Legendary Air Dominance F-14 Tomcat; A Fighter Aircraft Built Specially for a War That Never Happened, Still Unreplaced

After the 1950s, the show of strength between the USA and the USSR turned into an intensifying cold war, which, in some crises, carried the risk of turning into a hot war, the whole world was somehow involved in the duel between these two great powers, roughly east-west.

In the 1960-70s, the US was far ahead of the USSR in terms of aircraft carrier power. The US aircraft carrier fleet had long served as the nation's best projection of force and deterrent, a show of strength. An aircraft carrier could carry a NATO-standard air base. This meant the transfer of a formidable air power at sea. However, the enormous size of aircraft carriers also made them difficult to defend.

The Second World War showed that enemy aircraft were a greater threat at sea than enemy ships, and the Vietnam War demonstrated the shortcomings of the F-4 Phantom II, the most effective aircraft of US air power when it came to dogfighting. The US Navy anticipated that as the Cold War continued, a ruthless war of attrition would be waged in the skies.

The US Navy needed an aircraft that could serve as the front line of defence for the carrier strike group, approaching incoming enemy bombers at high speed and engaging them from long enough distances to keep its carrier safely out of harm's way.

In other words, the US Navy needed a true "air superiority" aircraft.

A "heavyweight and muscular" fighter aircraft design proposed by Grumman Aerospace Corporation seemed to be suitable for this purpose. This new aircraft included an extensive variable geometry wing design that would allow it to maximise lift during take-off and minimise drag during high-speed flight.

And then came the F-14 Tomcat.

The US Navy liked and loved this new fighter aircraft so much that it chose to skip the prototype testing and evaluation phase altogether and put the Tomcat into mass production in 1969 and commissioned its first F-14s in 1972, production continued until 1991, with a total of 712 F-14s produced.

Air superiority was a must and there was no compromise. Tomcat and Phoenix were almost integrated

The weapons carried by the F-14 were as heavyweight as the F-14 itself, but fast, powerful and agile. With a total of ten fixed points and 14,500 pounds of weapons carrying capacity, the Tomcat was a serious flying arsenal, but the weapon that struck the real heavy blow was the AIM-54 Phoenix missile, of which it could carry 6. Tomcat and Phoenix were almost integrated.

The Tomcat was a huge aircraft that used a huge nose radar specially built to launch the AIM-54 Phoenix, the deadliest air-to-air missile in the western inventory. Missiles fielded today can only capture a fraction of the Phoenix's capabilities.

When the Cold War ended, the mighty F-14 became a fighter without a war and its mission ended.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US Navy found itself at a crossroads. Without the specter of Russian bombers to contend with hanging over the US Navy, the mighty F-14 had become a fighter without a war.

Some F-14s were being modernised in terms of avionics and some new systems were being added, but the F-14 was very difficult and expensive to maintain and operate, and very difficult to operate. The F-14 was a much more difficult and costly aircraft in every aspect, especially compared to new fourth generation competitors such as the F/A-18 Hornet and its successor, the Super Hornet.

Yes, thanks to some electronic improvements, the F-14s flew air attack missions against ground targets in the early days of the modern wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, air-to-air missions in joint operations were generally in the hands of the F-18, F-15 and F-16, and the Tomcat's glorious days of air superiority were long gone.

In 2006, the F-14 Tomcat retired, handing over its role to the slower and cheaper F/A-18 Super Hornet.

With the rise of China, the US Navy is looking for an aircraft that can offer the Tomcat's capacity as an air superiority aircraft.

With the rise of China, it is aimed and desired that the air superiority capacity offered by the Tomcat will be obtained from the "PCA (Penetrating Counter Air)" project.

The F-14 was a fighter aircraft specially built for a war that never happened.

Yes, the F-14 was a fighter aircraft specially built for a war that never happened. But when deterrence was the name of the game, the Tomcat fulfilled its mission. After all, a fully loaded F-14, armed with more than 14,000 pounds of missiles at twice the speed of sound, was very hard to beat.