First flight for the Russian "F-22"

[Strip]

Ok.  Correct it then, instead of simply throwing attitude like a 14 year old girl at her freshman dinner dance.

Prove that a single fighter pilot would give up 1 degree instantaneous turn for a .01% RCS difference.

In my eyes I think a fighter pilot would fly a 747 if given total stealth (including visual) but your example is extremely construed anyway.

At an exchange rate like that you could give all of the turn rate up and maybe gain what? Between 1-2 percent?  No I wont even try to argue with that other than to point out its a biased question to begin with.

But regardless of that, my comment was mainly directed towards other aspects of your scientific analysis....

Strip

[Cthulhu]

I am not Mace, but I am very confident in the accuracy of that statement...

A typical dry F-14 weighed a little over 44,000 lbs and the Aim-54 weighs around 1,025 lbs. Given six missiles on board that would put its dry weight at 50 thousand lbs. By the time you add sufficient fuel reserves your well over the maximum trap.

I am a big fan of the F-14 and have read a lot of info, I am curious to see how my opinion stacks up with Mace.

(Who most certainly would be the best source of anecdotal info I have seen in a long time....)

<S> Mace, I miss your old girl, even if it was just watching from the ground.

Strip

Thx Strip 

[Babalonian]

That's Vandy 50, the second production F14D and first of four D's I had at VX4 (Vandy 50-53) for the F14D OPEVAL in 1990.  I was the F14D Operational Test Director and took this shot from Vandy 51.  This was a test flight to check out the missiles and weapon system for the next day's missile shoot where I launched four Phoenix, two Sparrows and a Sidewinder on one run against six targets.  That was the biggest missile shoot the Tomcat did since the 6 Phoenix shot during developmental testing in the early 70's.  It's not often you see a Tomcat fully loaded for air-to-air but, as you can see, you can still use the vertical.  Strapping 5,500lbs of pure air-to-air meanness under your wings sure puts some lead in the pencil.  

Here's the original:
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and on deck at NAS Pt Mugu the next day just before the big shoot:
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Vandy 52 on our way to a low-altitude combined Phonix and Sparrow shoot over the desert near China Lake
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Vandy 51 and 52 on our way out to Nimitz for traps.  Look how pretty those brand new puppy's are!
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Very cool.  Those Tomcat's tailmarkings look really familiar, I wonder if they're the ones the Navy had on display at the first airshows I can remember as a kid at Pt. Magu back in the early '90s (some of the best looking and conditioned Tomcats I can remember too)?  Still is one of my favorite airshows to go to when they host them... even if I thought you Tomcat guys there always elbowed in on the hornet guy's spotlight =P .

[Mace2004]

In my eyes I think a fighter pilot would fly a 747 if given total stealth (including visual) but your example is extremely construed anyway.

No, he wouldn't.  If he did he'd be a transport pilot.   

[Mace2004]

Very cool.  Those Tomcat's tailmarkings look really familiar, I wonder if they're the ones the Navy had on display at the first airshows I can remember as a kid at Pt. Magu back in the early '90s (some of the best looking and conditioned Tomcats I can remember too)?  Still is one of my favorite airshows to go to when they host them... even if I thought you Tomcat guys there always elbowed in on the hornet guy's spotlight =P .

XF is the squadron identifier but we usually filed as Vandy X (based on our squadron callsign "Vanderbuilt").  BTW, no Tomcat guy ever elbowed in on a Hornet guy's spotlight as no Hornet guy ever had a spotlight shined on him, it was always on us   

You may remember this one, it was painted by Grumman for us (illegally...so shuuuuussssshhhh) when we retired our black F4U:

Or, if you were older perhaps this one:

[Kazaa]

Best thread ever!

Tomcats forever, baby!

Mace, you're my Hero! The Tomcat has been my favourite bird since day one.

[Mace2004]

Ain't that the truth.  

But I have a question for someone who's actually been there:


Mace,

Years ago I did Carrier Suitability work on a "not so brightly lit" program.    The Mk 7 Mod 3 gear was state of the art back then, but it still was limited to 50,000 lb max trap weight. I was told by a Grumman engineer at the time that the F-14's couldn't get down to this max recovery weight while carrying 6 AIM-54's, so they typically only flew with four.  Is this true?  

F14 max trap was 54k lbs.  I don't know much about the limits of the arresting gear but have to assume the Mk7 must have had a Mod4.  

To figure out your max trap fuel you take the basic airframe weight of 44klbs and add the weight of ordnance and launchers (all these numbers are just rounded off for simplicity).  Six AIM54C's would be 6k plus the weight of the four weapons rails in the belly which, if I remember correctly were about 300lbs each plus two sidewinders at 500lbs total and about 300 lbs of 20mm.  That load out would give you a weight without fuel of about 52k lbs.  With the 54k lbs max trap weight that leaves you with 2k lbs for fuel so it's theoretically possible (provided you don't have external tanks); however, while 2k lbs sounds like a lot of gas it isn't, you're basically driving with the fuel needle on E.  Actually, NATOPS requires you to land with at least 2k lbs of fuel to take into account the possibility of a misrigged fuel totalizer and trapped (i.e., unusuable) fuel.  If you really found yourself at the CV with six buffalos strapped on you'd have to jettison two to give you 4k lbs on the ball and that's about as low as you ever want to go.  The problem with this scenario is that buffalos cost $1M each so even dropping just one is a real expensive proposition.

If you thought you needed the Phoenix (and would be able to use it given the ROE) you'd typically carry two in the forward part of the tunnel, and two Sparrows and two Sidewiders on the glove stations.  That's a bit less than 4k lbs of ordnance giving you max trap fuel of 6k lbs.  This is a much more comfortable amount if you can't get aboard and you are within bingo range of a divert field.  If you were blue water (i.e., no divert available and you either get aboard, succesfully tank, or eject) you could plan on being on the ball with 4k lbs of fuel since a divert isn't an option anyway.  Also, the extra fuel let you delta (hold) while the brand spanking new Hornet dweebs started crying that they were low on gas (which is basically the condition they launched in   ) and needed to land first, ahead of the real fighters.

[Stoney]

My favorite Tomcat memory was during a TACP class at Camp Lejeune back in the late 90's.  The instructor, an old OV-10 pilot, had lined up a couple of "Bombcats" out of Oceana.  They came down and none of them could bomb worth a damn, but the panel checks were superb.  Had one that blew some of the shingles off the top of the tower at OP-2 of the Golf 10 range.  Nothing like watching that big hunk of metal flying inverted at tree top...

[Gman]

Mace did you ever use the "I"ll hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" maneuver?

Seriously though, I have an F14 question.

In "The Hunt for Red October" Tom Clancy writes that the F14's "rearward looking radar" light clicked on and detected  AA2 Atolls inbound.  Is there such a device that serves as a sort of RWR for IR missiles etc?

[Mace2004]

Mace did you ever use the "I"ll hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" maneuver?

Seriously though, I have an F14 question.

In "The Hunt for Red October" Tom Clancy writes that the F14's "rearward looking radar" light clicked on and detected  AA2 Atolls inbound.  Is there such a device that serves as a sort of RWR for IR missiles etc?

There are systems that can detect a missile plume but the F14 never had one nor did it have rearward looking radar so there would be no way to detect an IR missile like an Atoll except by eye.  The A did have the ALR45/50 and the B and D had the ALR67 radar warning receivers but those only worked against radar threats.

[bozon]

The fact of clear superiority is exactly why they are valuable.  Would you start a knife fight if the other guy has a machine gun?

No, but if I was the guy with the machine gun, I wouldn't bother to develop a laser rifle just to scare the others even more.

Military advantage saturates at some point. If your fighters are too good, they will not fight you in the air. It does not mean that they will not fight. If you work very hard to secure absolute superiority in every aspect, they will hijack a plane using a plastic knife and fly it into a big building. This is how it works in the real world.

numbers always beat superior technology (if used smartly).

umm...........Israel???????

This is why Israel is leading the world in drone technology and deployment. Why trade-off when you can have both technology AND numbers.

[indy007]

Mace, just curious. At $1 million a pop... did the AIM-54C ever actually down anything in combat?

[Mace2004]

Mace, just curious. At $1 million a pop... did the AIM-54C ever actually down anything in combat?

Nope.  There is one launch during Desert Storm but no confirmed kill out of it.  That's one of the problems with BVR, you're not going to have gun camera footage.

[Strip]

Indy007,
I believe there are only two confirmed launches by the U.S. in combat, neither resulting in a downed enemy aircraft. I have heard rumors of a couple of others fired but nothing concrete unfortunately. Iran has claimed to down a few using the AIM-54C but again nothing has been confirmed. Nearly 300 AIM-54's were sent to Iran, all of which were operational at one time. When the U.S. pulled its aircraft support many doubted the Iranians ability to maintain the F-14, a notoriously fickle aircraft. Some even claimed the U.S. supplied technicians sabotaged the remaining missiles and the weapons system on board the F-14. Some evidence suggests that Iran still has the capability to field operational F-14's equipped with the Phoenix missile though. Often the lack of molten salt batteries were responsible for the lack of available missiles. Iran has procured these thermal batteries clandestinely before and its presumed they continue to do so to this day.

A funny story, during the opening days of the war Iraqi pilots would consistently not operate near F-14's. When the Tomcat's activated there radar they would immediately leave the area. The odd part was they did not respect the F-15/F-18 as seriously. Presumably they learned the distinctive radar signal from the F-14's AWG-9 radar during encounters with the Iranians. The Iranians used the F-14 as a early warning aircraft, often protecting large formations of other aircraft.

I found that a bit curious and got a good chuckle, heard that from a few pilots who served in that time frame as well as various other articles.

Strip

[Mace2004]

No, but if I was the guy with the machine gun, I wouldn't bother to develop a laser rifle just to scare the others even more.

Military advantage saturates at some point. If your fighters are too good, they will not fight you in the air. It does not mean that they will not fight. If you work very hard to secure absolute superiority in every aspect, they will hijack a plane using a plastic knife and fly it into a big building. This is how it works in the real world.

LOL.  Are you seriously heading into an argument that we're really to blame for terrorism because our military is too good?  That's a pretty big stretch.  Are you suggesting that al-Qiada and Hizballah and Amal and Hamas exist because we have F22s?  Would terrorism be less of a problem in the "real world" if we only flew F6F's instead?  How about Spads?  There is no point at which absolute superiority in any area is detremental, there are just those that think that being the best just isn't "fair".