Comments by "Tara Raboomdiay" (@tararaboomdiay7442) on "The Navy's Alternatives To The F-14 Tomcat Were A Fascinating Mix Of Good Ideas. Some Of Them French" video.

Navy realized F100 was having problems and the F400, the engine the F-41 was designed round, that was based on it would have those problems and more and Navy couldn't afford to pay to fix them so they canceled that engine and settled for the TF30. The F-14A was never meant to be the production version, just the developmental version. The B was to be the first production version, but when the P&W F400 died, so did the original B. BTW, there is an original B on the Lexington in NYC. The C was to have been the B but with more powerful electronics. When the B died so did the C . The F-14D was essentially the F-14C but with even more capable avionics. The first F110 equipped F-14s were at first called A+s to avoid confusion since they were basically As with the bigger motors but not the airframe and wiring enhancements planned for the original production model, the original B. Then it was decided this was even more confusing and since the original B never got into production, they changed A+ to B. I'm not sure why they skipped C.
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@MrCateagle At that time F100 and F401 were being developed in parallel and were being jointly funded. IIRC, part of the agreement was that when USAF accepted the F100, any further improvements to the F401 would have to be paid for by Navy alone. AF accepted the F100 at a certain point because if there was no F100, there would be no F-15 and they felt it could become a good engine. . Navy looked at its budget in the early '70s and said they just couldn't afford the fixes on their own, and they did nave an "interim" engine in the TF30, so they canceled the F401.
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@christophmahler The B/D also finally had the kind of engine it was designed for. The Super Hornet also benefited from industrial policy. It was more important to keep a more versatile company in business, than a more limited one that primarily built naval aircraft.
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@TyrannoJoris_Rex The Spey wouldn't have given the overall performance desired for VFX-2
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@TyrannoJoris_Rex Because the TF30 would allow the program to continue. After the dropping of the F401, unless Navy could keep F-14 development going, Congress would have probably killed it. Also, Navy just didn't have the money then. If they were going to try and fund a new engine, they'd want something that would do for the Tomcat everything the F401 was supposed to do. They didn't get that until the F110.
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@TyrannoJoris_Rex Tomcat #2 was dedicated to low speed handling tests and wouldn't be suitable for full envelope testing. It would also require time to fit a new engine, which the Navy didn't have. Also, both it and the F-15 were under scrutiny by Congress, which was not fully behind development of either fighter ("Why can't you just use F-4s forever"?), and adding the complication of putting in the Spey ("What? You want us to pay for a Foreign engine ??!!") could give its enemies the club they needed. Besides, if they somehow got the amount of money it would take to integrate Spey, maybe they'd just have wanted to use it to try and fix F401.
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@MrCateagle The afterburning TF41 would have required more time and money than the TF30 which was already in the F-14A, neither one of which the Navy had. I don't remember the afterburning thrust but I believe the afterburning TF41 had 18,000 lbs dry thrust. The key was it didn't offer enough improvement over the TF30 to "sell" itself to teh Navy. Regarding the F401, the agreement between USAF and Navy is that development costs would be shared on a percentage basis between teh two. However, one USAF accepted F100 in whatever state it was in at the time, USN would have to cover 100% of the costs to continue development and increases in reliability 100% on its own . USAF accepted the F100 arguably prematurely because it HAD to have it and Navy just didn't have the money to do a lot more work on the F401 on its own, and it Did have a working engine already in the F-14.
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@ninjalectualx Hard to tell since neither aircraft exits.
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@daniellarge9784 Different mission entirely.
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@neilturner6749 UK compared F-14, F-15 and Tornado ADV. One particular issue with the comparison was that in the study, F-15 and Tornado were evaluated with Sparrow and what would become Skyflash, which was basically a much improved Sparrow. Tomcat was evaluated just with Phoenix, which gave it an aerodynamic performance hit. When the strategy became to take the existing order to build 165 of the 385 Tornados that were already being ordered for the UK anyway as ADVs, the extra cost was much less than what would would be spent on buying a foreign aircraft.
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@AlanToon-fy4hg As it aged (essentially the F-14A of 1995 was mostly the same as the one of 1975), it became harder to support and parts became harder to get. The D was much easier to support.
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@heatloss The F-14 was designed to take different engines. F-14 B & D both were initially as fast as the A. What happened was that USN found that fighters rarely went above Mach 2, and by locking the intake ramps in a fixed position they could save a bunch of money on maintenance. Locking the ramps restricted the speed to Mach1.88, a tradeoff the Navy happily made.
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@Matt_The_Hugenot Actually hd a substantial air to ground potential designed in but it was not exploited until the :"Bombcat" primarily for two reasons: 1 the Fighter jocks wanted "Not a pound for air to ground". 2. The air to ground mission was needed to help justify the development of the F/A-18.
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@the_Carthaginian1 Some figures for the slow F-14... At 10,000 ft. 150 knots to 610 knots 9.7 seconds. 400knots to M2.34 ~ 50 seconds, not sure of the altitude in this case.. Of course these are with clean aircraft fully maintained.
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@neilturner6749 This is going to shake a lot of people up. When the records were reviewed after the Vietnam War, it was found that while missiles didn't do anywhere as well as was promised they did better than guns. It was the way the records were originally kept. If you took a shot with a missile and missed it counted. But if in that same situation you didn't take a gun shot because you could never get in position for the shot (even though you were in missile envelope) it didn't count. Also, if the missile malfunctioned, it counted. If you squeezed the trigger on the gun and it jammed, it didn't
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F-14D required much less maintenance than the A, but it wouldn't have been as low as the Hornet E/F. Capability costs.
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@mpetersen6 Except for the FJ-2 Fury which was a derivative of the F-86, which itself might be argued was a derivative of the Navy FJ-1 Fury, all tactical airframes used by both the USAF and USN were derivatives of naval aircraft (A-1. A-3/B-66).
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In the case of the Crusader III vs Phantom II, the Crusader was somewhat faster and accelerated better. It also had greater range when both were flown without tanks. However, that Phantom was twin engined, which while not as big a factor in Navy's as has been thought, was still a factor given the Navy's previous experience with the reliability of jet engines. It had more room for a better radar and a larger antenna. Also it had a Radar Intercept Officer which meant lower workload and higher effectiveness than a single crewed fighter. It could carry more armament, both missiles and air to ground ordnance. Those last three factors were probably the deciding ones. No way to tell if the Crusader III would have had as appalling a safety record as its predecessor. The Navy could only afford one so they picked the one they thought would give them the most bang for the buck. The original VFAX designation was for a program that was canceled, and replaced with VFX, which resulted in the F-14. The acronym VFAX was reutilized for a later program that resulted in the F/A-18. By the way, there is an urban legend that's been going around saying that after it wasn't selected, the existing Crusader IIIs would bounce Phantoms during the development process and consistently wax hem. This never happened. There are a number of reasons that confirm this, but the easiest one is that the Crusader IIIs and Phantom IIs were never in the same place at the same time for said mock combats to occur.
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@jeffreyskoritowski4114 It wasn't that easy and you have to allow for who was flying each plane. In first Gulf War USAF had tough time with Foxbats at unless they caught them near their home airfields. Same thing happened win WWII with the ME-262
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@TyrannoJoris_Rex Roth countries didn't "pull out". At the time it was too tenuous a program for most countries to take a risk on. Also Iran offered something no one else did: cash.
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@neilturner6749 The F-11B was not equipped to be able to do the A mission just like the A couldn't do the B's. Also USN couldn't afford the weight.
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I always thought it was, "...even a barn...".
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@CAP198462 Well, they're actually both true 😊
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@gort8203 The bigger engines were needed to overcome its weight growth that affected climbout and acceleration as well as operations around the boat. You are correct that the Navy changed its mind about what it really needed. So did the Air Force. But that was because of Vietnam, but also the July 9, 1967 Domodedovo Air Show where the Soviets publicly displayed 12 new types of aircraft, including fighters with performance well beyond what we thought they were capable of. That shocked the US into giving major priority to get new high performance fighters, which resulted in the F-14 and F-15.
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@gort8203 The F-111Bs used in the trials on the Coral Sea were operated at lighter weights without armament or even full fuel. The purpose of the exercise was to evaluate variable sweep wings on deck and in launch/recovery operations. F-111A was planned to replace the F-105 (not the B-58) and to operate as USAF's next fighter, maybe eventually replacing the F-4 (Vietnam had something to say about that) and in reconnaissance roles. As it turned out, it only fulfilled the first role and did a good job, although it never achieved all the performance desired for that role (primarily range in certain profiles).
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@gort8203 You are 100% right about the F-111A always being intended to be a strike aircraft (To USAF, if it's not a Bomber, then no matter what else it does, it's a Fighter). The only AF aircraft that was ever designated from the start as an "A- " was the A-10 as part of its campaign against the AH-56. Where I screwed up was not paying attention and looking at the early, early missions for the original TFX program, which would have been impractical to actually build. Minor point: the version that was to fulfill the B-58 mission was the later FB-111. Again, the F-111Bs that flew from the Coral Sea were operated at reduced weight and the purpose was not to do full carrier compatibility tests. IIRC, one of the requirements for an operational bird was that if an engine was lost on approach in landing configuration at operational landing weight the aircraft had to be able to climb at 500 fpm in case of waveoff. It was estimated that an operational F-111B would not be able to come close to that. Carrier suitability was one of, but by no means the only, reasons fort he Navy wanting out. Another one was that given limited deck space, they couldn't afford to have it plus another fighter to handle all the rest of the fighter mission.
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@christophmahler Two things: The F-111F of Desert Storm fame was a fr cry from the F-111A/B of Connolly's time. It also had 35% more thrust. Also [not to sound snarky but...] it was not one of their most capable supersonic deep strike platforms, it was the Only one, a tribute to its excellence. B-1Bs were assigned the nuclear strike mission at that time.
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@christophmahler It hasn't done it to mine or many others Maybe the gods of Google do not look upon you with favor.
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@IsaacKuo The reason AMRAMM wasn't on tomcat was a conscious decision to use the money that was planned for its integration to instead integrate LANTIRN. it was felt that there would be a greater demand for more strike capability than air-to-air for the remainder of the Tomcat's life.
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Jaguar originally had a naval version for France, but after a few were built, France decided not to pursue the program.
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@imperialinquisition6006 Actually, there were numerous later reports on both the F-111 and F-35 that indicate that if the services had been allowed to have their own aircraft with just some common subcomponents it would have been cheaper. For one thing, you wouldn't have to gt two services' clearance on almost everything you wanted to do. Hindsight being 20/20.
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@neilturner6749 Actually in limited profiles AIM-120D can almost reach AIM-54 range AIM-260 is supposed to have longer range and the limited use AIM-174 has loner range than Phoenix.
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@gort8203 Also didn't have the maneuverability, visibility, maintainability, ability to carry the necessary avionics and turnaround capability. For what it was designed for, it was very good at. In fact, a three engined version was proposed to USAF as an interceptor.
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The F6D was canceled in 1961, six years before the US became aware of what it thought were M3 MiGs. Regarding getting close to M3 bombers, remember the bombers would be coming toward the carriers. It was canceled because the concept of a slow long endurance plane designed to do nothing but loiter around and hurl missiles at Soviet bombers simply wasn't viable. It would take a while to get back and rearm and was of no use against fighters and other craft. There really wasn't going to be enough deck space for the luxury of such a limited craft. As far as a cheap day fighter went, what if you encountered the enemy at nought or IFR weather? Again, there's only so much deck space. F-111B's speed was a byproduct of USAF requirements since McNamara directed a "one size fits all" approach.
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@Matt_The_Hugenot F-14D (which was the version Cheney killed) met or exceeded everything that was asked of it and for which DoD provided support. Its avionics were the most advanced in US service APG-71 was essentially the F-15E;s APG-70 with or air-to-air capability, a more powerful transmitter and a bigger antenna. . It carried the same missiles as other US fighters except for Phoenix, which is only now being superseded. It was the first fighter to fire AMRAAM,but it was decided to use the money to integrate LANTIRN instead.
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