saying that once decent flight control systems were available, the
swing wing lost its justification?

not Fred, but...

The design period of the F-14 was mid 60's, long before there was enough
computing power to support unstable FBW designs. IIRC it was actually
before the very idea.

The swing wing idea has more to do with top speed/approach speed
than with manuevering and stability.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur

"Howard C. Berkowitz" wrote:

:In article , Fred J. McCall
wrote:
:
: "Typhoon502" wrote:
:
: :Thomas Schoene wrote:
: : Strike and cold-nose (i.e., no radar) aren't compatible options anymore.
: : You need radar ground-mapping modes at a minimum, and realistically
: : also some air-to-air modes for self-defense. At that point, there's not
: : a huge amount of unique Sparrow or Phoenix support left in the system.
: : But you have to ADD distinctive strike capabilities, such as a laser
: : designator and FLIR (e.g. LANTIRN) to match the A-6's TRAM sensor turret.
: :
: : OTOH, a ground-up redesign of the F-14 like the Super Hornet (ASF-14,
: : roughly) might have allowed significant savings.
: :
: :How much of the maintenance issues were related to the swing wing?
:
: Very few.
:
: :Theoretically, do you think a redesign of that scale would have
: :retained the swinger or was it an outdated solution?
:
: The alternative would be a redesign much more extreme than what was
: done with the Super Bug, since the alternative to achieve everything
: the swing wing brought to the table would be aerodynamically unstable
: flight.
:
: There actually were early Tomcat designs with fixed wings that looked
: a lot like those on the F-15. They went with the swing wing instead.
:
:Fred, was the flight control computing needed to support unstable
:designs available at the time of design of the F-14? Do I hear you
:saying that once decent flight control systems were available, the
:swing wing lost its justification?

It probably could have been done then, but I suspect that the Navy
would have viewed the technology of going to 'fly-by-wire' as being
too risky to put on such a high-cost fighter. The swing-wing,
meanwhile, had been one of the parts (along with the AWG-9 weapon
system) of the F-111 program that had worked as advertised, despite
some initial problems with the F-111 pivot bearing during design.

The F-16 wasn't done that much later, but it started out as a
'technology demonstrator' program with an option to go to a real
aircraft. Without the experience gained in the technology
demonstrator phase, folks inside USAF procurement at the time have
stated that there is no way they would have risked 'fly-by-wire' on
the operational aircraft.

Without fly-by-wire, relaxed stability is pretty much a non-starter.

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

(Harry Andreas) wrote:

:In article , "Howard C. Berkowitz"
wrote:
:
: In article , Fred J. McCall
: wrote:
:
: "Typhoon502" wrote:
:
: :Thomas Schoene wrote:
: : Strike and cold-nose (i.e., no radar) aren't compatible options anymore.
: : You need radar ground-mapping modes at a minimum, and realistically
: : also some air-to-air modes for self-defense. At that point, there's not
: : a huge amount of unique Sparrow or Phoenix support left in the system.
: : But you have to ADD distinctive strike capabilities, such as a laser
: : designator and FLIR (e.g. LANTIRN) to match the A-6's TRAM sensor turret.
: :
: : OTOH, a ground-up redesign of the F-14 like the Super Hornet (ASF-14,
: : roughly) might have allowed significant savings.
: :
: :How much of the maintenance issues were related to the swing wing?
:
: Very few.
:
: :Theoretically, do you think a redesign of that scale would have
: :retained the swinger or was it an outdated solution?
:
: The alternative would be a redesign much more extreme than what was
: done with the Super Bug, since the alternative to achieve everything
: the swing wing brought to the table would be aerodynamically unstable
: flight.
:
: There actually were early Tomcat designs with fixed wings that looked
: a lot like those on the F-15. They went with the swing wing instead.
:
: Fred, was the flight control computing needed to support unstable
: designs available at the time of design of the F-14? Do I hear you
: saying that once decent flight control systems were available, the
: swing wing lost its justification?
:
:not Fred, but...
:
:The design period of the F-14 was mid 60's, long before there was enough
:computing power to support unstable FBW designs. IIRC it was actually
:before the very idea.
:
:The swing wing idea has more to do with top speed/approach speed
:than with manuevering and stability.

The F-16 technology demonstrator stuff actually started in the
mid-1960s as well. The difference was that the F-14 was one of the
most capable and expensive fighter aircraft being developed and the
F-16 was a technology demonstrator program. You will decline risks
doing the former that you might decide are acceptable doing the
latter.

The Air Force would not have bought the F-16 if there hadn't been the
preceding technology demonstrator phase to prove out the fly-by-wire
stuff.

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney