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The US Navy Says Goodbye to the Tomcat
jonerik writes "Though it's not being widely reported, this week marks the end of the line for the F-14 Tomcat in US Navy service. First flown in 1970, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was easily one of the world's most powerful, advanced, and deadly aircraft for many years, capable of flying at Mach 2.3 and firing its half-dozen Mach 5 AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles at targets as much as 100 miles away. Having been gradually replaced during the last several years by the newer F/A-18E/F, the last of the aircraft in US service will be officially retired on Friday, September 22nd in a ceremony at Virginia's Oceana Naval Air Station. However, at least a few F-14s will continue to fly for a few more years: Iran — which took delivery of 79 aircraft before the overthrow of the Shah — still flies the plane, though only a small number (perhaps ten or twenty) are believed to still be in service due to a lack of spare parts and attrition."
that we won't have to think of Tom Cruise anymore when we see one of those planes flying!!!
Not to mention we won't have to think of "Danger Zone", "you've lost that loving feelin'" (when he sings it), and we won't have to think of Navy training jets as MIGs anymore!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
my friend, tomcats are air to air fighters. they do not have real air-to-ground capabilities.
Yes! All none of them!
I believe Jerry mouse had it his way this time, poor Tomcat.
:)
On a related note:
Last time I checked, our country only had 4 italian training jets for our air defense. Maybe they're going to donate those things
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
...Military Industrial War Complex....new planes, new weapons, new profits...
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
At first I thought the Navy was dumping Apache Tomcat! :) http://tomcat.apache.org/
Yeah, never mind the bullets, missles, and bombs deployed from the F-14 that killed countless people...but it NEVER dropped Agent Orange, so the F-14 was kind to humanity.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
long live the amerikan war machine
The link below goes to a story that claims the F-14 was a formidable opponent for MIGs in Vietnam:
D =/20060919/NEWS/609190338&SearchID=73257582885024/
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AI
The Grumman F-14D Tomcat is a twin-engine, two-seat supersonic airplane that in the years since the early 1970s was the Navy's primary fighter. Its battles with Russian-built MiGs over Vietnam made both planes famous.
Clearly he confused the F-14 with the F-4...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
They have moved from Apache & Tomcat to IIS & ASP.NET.
Oddly enough, the "F" in F-14 stands for "FIghter"; I give you my personal guarantee that a U.S. Navy F-14 never dropped an agent orange bomb on vietnam.
Considering that all F-14's were pure fighter, as in no strike capability, until after I got out of the military in '91, I sort of doubt that they dropped any other type of bomb on vietnam, either.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
How about not blaming the craft, rather the pilots, nay, the civilian leadership who authorized and/or ordered the deployment of said bullets, missles, and bombs.
Don't worry about their targets, I have an idea you can't know or comprehend the ways in which this craft was used.
Yeah, not having enough attrition is a big problem in the Tomcat business.
On a more serious subject, were these the ones with the foldy wings? Man, I have a Micro Machine that I'm somewhat sure is a Tomcat and the wings amaze me every time I play with it.
Er, you know. Every time when I used to play with it. Because...I'm too old for Micro Machines now...of...course...
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
Maybe as much as half a year ago.
The Iranians keep them around for propaganda value, really. Although these days, they're getting more propaganda mileage out of that "new bomber" they rolled out, which is just a cannibalized F-5 with the tail hacked up to stuff in twin engines and twin tail fins, neither of which were necessary. And painted black to make it a "stealth fighter."
in case you need parts later!
Thats right America is the problem once again.
Does one of these cost now and where can I buy one?
I guess one could argue the P-51D was not kind to humanity.
But they apparently did not spray enough of it.
I believe you meant to say, "Eat a bag of [i]babies[/i]". To which my liberal leanings would say, "Delicious!"
What about Soviet Slashdot readers? I doubt they share your final sentiment.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The F-14 uses a variable sweep wing, the idea being that for maneuverability the wings are extended and for speed the wings are swept back.
Nice idea eh? The problem is there are six hydraulic actuators on each wing to make this happen. When one breaks, there's no way to tell which one is bad without pulling all six from the wing and putting each one on a test bench. Testing a single actuator takes about an hour... and Murphy states the bad actuator is the last one you test.
The F-18 may look like a lawn dart from hell, but at least it's relatively easier to work on.
A Human Right
I've read elsewhere that Tomcats were used as strike aircraft during Shrub's crusade.
I don't doubt that it didn't drop Agent Orange. I'll take your word for it that it didn't.
I'm just sarcastically pointing out that the point is moot - the Tomcat was a killing machine - I see no reason for us all to feel sentimental for something being "retired" (anthropomorphism anyone?) that existed on this earth for the sole reason of killing human beings.
So, just pointing that out.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
The F/A-18 means it's both a Fighter and also an Attack aircraft, which means is does neither as well as a plane designed specifically for that purpose. Meaning, the F/A-18 cannot carry as much ordinance as an A-6 nor dogfight as well as an F-14 or F-15.
That said, the F-14 is also one damned big plane compared to the F/A-18, despite how cool it may have looked. IANANA (I am not a naval aviator) so I can't say which flies better. I just know that when I was aboard CV-62 USS Independence, I was surprised at how much bigger the Tomcat was compared to the Hornet.
Well you're half right. They weren't designed with air-to-ground in mind, but it was modified to perform in a limited strike role later on. They did pretty well over Libya, and I believe they dropped some bombs in Iraq and maybe Afghanistan as well. From http://www.airtoaircombat.com/background.asp?id=14 &bg=8
The F-14A can carry up to 14,500 pounds of bombs and rockets, although it was not originally assigned a ground-attack mission. The under-fuselage pallets which ordinarily carry Phoenix missiles can also mount bomb racks for 1000-pound Mk 83 or 2000-pound Mk 84 bombs or other free-fall weaponry. As early as 1972, a Tomcat flew with 18 Mk 82 bombs, plus a complement of missiles. VF-122 dropped the first bombs from a Fleet Tomcat on August 8, 1990. Although the F/A-18 Hornet is the primary air-to-ground aircraft of the Navy fleet squadrons, the F/A-18 is felt to lack a sufficient range/payload capacity, and the air-to-ground capable F-14 Tomcat was felt to be essential to permit a carrier-based air wing to retain its full capacity. However, there were initially some shortages of bomb racks, and it was often true that only one F-14 squadron on each carrier was equipped to carry out a secondary ground attack role, with the other squadron being TARPS-equipped. Software for a ground attack mission has now been installed on all F-14Bs and Ds, as well on some F-14As. Today, the training syllabus includes some emphasis on air-to-ground strike, although such missions would only be carried out in a relatively permissible combat environment because of the high cost of the Tomcat.
I'm also pretty sure Tomcats could carry AGM Mavericks....
For whatever your beliefs, thanks for sharing them. Thanks for spelling America with a "k". You get a star for utilizing your free speech!
The prowler is even being fazed out, because of the F-18 variants.
A bunch of old planes are getting older. Some are older than the pilots and mechanics making them fly.
Nostalgia... except I am too young to remember.
I am glad they are done with this plane because it killed Goose.
Die when you die -GG Allin
For a minute I though they. were breaking up.
Especially since the F-14 was fleet air defence (shooting missiles at Sov bombers) and didn't enter service until late 1974.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I always wanted one of those! And, well, since they are getting rid of them, better for me to get one than somebody else, right? =D
They should. Like the Japanese, they're a hell of a lot better off than they were before we defeated them.
And as if the economic advantages that come from ditching Communism weren't enough, the former Soviets get to rent out their old GULAG camps to the CIA! Talk about synergizing your core competencies.
Western society is generally obsessed with technology anyway. It's not just the military-industrial complex. Read the books Technopoly by Neil Postman or Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul for a good explanation of how society has made technology and technological systems of thought the automatic solution to all our problems.
Sentimental feelings aside (no more riding into the Danger Zone), it's a good thing the Tomcat is gone. Hopefully maintenace budgets will fall as a result. Make way for the F/A-18s and F-35s!
...and a rousing cheer for the guy who can't tell an F14 from a C123.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I served in the USN from 1981-1986 and worked on Tomcats (flight line and later AIMD at Miramar and ship's company on the Ranger.) These were amazing aircraft and a huge step forward technologically from '60's era aviation. Not only were things like moving wings and the Phoenix missile system introduced, but the avionics were the first ever designed for computerized testing, repair and calibration. As technical pioneers, this and the SR-71 Blackbird benefited hugely from NASA research, of course. :)
Anyway, I have some amazing memories (and some neat pictures) from those years, and in a way its sad to see this plane retired.
Ok well I'm not that old, but I remember drooling over F4s in Okinawa back when I was knee high to a grasshopper. Probably would have ended up flying if my eyes hadn't taken a turn for the worse when I was 10. I reckon you can fix 'em now with those newfangled "lasers" but it's a bit too late to get started now...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Napalm is not Agent Orange!!! Sure, both get dropped by planes in warfare, and I wouldn't want to be the target of either, but that's about where the similarities end.
Besides, I'm pretty sure that the military doesn't see much need for defoliant in the desert.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
It's hard to find any grown man today who hasn't seen the classic man-flick "Top Gun." By the same token it would be hard for any man not to be able to identify the F-14. A small slice of americana has officially slid into the past. It looked like the SUV of jet fighters, since it was so big, but it was sexy. It was meant to rule the sky, an air superiority fighter.
Hell yes, I admit I would love to fly at Mach 3 with my hair on fire, and have the call sign "Maverick." While over all I felt the military would be a poor choice of career for me due to my disrespect for authority, I always had a small fantasy to be able to fly an F-14.
I will briefly lament it's passing by wearing Axe body spray, putting on a navy uniform, and going out to bars to sing "She's Lost that Lovin' Feeling" to women who won't sleep with me.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Tomcat seemed to be a good Application Server I doubt they are going to get the same performance out of whatever they replace it with, Apache maybe?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I see no reason for us all to feel sentimental for something being "retired" (anthropomorphism anyone?) that existed on this earth for the sole reason of killing human beings.
Pure fighter aircraft are defensive weaponry, not offensive weaponry. They are used in the first instance to intercept bombers. Of course if you know your bombers are going to be intercepted you will deploy fighters alongside your bombers to intercept the fighters intercepting your bombers, but even in that case they are defending the bomber, not attacking enemy infrastructure in their own right.
I think you're confusing napalm and agent orange. Napalm is thickened fuel, used an an incendiary. Agent Orange is a herbicide (with human carcinogenic properties).
I am not a crackpot.
Air and Space Smithsonian had a "22-page salute" to the Tomcat in its August-September issue, some of which is available online.
Jeff
A nerdy fact for you
History and stats on the F-14
emt 377 emt 4
All these firings! This craziness must stop!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Just the one I use doesn't quite hit mach 2.3 ... more like 90knots ... if you thrash it! ;-)
http://www.iserve.net.nz/users/d1helxb/aac.org.nz/ htdocs/region_images/grummanoutside.jpg
While its true that the F-14's primary role throughout its length of service has been as an air-to-air interceptor, it could indeed drop bombs. I don't know that the F-14 did any bombing in Vietnam (the US Navy had several aircraft to fill this role, most notably the A-6 Intruder which was in service well into the 1990s), but at the very least it did drop laser-guided bombs (with laser designation by other aircraft, presumably F-18s) in Bosnia in 1995.
I don't know the numbers, but the poster you're responding to is talking about military spending as a proportion of federal income tax revenues, not as a proportion of GDP.
Remind me who won the Cold War. Because from here, it doeesn't look like the citizens of either side.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I wasn't aware that the Hornet or the Intruder were capable of carrying(?) laws or regulations. The word you're looking for is ordnance.
That is an interesting read. I wonder how the 20 bit converters were designed. They do not say but if they were used for what would be considered an instrumentation application and had 18 bits of linearity, I would assume some type of charge balancing scheme or single slope integrating. I doubt I could do better then 16 bits on the first shot with a discrete design.
I'm an airplane buff, love the F-14, and am a programmer.
I was looking at data on the Commodore 64 ( I had not
had one when they came out, we could not afford it,
but I found one for free on Craigslist, so I was just
looking ) and I came across the above. Google found
it again for me. I cant add anything to the article,
unfortunately. But very cool.
emt 377 emt 4
... but they can be compared. Kind of like the cardinality of infinite sets.
It sucks to have to kill people, but you must be prepared to do it to prevent other killings and/or misery — deemed greater by some measure or another.
People have always been fascinated with things beautiful, weapons included — consider the swords and the firearms collections, for example. The fascination with a fighter plane is perfectly legitimate too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The 2007 Federal budget allocates about 20% of its funds for defense spending not 64%.
Where'd you pull that number from? Maybe you got that number mixed up with SOCIAL PROGRAMS. The military hardly gets anything today relatively speaking... along with NASA, etc...
Ok this sounds cool. Do you know if any of the Army/Navy surplus places have any of these? I know they were expensive, but you'd be real surprised how cheap you can get ex-gov stuff if you know where to look. Hmmm.. Anyone know of any auctions? I had better hit up eBay!
"They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald."
40,000 pounds means two planes, maybe three. Throw weight adds up fast with modern aircraft.
I'm relieved now!
So for most of its life, the Tomcat was basically a flying weapons platform for the AIM-54 Phoenix long-ass-range missile. The idea was at first to shoot down enemy planes, and after a while the idea became to shoot down enemy cruise missiles. The Phoenix was unique in that its range was ~100 miles, while I think the second best was AMRAAM, at ~30 miles, and didn't come out for a decade or two afterwards.
So there's not really a replacement for the Phoenix in the modern inventory, unless somebody knows better?
Though why you'd want Phoenix when you've got Aegis cruisers defending the fleet remains an open question. So unless you want to shoot down enemy targets somewhere not over your fleet, Phoenix doesn't seem that neat anymore....
All i have to say is: RIP F-14 Tomcat. You were a great plane.
Remind me who won the Cold War. Because from here, it doeesn't look like the citizens of either side.
How fast is the computer you are typing on? Is it yours? Are you under a roof? Did you eat today?
Sounds like somebody has a whole lot to be grateful for but lacks sense enough to realise how different things could be. The fact that nuclear weapons were never used by either side in combat means we all hit the jackpot, if you must name a winner and not just appreciate how good life is for people in Russia and the US.
If you want a little reality check on what a truly sucky government can do for you, take a trip into Zimbabwe in Africa. We'll wait for you to post when you get back because they couldn't pay for the primary internet connection for the whole country and are dead in the water, internet wise and many-other-things wise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Rather like the F-4 "Phantom," in the late '60s and the '70s, the F-14 was probably the most idealized fighter for an entire generation of kids in the '80s. Something about the design - the graceful lines, or the swing wings, perhaps - just made it more romantic than either the F-15 or F-16 to my mind. I got to see one at an airshow once, afterburners on and all, which was a treat given that I don't live on the coast.
Children of the '90s have their F-22s, and F-117s, to admire, I suppose. For the rest, the postively ancient B-52 still lives.
I was sad to see the F-4 fade away over the course of the '80s, though I wasn't around for its heyday. The same with the F-111 - the last true fighter-bomber (as opposed to strike fighter) in U.S. service. I have to wonder if the "Tomcat" won't be the last pure air-combat-fighter/interceptor ever put into production for the U.S. armed forces.
Surely only a Devil's Advocate could invoke Axe body spray, a Navy dress uniform, and The Song That Must Not Me Sung all in one sentence without being struck dead by lightning.
I will briefly lament it's passing by wearing Axe body spray, putting on a navy uniform, and going out to bars to sing "She's Lost that Lovin' Feeling" to women who won't sleep with me.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
big wings
big engines
big radar
big missile (Phoenix)
big gas tanks
big loss.....
at least we can shoot them down in someone else's airforce
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
Might the concept have been based on the Avro Arrow?
Thirty tons of thrust. That is a LOT of push.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Actually the original poster referred to income taxes not federal budget. Now i'm assuming the original poster meant total receipts so using the estimated 2007 data you linked to, thats $2.4 trillion vs $466 billion in defense spending next year so that's like ~19.5%
If we do in fact use just the $1.1 in individual income tax receipts, then it is 42%. Granted still not 64% but a hell of alot.
But whatever the case, you definetly would not refer to the overal budget since our government will be ~400 billion OVER total receipts (i.e deficit). Referencing as a percentage of GDP as another poster suggested is even more rediculous. The fact is, as a nation we are over $8 TRILLION dollars in debt and it's going to be getting larger and larger over the next decade. By the time we're rid of this president we'll be close to $10 trillion in debt... he'll have nearly doubled our debt in 8 years.
Somebody save us from these so called "conservatives."
I'm curious, because I have wondered whether the Canadian jet-fighter industry might ever have offered something to complement/compete with the US offerings: could the Avro Arrow (or imaginable improvements to the present day) have compared favourable with the F14 and its later siblings?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
amen to that. i might vote for a republican that would actually lower the federal deficit. as both parties seem to be debt spenders i'll vote democrat so at least the money is spent here at home.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Agent Orange (Blue White Pink Green Purple and whatever) were not weapons. They were herbicides. They were not dropped. They were sprayed by transport aircraft converted into giant cropdusters.
The "defoliants" were used to remove the jungle cover in a few areas in Viet-Nam where VC/NVA activity was prolific and hidden under the forest canopy. It is arguable that it achieved its purpose. It was "policy" not to spray it directly onto population. The lingering after affect is less about poisons than about the totally denuded terrain left behind, that saw topsoil torn away and lost in the following monsoons. Wet deserts. I don't know if the areas have recovered yet - maybe?
Agent Orange was simply a mix of 2.4.5-T and 2.4-D which are common farm chemicals used to this today as weedicides. (Haven't seen 2.4.5-T around lately, it may have been pulled). They really work well to kill off broadleaf plants (vines) amongst grass crops like sorghum and maize. They are systemic and apparently in effect starve the plants. As far as the literature that I have read relates, these chemicals do not have any such effect on animals and more to the point - humans. They would almost certainly be friendlier than spraying with diesel fuel and kerosene which was also tried. The great poison debate that arose over Agent Orange came from a contaminant - dioxin.
Apparently dioxin can be produced as an impurity in the manufacturing process. The chemical companies supposedly monitor this and declare them dioxin free after removing bad batches. I have read that the US military was given guarantees that their supplies were not contaminated. I have also read that with the quantities that they ordered and that the speed that it was manufactured there was not the sampling and monitoring in place that might have been prudent. I don't know. If you really care there is lots and lots of biased (both ways) literature on the subject to read.
The good old wikipedia seems to have something on it though I haven't read it:
URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
Disclaimer: As an ex-farm boy I contacted these specific chemicals many times and indeed on occasion was sprayed directly with them. I had no protective clothing or breathing apparatus. I have two healthy kids with fully formed pentadactyl limbs. My mental state however has now degraded to responding to stuff on slashdot occasionally............
Tom Cruise is now officially old.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
You know, like if there are enemy jets flying around?
Seems to me that they'd be purely in aggressor mode for such a situation.
I'm not sure how you'd exactly qualify a ground attack plane (one that has no bombs, only guns & rockets) but they certainly aren't there for defensive purposes.
Air superiority isn't something that you magically attain. You usually have to take it by destroying enemy airplanes and/or S-A weapons.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
As I understand, and I could be wrong here, the F/A-18 is not a full-on air superiority fighter the way the F-14 is. The F/A-18 is more of a fighter/bomber. Why do we always mothball the weapons systems that actually work? First the SR-71, then the A-10 (well, it was going to be retired at one point,) and now this. By contrast, we keep running the ones that turn out to be pieces of shit that work only half the time, like the B-1B and B-2.
The best thing I can come up with is that the AF is banking on replacing the F-14 with the F-22 when (if?) the latter comes online.
Help me out here, any military guys?
She came, she saw, she conquered.
She was built to fight the USSR, and remained in service long past her purpose.
She did her job, and jobs she was never meant to do.
I will miss that amazing bird.
The embarassing thing is that the F-14's replacement, the F-18 series, dates from 1978. It's been upgraded through several generations, but it's still an old design.
The next step is supposed to be the F-35, which is supposed to replace the F-16, the A-10, and the Harrier. That's scary; those are very different airplanes with very different missions and very different design criteria.
Seriously, the military has indicated that the F-35 will likely be the last manned fighter jet ever developed. They expect all new fighters will be drones after that!
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the total US Federal Budget for 2006 was projected to be approximately $2,507 Billion. Of that, defense is $438 Billion, Social Security is $540 Billion, Medicare is $380 Billion, and Medicaid is $193 Billion. Social welfare dwarfs military spending now, and it will skyrocket over the next 30 years or so as the US baby boom generation is starting to retire.
Still, $438 Billion is all weapons, right? Well... no. Depending on the year, Defense spending, is about 23% for personnel (pay, benefits), 31% for operations and maintenance (fuel & parts), and 15% for R&D. Procurement is a stunning 18%. That is about 3% of the total Federal budget. But not even all of that 3% goes to buying weapons. A sizable chunk of it goes to ship building for the Navy, for example. Another chunk goes to buying ammo. There are plenty of other things, like fire fighting equipment, periscopes, and pollution control equipment, night vision gear, and construction equipment.
The Federal budget also doesn't include state income taxes for which an even smaller percentage is going to go for defense related expenses. City and county taxes don't contribute anything either.
Overall, a minute percentage of American taxes goes to new weapons.
(I guess protest signs wouldn't look so scary if they complained that the US spent 1.6% of its Federal budget on weapons.)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
> the F/A-18 cannot carry as much ordinance as an A-6 nor dogfight as well as an
> F-14 or F-15.
Almost anything ( excluding maybe only mig-31 and panavia tornado) built after 1980 dogfights better than F-14.
F-14 is overweight, underpowered, missile platform, good for shooting bombers with big missiles, bad for dogfight.
F-14's variable wing sounds like a good idea, but in practice it adds a lot of mass to the plane, making if much less agile.
F-18 was originally designed as a pure dogfight fighter, but later modified to also fit for attack duty. (and then modified again for bigger size, but also engine power and wing area was increased, so performance should not have suffered very much)
This is a reference to a famous gay movie from the 80's. The love of maverick for his goose (who was behind him when he wasn't next to him in the bar) steamy locker room scenes with iceman and wolfman, and oh yeah.. it was set in the navy with all those sailors. What.. were you fooled by the heterosexual tokenism of charlie and maverick?
That's true. People reading Slashdot (1997-) during the period when the Soviet union was in existence (1922-1991) would be quite disagreeable. Time travel always makes me grouchy!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
The US Navy may have retired these jets but the Tomcats will continue to fly. US Military will probably sell them to other countries. For example, Israel may want a few.
\
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-706964884 2128183770
I was employed by one of the Raptor/JSF contractors The F-35 is supposed to supplement the F-22 as an air-to-ground strike aircraft for the Air Force. For the Navy, the F-35CV has twice the range on as the F-18 utilizing internal fuel tanks. Even better, the wingspan is much larger on this version for increased stability at low speed carrier landings. The F-35 is meant to be stealthy, external fuel tanks increase its chances of being spotted on radar. The Marines get the STOVL (short take-off, vertical landing) replacing their beloved Harrier jumpjet.
The Pratt & Whitney F-135 engine is the most powerful military engine to date, delivering 50,000 lbs of thrust.. I just have to say that the F119/135 engine and the Raptor & JSF are the most bad-ass aircraft the DoD has seen. I fell in love with the two the day they were announced, and having the chance to work for them was a dream come true. The engineers at Lockheed, Rolls-Royce, P&W, and Hamilton Sunstrand are truly delivering a remarkable combination
Ultimately, there is no escape from the fact that the government must always have the greatest capacity for violence. It is the basis of orderly society. Otherwise, how could the government enforce the law or prevent itself from being replaced by a group with greater force at their disposal? And as weaponry evolves, populations grow, the government has to stay out ahead. And that means researching, developing, and buying new weapons and technology for the part of the government responsible for violence: the military and the police force(s).
It sucks. It sucks BAD. Militaries are the most contemptible organizations on the planet, followed shortly thereafter by police. But they're necessary, at least until we can develop a virus that exlusively kills jackasses.
DA:
Disrespect for authority should not be an impediment for being a Navy Aviator, at least it was not for Rudy, my Cubano college buddy. A few weeks after graduation he found himself at Navy Aviation Officers' Training School in Beeville, Texas ( "Beeville?" said my dad who is from Texas, "Have you seen Beeville? There's people who live in Texas nearby who blink and don't see Beeville!") The first thing out of Rudy's mouth upon seeing the first officer in uniform was: "Let's just cut all the crap and show me my plane."
50 pushups.
Not as quick as the much older EE Lightning though, but a much more capable aircraft
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
Actually, the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet is a COMPLETELY different jet than the F/A-18 C/D. The only reason they kept the F18 designation was for funding purposes.
Ride the skies
... the news arrived to /. as well. The US Navy has retired the Tomcat last March 3rd !!!!
You're kidding, right? oh look, a visual aid.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Ha ha! But then the F-14s will magically transmogrify into fully loaded commercial A300s, and make the Evil EVIL minions in the Navy look reeeely Evil. And stupid. And Evil.
...than the plane, and that is why the Marines often have their own air support, and that is also why every Marine pilot also has infantry training. Or do I have that wrong?
These are very different times. Surely you don't disapprove of a fighter built for a current purpose?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
"the Tomcat was a killing machine - I see no reason for us all to feel sentimental for something being "retired" (anthropomorphism anyone?) that existed on this earth for the sole reason of killing human beings."
The only thing the Tomcat was intended to "kill" were enemy bombers. They were built as super fast planes with weaponry that could reach out and touch air targets (bombers, specifically). They initially had no ground capability whatsoever. Their primary offensive weaponry couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, let alone a highly manueverable fighter aircraft. However, they could swoop in quickly, unload on large bomber groups (taking down huge numbers of bombers), and then run like hell from the escort aircraft.
The purpose of the Tomcat was to take down Russian bombers before Russian bombers carpet-bombed and/or dropped nuclear weapons on American cities. It wasn't a killing machine; it was a tool of deterrence. Without reason to believe their bombers would never make it to American shores, the Soviets would have felt a lot more comfortable launching a crippling first attack on America. ICBMs can only do but so much damage. Bombers, on the other hand, could cripple our counter-attack capability and nullify MAD.
In other words, the Tomcat served to help prevent what could have easily been the bloodiest and most destructive conflict in all of human history.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Will they migrate to IIS/.net?
... F-14 ... ^[^[^[
No wait
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
"Remind me who won the Cold War. Because from here, it doeesn't look like the citizens of either side."
Sales charts of fallout shelters tell a far different story. Those who didn't live through the time when air raid sirens went off in the United States, and when children were taught ways of protecting themselves during a nuclear attack in public schools, and when families huddled in fallout shelters as part of practice drills do not and can not fully understand just how much better things are now compared to then.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I do find it sad that one by one all the planes that used to excite and enthral me as a kid are slowly dissapearing from the skies. I remember the thrill of making model kits of Tomcats, Vulcan Bombers (Brit), F-111s and Phantoms and the thought that they're all now relagated to air-shows (if you're lucky) is like losing a part of myself.
God I'm feeling maudlin this morning.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Well, yes, but it is designed to kill a very specific target. Sometimes this is seen as neccesary in war, and war can be just (e.g. The American War of Independence, World War 2 and the Star Wars trilogy).
You may argue specific ethics of each event, but surely arbitrarily dropping harmful chemicals over a large area, is less ethical.
Wasn't it the F4 Phantom that dropped Agent orange, as well as napalm in Vietnam...?
-Noc
>> Also, I'm not fat, which makes all my exercise and healthy eating REALLY pointless.
Bah. I am fat. Imagine how I feel about all my exercise and healthy eating!
Well, see, that's the neat thing about the Tomcat.
It's an air-to-air machine. It's really only good for shooting down planes. Since they haven't been used to shoot down civilian planes, and they weren't built for bombing, they were pretty much 'kind to humanity.' War is certainly something to be avoided, but as long as it's only one combatant killing another, that's on a different plane entirely from the killing of civilians.
And it's the bombers that kill civilians.
Interestingly, the Tomcat appears to be the last pure air-to-air plane made. It's being replaced with "fighter-bombers" - with a real emphasis on the bomber aspect.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
That's great that the US Air force can handle that many planes. Too bad few if any of them are Tomcats being that it is a NAVY plane...
Fighters are models, bombers are big mamas. Sure, a few guys will fall in love with their soft, motherly voice and the warm embrace they can give you (at least when dropping incendiary bombs), but I guess most would rather embrace that swift agile and sleek jet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I thought under the last Democrat president the USA deficit actually went down, or am I missing something?
Let's face it. The F14 was a money sink to keep it up in the air. Expensive and time consuming maintenance, 2 officers to fly it, very expensive armarment. That's not today's war.
Today's war is perpetual and limited, not unlimited but over after a few years. That's WW2. Today, there's "always" war, while you try to maintain a face of peacetime in the main country. At the same time, you have to justify spending. It's not anymore the huge threat of the Red Scare, where you had to prepare against a high tech enemy with a deep strike capability and a defined line of combat. Today, your enemy is low tech but stealthy, able to infiltrate and breach your defenses before you even notice him. You can't keep that enemy away with a long range missile.
Instead, today you need strike capability. Air superiority doesn't matter anymore. You already have it 99% of the time already, without even having AS fighters. Your enemy has air fighters that are a generation behind, even your strike planes are more than on par with its superiority fighters. Your enemy also doesn't launch long range bombers, for various reasons. First of all, it's highly unlikely that he has them. Second, you'd know it (via satelite) the moment he starts it, so there's no need for long range radar and long range rockets, you'd simply direct a sortie with med range a2a weapons there.
Also, you have to justify every kill. It has to be confirmed that it was an enemy, because you'll end up on TV. We need that picture of the kill, and it better be someone pointing a gun at you. Civilian life goes on, it's not an all out war, and shooting down a 747 would be a devastating hit to your PR department.
So what we need today is an affordable air fighter with good ground fighting ability at med-close range that can carry modern equipment and weaponry. And, sorry, the F14 is anything but that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
> The F-14 Tomcat was easily one of the world's most powerful, advanced, and deadly aircraft
Yes it was deadly. The Iranian air force lost 15 Tomcats in the Iran-Iraq war of 1981-1988. Three were lost due to shotdown in air combat and TWELVE of them crashed due to engine flameout during dogfight, because the turbojets were utter junk, entiely unsuitable for a fighter plane. The engine was neither modern, nor powerful and had a tendency to stall at moderately high angles of attacks or oblique directed airflow.
US carrier groups have been pretty underutilized since WWII in terms of their capital cost (the Nimitz cost a couple of billion with a B, and I think she's seen action near Libya once and did some support during the first Gulf War, and thats about it). But the entire purpose of being the biggest guy on the block is that so your fighter aces can grow old and die without ever seeing combat. Every time Communist Russia thought the prospect of universal socialism could be achieved faster by rolling over Western Germany, every time a tinpot dictator thinks "Hmm, starving my people for the last couple of decades has given me enough tanks to crush my neighbor... sounds appealing", every time Kim Jon Quackpot gets tired of eating grass and thinks "Hey I could get some sweet kimchi if I could take a quick vacation in the burning remains of Seoul", they look to the horizon and see a distinct absence of US military ready to kick their ass. And they remember that that could change tomorrow if we had a reason to change it. And so their tanks stay parked collecting rust while they scavenge parts to bring a couple out to the parade ground.
Of course, some folks and even some nation-states occasionally decide "Eh, the Americans were probably kidding about actually using that whole military machine thing". Hiya, Saddam, tell me: how did that invasion of Kuwait go for you again?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The next plane that needs to go is that d*** A-10 warthog, spewing nuclear garbage all over the place. Of all the absolutly stupid things to do, throwing depleted uranium radioactive garbage around as a weapon. There are a s**tload of retards in the military (as far as I'm concerned, the only thing lower than being in prison is whoring yourself out to the military... that's why judges use to give criminals that option)... but it had to take one serious SOB with no morals at all to approve this kind of monster:
_ by_Subject.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II
There are so many human rights violations around this plane its not funny. A lot of people are breathing in the crap from this flying death dealer and I dare say kids for a long time to come will be digging out these DEPLETED URANIUM bullets from the sand and carrying them around playing with them. Carrying around a piece of nuclear radioactive waste thinking its a toy.
The military is putting out a massive under the radar covert SPIN effort to claim DU has negligible toxic effects at all but its all a bunch of bs. Anyone with half a brain knows that junk coming out of a nuclear reactor is going to be radioactive as hell and you shouldn't make some thing like a bullet out of it that is going to be lost and then found later by someone who has no idea what it is.
Moral irresponsibility. And these SOBs want to judge the world and brand it with their corrupted and denigrated brand of freedom.
The real freedom the world and every individual wants is to be left alone by the US and its Pax Americana imperial campaign of lies and corruption.
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/Books
I found a couple of papers at http://www.microcomputerhistory.com/f14paper.htm with more CPU design details but nothing significant about the converters or signal conditioning. The more I think about it the more I suspect the 20 bit quote was just given because of the data word size and has nothing to do with the actual resolution or linearity which were probably 8 to 10 bits.
It's hard to find any grown man today who hasn't seen the classic man-flick "Top Gun."
e produce-if-they-were-mammals" would still follow orders. Additionally, I heard from one of the enlisted plane captains at Miramar at the time that Tom Cruise treated them like they were way low-class during filming. Way, way, uncool to treat the people responsible for the aircraft you are about to fly in like that. Apparently he's changed since then, but even so, I still consequently hate that movie, even more than most other chick-flicks.
Surely you jest. I saw it, and being in the Navy at the time, hated it, since it was nothing like the real Navy, and apparently a chick-flick. There are emotional issues, a love conflict, (boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-again story line,) the men-playing-volleyball scene, and the ending with the protagonist confronting personal demons and finding self-actualization. Take away the F-14s, and it is your stereotypical chick-flick. I would say all it needs is Meg Ryan, but she's already there.
To be fair, I am kind of biased. Most (definitely not all) of the Navy (and other military) pilots I have known followed orders to the tee to safely complete their mission, and would never act like Maverick, so the whole screenplay is bull. Even the pilots who were bigger-penises-than-supernovae-would-require-to-r
Yes, now I can finally buy that former naval fighter I've always wanted! Hey, just make sure you don't sell to terrorists, because the last thing I want to see in a headline is "Terrorist F-14 attacks onlookers at BinLaden meeting".
Every citizen of the former Soviet Union and every western nation, well - even every person alive now are enjoying the spoils of "winning the cold war". We all won.
If you don't think so, send me a private message and I'll send you a copy of "Threads" and "The War Game" so you can understand what it might have been like had we actually lost.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Hmm... probably a sigma delta ADC?
Besides, wasn't that the famous bombing run that had to fly around France because they wouldn't let Reagan use their airspace?
F-14's don't have that kind of range (or payload.)
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
Congress spends the money. The president proposes it and can affect spending with his policies, but Congress will often pass legislation to distribute money.
The budget balanced a while back because both Congress and the President made it happen, not just the president.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Answer: 4 jets and 1 helicopter [aerospaceweb.org].
Apparently the Iranians added substantially to that score during the first Gulf war. Ironically enough, and if your information on Tomact air victories in US service is reliable, that means that the majority of F-14 Tomcat victories were achieved by the air force of the Islamic Republic of Iranian. It took Iran a while to recover their capability to operate the Tomcat after the revolution but when they did the Tomcat had an easy time especially vs. Iraqi MiG-21s, MiG-23s and assorted helicopters since the Iraqis only got pretty low grade export variants from the Soviets and had nothing capable of matching the Tomcat on any level until they got MiG-25 and Mirage fighters with good radar warning receivers, modern intercept radars and the all important long range missiles. Of course all this happened while Saddam was still America's friend and <sarcasm> before he joined the axis-of-evil </sarcasm>. What is really amazing is that Iran still manages to operate the Tomcat today 27 years after the revolution without manufacturer support.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I can't remember where I heard it, and it may no longer be true, but several years ago somone made the point that one of these, F-14, 16 18? Had never been taken out of the sky. Anyone know?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Yeah, but we all know the tragedy that happens when they carry Goose.
SYS 64738
The F-14 wasn't in Vietnam. The first flight was around 70 and it didn't enter service until 72 or so. It wasn't at operational capacity until a couple years after that. The only Vietnam "service" it saw was air cover for the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon.
This says all you need to know about agent orange http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-02/0 5/content_303315.htm
The budget balanced a while back because both Congress and the President made it happen, not just the president.
Thanks to the Democratic President and Democratic Congress that rammed through a tax increase on the richest Americans without a single Republican vote in support. In fact I think all of the Republicans predicted doom and gloom for the economy. We all know that the 90s were nothing but recession after recession so they must have had a point.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Tomcat pilots liked to call the F/A-18 pilots FAGs (because they were Fighter-Attack Guys).
It always seemed odd to me that the *Navy's* *air superiority* fighter was the biggest fighter ever made. It is fairly gigantic.
I always thought the Blue Angels should be flying the F-14 (and the Thunderbirds the F-15). Maybe they could switch now that they're not going to be used in the fleet anymore. I doubt it, I expect the expense was the problem in the first place.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
Of course, some folks and even some nation-states occasionally decide "Eh, the Americans were probably kidding about actually using that whole military machine thing". Hiya, Saddam, tell me: how did that invasion of Kuwait go for you again?
Saddam only decided we were 'kidding' about actually using that 'whole military thing' because we told him we didn't care about Kuwait!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
But what I remember is the excitment of the senior officers and mission planners because the 14 had long legs compared to the old F-4. That means it carried more fuel and could fly longer without refueling. The F-4 could fly something like 5 minutes on afterburner. They were like sysadmins with a hot new box, coming up with ways to use those legs.
Funny though, the replacement F-18 is famous for short legs as well. Haven't heard that complaint about the F-35.
Anytime baby.
The Veritech Fighter 1 had a similar design to F-14...so no chance of making one of those for real, eh?
...the F-14 and the Ferrari Testarrosa, all bigger and sexier than other machines in their categories!
The 80s was an era were 'large' dominated both in American and European culture. We had larger-than-life stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna, basketball players like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, rappers like Chuck D and groups like Public Enemy, all of them larger-than-life icons (along with many others of course) that defined that era...
He is also wrong. The military takes about that much of yearly discretionary spending. The poster was ignoring the non-discretionary spending. The items that are not voted on each year. If you look a proportion of total federal outlays the military comes in at about 20-25%
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
Summary: This rock was designed to scare away tigers, but it ended up being used to throw at random people.
(After slight modification, viz. F-14A et al.)
Can we have a group hug?
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
The F18E Super Hornet cost per flight hour is 40% of the F14 Tomcat and requires 75% less labor hours per flight hour.
It's because the F14 was designed for intercept missions. The F18 for bombing. The F18 fits our model of modern warfare better, not to mention that with recent improvements in surface-to-air and air-to-air missile tech, having a plane specializing in intercept missions was just unneeded.
/. crowd might care to know.
I just figured some in the
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Not true.
an ill wind that blows no good
I missed the air raid sirens and duck and cover drills, but I do remember the "us vs. them" mentality when I was in elementary school in the 80s. For example, I remember a science teacher saying something along the lines of, "They got to space first, but we got to the moon first!" (As if it really matters...but, during the cold war, it DID.)
Originaly, the F-14 could NOT drop bombs (read the F-14A)
What MOST folks here are calling the F-14A is actually F-14A+ (upgraded F-14As), and the F-14D. There WERE B-C prototypes/proposals that never went anywhere (actually I think the A+ was originally called Bs for a VERY short period of time)
It was not until the avionics computers were changed in the 80s sometime when the bomb drop ability was added. They became known as "Mudcats" (after the F-15E "Mudhen")
I worked for a VERY small defence contractor that had almost nothing to do with the F-14 (we built some ground support stuff, and some battery boxes used to supply backup power), but I was at a lab doing some equipment quals while the displays for the mudcat were being qualified, so I got to see some of that
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The Airforce really doesn't understand CAS missions very well and keeps trying to replace the A-10 with something that just wont work. Any of the FA aircraft in a CAS role falls into the "I won't turn it down if thats all I can get" category. The Air Force needs to eaither get serious about Attack aircraft or get out of the way and let the army make their own.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
Mistyped - was thinking "Mud-hens" when I was typing about the F-14 - NOT Mudcat - "Bombcat"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
...for the gods' sake, make sure they put orange flags on the wingtips.
My girlfriend lived in Virginia Beach for a while, and she once told me a story about how some guys managed to load an F-14 onto a flatbed trailer and truck it straight out of Oceana. Nobody paid them much mind either once they were off the base, presumably because if Joe Sixpack saw a large fighter plane being trucked down a city street, Joe would assume that the military was behind it and they knew what they were doing. They were tooling their way down Virginia Beach Boulevard when some cop decided to pull them over because they had an oversized load without proper management (no warning flags on the load and no properly-labeled escorts). If not for that, they would have made it to wherever they were planning to go with it.
I've seen a few comments from VAB'ers here...can any of you fill in details, like whether this was some sort of security exercise or just a prank?
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
Final Flight - NavyTimes.com - very good send-off!
ASCII silly question, get a silly ANSI.
However, the F-14 - relatively late in life - turned out to be a halfway decent bomber as well. It had been intended to have a secondary bombing capability early on, but - as I understand it - the software and targeting equipment was never installed for budget reasons. However, these eventually made their way onto the plane, and it was also used as a bomber as a result. In fact, its last combat mission took place just this last February on a bombing run in Iraq.
They are old. Not too old, but old, which makes them expensive to maintain. They require something like 5 times the maintainence as an 18.
In addition, they are a separate platform form the now ubiquitous F/A-18. There is much commonality across the entire F/A-18 family - not so much from the Hornet to Super Hornet (although there is a little even there).... but the 14 requires an entirely different part/supply chain right on down to the vendors. Avionics are becoming hard to find. Corrosion and fatigue issues are really starting to crop up in the Tomcats.
All in all, it is just time for them to stand down, form a safety as well as maintainence and cost perspective. A few will stick around - some will still fly at Pax River and other NAWC/AD sites. There is talk of NASA taking two or three.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You don't get it. God has made the skies the sole property of the United States of America. So if an American fighter shoots down an enemy aircraft anywhere it is always defensive. America must defend its God given air superiority even if it is over foreign countries.
At a naval air show several years ago I had the opportunity to see (and hear) an F-14 do some acrobatic demonstrations. In one move, the pilot brought the plane into alignment with the runway and dropped to about 140 knots in a 'simulated' carrier landing. He skimmed the runway with his wheels down before going full throttle/full afterburner and pulling out at about a 25 degree angle. Very impressive, but loud enough to make your ears hurt. So what was the 1st loudest jet I've ever heard? Harrier on a Verticle landing. Ouch.
The SR-71 required multiple tanker operations for any sort of operational flight. The profile was usually to tanker up in international airspace, penetrate "enemy" airspace at high speed and high altitude burning fuel like crazy, snap pictures over the target (assuming it was not obscured by clouds or smoke) and then dash out and then refuel again. It took days or even weeks to prepare any given SR-71 recon mission as refueling mistakes could cost them the plane (as it did in one instance when the wrong sort of fuel was loaded onto a tanker).
The SR-71's fuel wasn't stock Jet-A, it was a specially concocted mix that I've heard cost about as much as single malt whisky, litre for litre.
No plane can travel at its peak speed with an external weapons load. The fastest speed ever measured on an F-4 was Mach 2.66, but that was on a "clean" F-4; that is, not carrying any weapons. The MiG-25 was capable of Mach 3, but at the price of burning out its engines. My dad used to fly FB-111s, which is still probably the fastest low-level aircraft ever built - capable of Mach 1.5 at sea level. However - again - that was in a "clean" configuration (though since the -111 had an internal bomb bay it was still capable of carrying weapons internally at that speed). Just because a plane is rated at X speed doesn't necessarily mean that speed will ever be used.
The F-14 had a horrible flight-to-maintenance hour figure, true enough. But that wasn't at all unusual for the modern aircraft of that era. The F-111 and early F-15 were in the same boat. For that matter, so is the B-2.
Its powerful radar wasn't much of a problem since it could engage its targets long before they could engage it.
The original engine was disappointing. No doubt about it. However, the later versions corrected this problem to some degree.
Agent Orange is SPRAYED not dropped. From the agent orange wiki page:
Most of Agent Orange sprayed during the program was delivered from modified US Air Force C-123K Provider aircraft under a program known as Operation Ranch Hand. Other delivery methods included helicopters, truck and hand spraying, notably for the areas directly around US bases.
Think of it as crop dusting which is basically what it was. It was used to kill the dense foliage of the jungle. It was not a bomb at all, it was a spray. Say it with me. SPRAY. The F-14 had nothing NOTHING what-so-ever to do with Agent Orange. Now can we drop it?
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Actually the 466 billion you mention is for the Department of Defense, it doesn't include the spending on the War on Terror, the Coast Guard, the National Nuclear Security Administration and a bunch of other spending which is basically national defense. If you total them up, it works out that the US spends about 630 billion on defense.
http://thebudgetgraph.com/view.html
Deleted
One of the highlights of my childhood was getting to tour the USS-Nimitz (while docked in VA Beach) and actually touch one of the F-14's from the "Jolly Roger" squadron. I was about 13 and my favorite things were the movie "Top Gun" and computers. As I thought I was quite the "hacker" on my Commodore 64 beacuse of my ability to copy any game on my dual 1541 disk drives and use Disc Doctor to rename the load screen to my "elite hacker name" (this was before 733t speak) as well as call and logon to most companies on my 400 baud modem, the pirate logo on their sides fit me just perfect. My walls were littered with pictures of Tomcats and phone lists of successful conections I had made. Ahhh, those were the days.
I know you can't mode me +1 Sentimental, but that would really make my day.
But how said is it that my childhood role model "Maverick" is now a couch jumping publicity whore that believes in aliens?
Think they will sell the old ones on Ebay for profit? I don't think it would fit in my garage and my homeowners association would have a fit, but, then again, I could just get in a dogfight with them. If they locked on I could jsut "put on the brakes and they'd fly right by".
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
Yes, it could go really fast, but not with any significant load of bombs or pods.
F-14 Not A-14 It wasn't meant to carry bombs. It was designed for fleet air defense. They only modified it in the last few years to carry bombs and that was an engineering nightmare. Fully loaded with missles it could still keep up with the Mig.
Yes, I lived in fighter town USA.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
He's working on that, too.
By the time he retires from office, we'll be able to attack any country in the world, and it's guaranteed to be an enemy of America.
Brilliant, no?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They explained that at some air-show I saw. They where displaying some Mirage 2000 model and they explained how this version differed at lot with the previous one because of a completly different avionics package and engine. They look a lot (same basic shape), but behave and perform totally differently. I guess it's like trying out a Audi A4 and comparing it to a RS4. Looks mostly the same, but the specs are radically different
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
Hey if they didn't want to get bombed, they shouldn't have pissed the US off.
Driving the family merrily down a country lane in Wales, UK, when whoosh, a tomcat goes past at 250 feet, lights the burners and yanks the stick.
My 2 year old daughter cried. So did I. It was _just_ _so_ beautiful. Amazing what a fast jet will do to your opinions on global warming...
The Tomcat did no such thing. Anyone who believes that may be interested in a bridge in Brooklyn I have for sale. It amazes me how guillible so many Americans are. Just look at how many still believe that Iraq had WMD at the time of the US invasion.
Actually, you're probably thinking of the F-15.. F-14s were carrier-based aircraft for fleet defense and air superiority.. Protecting the cap ships from Exocets or bombers, yes, but unless you deployed your aircraft carriers along known bomber routes, not so much of the strategic bomber defense..
Also, I'm thinking more along the lines of the F-104 Starfighter and F-106 Delta Dart for the role you're talking about, and that role was ceded to antiaircraft missiles in 1960s and 1970s..
Is there a reason the article's logo, the flag, has 12 stripes instead of 13?
Ibid.
To celebrate the flying of the last US F-14 it will be flown by Tom Cruise from Norfolk VA out to a carrier in the Atlantic. However the plane will only carry enough fuel to get it out a hundred miles out over the sea and will not have a functioning ejection seat. The carrier will also move during his flight to an undisclosed location. Fare thee well Tom!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Long live the dog fight!
You hit the nail on the head with your comment. I did design work on the F-22 and the F-35 at my last job. Both of which are capible of this manuver, but that is not really relavent, because there will probably never be another dog fight... The fighter aircraft has really been a dead genre since the end of the vietnam war, we still call them fighters, but they are really intercepters.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
As a former Russian bomber pilot, please forgive me if I don't feel all warm and fuzzy about the F14.
caritj.org
Hmm... probably a sigma delta ADC?
In a design using semiconductors from about 1970 with little or no integration available for the digital filters required? Delta sigma converters are really good for taking advantage of inexpensive digital logic integration but are only the most recent in a long series of converter architectures.
Single and dual slope integrating as well as various voltage to frequency converter designs were available and with care could have met their requirements for environment and size. TI probably had military temperature range chip sets for them even then. Successive approximation designs would have probably been in multi-chip modules because of the requirement for resistive ratio matching and were popular for military applications but I am not sure when they first came out like that. None of these would have been even close to 20 bits but I think that specification was inaccurate and only reflected the CPU data width. I really enjoy reverse engineering old equipment like this just to understand the designer's mind set.
Man I miss the Cold War. Bear in the air, Bear in the air, launch the alert F-14s.
At home I have a live video from a Tomcat playing cat and mouse with a Mig for thirty minutes. Its from my eight month mission aboard the Starship Enterprise (CVN-65) during 87/88.
The movie really shows how good US Navy pilots are. The film starts with a blaring sidewinder tone lock as the Mig is heading straight for the F-14. Within minutes the Tomcat is able to get behind the Mig (50 Yards) and stay there (You can appreciate the G-Force these guys feel as you hear the pilot strain to breath while manuvering). You hear the pilot talking to the NFO, "He doesn't know were here". Sidewinder tone solid scream by now. He stays that way for a couple of minutes before the Mig notices him and dives. Really good stuff. RIP Tomcat.
I need to get it off tape and uploaded it to youtube.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Pfft. And you call yourselves nerds.
Our elite, anti-terrorist organization retired these babies 20 years ago already:
it was replaced by the Conquest X-30 in 1986
Things like this are why we still need GiJoe to defend us from reptilian-based terrorists. The regular armed forces simply don't have enough of a merchandising requirement to get brand new airplane designs every 3 years.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Saddam only decided we were 'kidding' about actually using that 'whole military thing' because we told him we didn't care about Kuwait!
I read about that. Don't buy this spin on it. It's pretty well documented that the US and Kuwait thought Iraq was just using the military buildup as a bluff for a negotiating edge. And there was a legitimate dispute. Kuwait was apparently sneaking oil from the Iraqi side of the big oil field shared between the two countries. So there was good reason for the US to not intervene on either side of this dispute. But Iraq didn't ask directly, if they could invade, and the US ambassador didn't say "Go ahead! We don't care."I guess if you don't consider the front page of USA Today to be "wide" reporting, then nope, it's not being widely reported. :-)
1. "Forever-Fearsome F-14 Tomcat Fighter Jet's Last Official Launch, Flyby, Landing": http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1679090/p osts
2. Nice F-14 and F-18 photos: http://chamorrobible.org/gpw/gpw-20040817.htm
and http://chamorrobible.org/gpw/gpw-20040818.htm
3. Yet another fine gallery with F-14 photos: http://www.galleryoffluidmechanics.com/conden/pg_s ing.htm
4. Video of a transonic F-14 Tomcat, complete with the Prandtl-Glauert vapor cloud, with an unexpected ending: http://www.angelfire.com/hi/luckypuppy2840/MADDOGJ ET/videos/F14flyby.mpg
5. Nice page with links to photo galleries of transonic aircraft --including the F-14 and F-18 fighter jets -- bombers, and space vehicles: http://chamorrobible.org/gpw/gpw-The-Spectacular-C louds-of-the-Transonic-Flight-Regime.htm
Prandtl-Glauert condensation cloud tutorial: http://fluidmech.net/tutorials/sonic/prandtl-glaue rt-clouds.htm
Perhaps more important than you leaving out the $72 billion supplementary budget that was tacked on, is the $438 billion (plus $72 billion, plus whatever more is added on in December) does not cover what the true costs of military spending is.
And your own link shows how you are deceptively lowering the amount spent. There is a chart that says "Nondefense Discretionary Funding, by Budget Function", the slices of which you do not include in your $438 billion. A 7% slice of that for the 2005 budget ($31 billion) is Veterans' Benefits and Services. So from your numbers, a VA hospital treating wounded veterans who had their legs blown off by an IED in Iraq have nothing to do with military spending. The over $30 billion of that is "social welfare" as you call it.
The two ways I mentioned are fairly obvious ways that over $100 billion can be hidden, so that a $438 billion lowball military budget can be claimed. But the true number is higher than that, and much of the money is hidden in even more clever ways, if you take the trouble to investigate it, or read analysis of what the real military budget is.
Yes, but he also responded to terrorist attacks on the WTC and the USS Cole, and violations of the Iraqi no-fly zone, but launching cruise missiles instead of actually making an attempt to solve problems decisively.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The Super Hornet is a very differnt aircraft as pointed out. It was to have the desigation F/A-32, but due to the political atmosphere in Congress at the time, it was given the designation F/A-18 E/F/G - and given leading edge extentions and similar geometry to make it look like the same aircraft as the A/B/C/D.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
There's one thing that I haven't understood about the F-14 and AIM-56 for a long time. Every time people talk about them, a big deal is made out of the fact that it can track and fire missiles at so many targets at once, as though this is a unique or unusual feature.
Maybe it is, but I don't get why. AFAIK, the F-14 still just has one radar dish in the nosecone, right? So shouldn't the ability to track targets merely be a computers and software issue? That makes it kind of neat for 1970, but every year that goes by, should make it that much more trivial. Shouldn't every modern plane have this capability by now?
Or does this have something to do with the sensors in the Phoenix? (But if so, then why can't planes with AMRAAMs do the same thing?)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
And the economy went from stagnation (yes, it was stagnating fom 1992-1993) to boom.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Says who?
I, and most other western aviation buffs I know, are big fans of the Mig-27, Mig-25, and other Soviet planes. Won't suprise me in the least if the reverse is also true, and Russians who grew up in that area think our stuff is cool too.
Most of us are glad those planes never met each other in anger during the cold war, but we still find them really impressive pieces of machinery.
You do realize what irony and sarcasim are, right?
I was pointing out that the Democrats raised taxes (without any Republican support) giving us a budget surplus and almost an entire decade of growth and boom.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yeah...
And F-16s can be fitted with a 30mm cannon on the centerline station. That doesn't make them good for CAS missions. Ditto for the Bombcat (which was probably conceived as a stop-gap while A-6 and A-7 crews transitioned to F/A-18's)... There are simply better assets in the Navy inventory for carrying out strike/bombing missions.
More importantly the F-14 had nothing to do with VIETNAM!!
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Actually I believe that the public figure for the Phoenix is 100nm which is slightly longer range than 100m.
I'm sure that those will be missed as IIRC publicly the F/A-18 can only carry the sidewinder replacement which has a public range of c. 56nm, and it's avionics suite isn't nearly as good as the F-14's, or at least based upon publicly available and speculated info back from when I used to play Harpoon.
The only good thing about the F/A-18's from back then was that they could be loaded out for a multiplicity of roles, although they were no where near as good as the dedicated platforms, e.g. A-6 Intruder, F-14 Tomcat, etc. Shorter ranged, and lower overall payload capacities. Of course I used to compensate for avionics by using long ranged Hawkeye surveillance craft parked loitering near the fleet(highest alt) in intermittent mode, which in the game at least, worked out quite well. Of course back when I played no enemies had any sort of decently long ranged ATA missiles either, so they could be picked off by patrol craft before they even got close.
While I definitely think we are a bit overarmed now, I definitely see the point of the current military stance. You cannot start building fighters and carriers after the war has already started and we are certainly not the only big kid on the block. While China is a debatable threat at this point, who knows what will happen in the next five or ten years and the fact is, being prepared militarily is a large expense that is somewhat necessary. Now I don't pretend that I know even what is more cost-effective. We could just devote all our technology to nuclear missles and go back to tripwire policy, but that is hardly proportionate for small scale conflicts. And anyone who thinks you can fight a war with cheap cruise missiles is an idiot.
So the issue is not whether F-14s were used to their capacity, but whether they could have been needed at any point. It is not a cost-efficiency calculation that is made in retrospect.
Of course, some folks and even some nation-states occasionally decide "Eh, the Americans were probably kidding about actually using that whole military machine thing". Hiya, Saddam, tell me: how did that invasion of Kuwait go for you again?
Of course now with the whole Preemption Doctrine thing, we can invade countries even when they aren't in violation of international mandates!
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Please change the headline to indicate that you're talking about a plane. Some of us defense contractors that use a Java/Tomcat solution just crapped our pants.
The F-14 wasn't in service during Vietnam, smart guy. It came about after. Way to check you facts!
Clearly I forgot to equip my +5 Codpiece of Karma.
The F-14 was never IN Vietnam! It never, ever, ever, ever participated in the Vietnam conflict. Ever! Who started this meme and why won't it die?
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
... but even with the speed, flying an SR-71 is a pain (at least in the sim) -- drives like a boat. I'd much rather fly an F-22.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I bet the enemy pilots feel the same way.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Later planes probably use a phased array radar which has no moving parts. It varies the phase of the outgoing signals in each mini-antenna in the array to determine which direction the signal fires out from the overall array. No moving parts so it can track and be redirected instantly. I suspect the F-14 was one of the first planes with a phased array radar (which would've been a rather impressive feat in the 1970s with nowhere near the computing power we have today).
Looks like I was right. Search for AWG-9 in this link.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Bears or Backfires?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
One of my high school classmates died in one of these in 1994 off the coast of North Carolina.
The only thing the Tomcat was intended to "kill" were enemy bombers.
And who was flying the bombers? PEOPLE!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I agree with the parent. I used to build several assemblies for the Tomcat with Grumman, and I knew its design pretty well. The F-14 was an interceptor, more agile than its Phantom predecessor, but still designed to shoot down airborne targets at long range. After an avionics upgrade, with Pheonix and Sparrow missiles, the Tomcat could simultaneously fire and forget 6-7 targets at a range of about 150 kilometers. It was the first plane to do so, and that coupled with its effective variable sweep wing design made it an excellent plane. It was not designed to "kill people", except when they were trying to kill very, very many of us (you.) As time passed, the Tomcat's engines were upgraded in terms of pounds of thrust, but its avionics always were its strongest point. My best friend flew a Tomcat, and realized that while it was a damn good plane to fly, the Hornet would eventually take over. To the GP, were you even alive when the cold war was full on, or were you just naive and stupid?
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
Macross VF-1 Valkyrie
Maybe somebody below my reading threshold mentioned them.
I encountered both the Tomcat and Veritech at around the same time in my life and they both stuck with me. I'm old and stuff now but I still follow Macross a little and I'm going to miss The Jolly Rogers and Skull Squadron.
Somehow i picture you saying that infront of a waving flag, proudly standing at attention, saluting, with the US national anthem blaring loudly and figtherjets streaking the sky overhead.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
If anything, I'd say this stems from the fact that:
- The US builds for quality as far as weapons go. This makes US weapons pricy (European-designed weapons are the same way). Actually, very pricey. For the cost of the pissiest US handgun, I could buy an MP3 player that I'll get a lot more use out of. I could also get a few dozen kilos of flour or rice. This says something quite telling about the availability of US weapons to the third-world. Soviet weapons are in many cases simply sitting in abandoned stockpiles.
- US weapons are generally designed to have a trained operator who treats the weapon right. Soviet anythings were designed to be abuse-tolerant, since the pieces often didn't fit together well in the first place. They had to be ultra-rugged to function at all. This makes them ideal for people living in a cave without access to high quality parts and maintenance equipment.
There are other factors, like that the US normally doesn't trade weapons to dictatorships and other undesirables. After all, American weapon dealers do understand the consequences of having doctors fish bullets out of dead marines, and finding "Made in America" stamped on the back. That would suck. More so when you pull a chunk of missile casing out of downed airliner and find the Boeing logo on it. These things simply wouldn't do.In Soviet Russia, Tomcat F-14 retires you!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The point I was trying to make in a sarcastic way was that until AT THE VERY EARLIEST, late 1992/early 1993, and then only on R&D planes, there was no way a F-14 could drop a bomb. the electronic / mechanical hookups were not there. until a F-14 with an APG-71 Radar was put up in the air, the control software for air to ground munitions of any sort did not exist; prior to this the only way a F-14 could attack ground targets in ANY WAY was with:
A: releasing not-empty fuel drop tanks over the enemy.
B: releasing unexpended ordinance over the enemy (heavily frowned upon, not cost efficient).
C: Strafing runs with the guns.
D: throwing hand grenades from the opened canopy.
E: low Level sonic booms.
I really truely was a Avionics Fire Control Technician (2nd class) on board the CV-62 Independence, and worked on both F/A-18 APG-65 and F-14 AWG-9 Radar/Fire Control systems at a component level; at one time I could probably build you one from parts without a schematic. The F-14 Just Could Not Do It.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
He recovered his gonads when he finally realized that after Munich, any promise from Hitler was worthless.
He also had a treaty relationship with Poland which forced his hand.
Chamberlain is ill-used by history. I don't think that he was as bad as portrayed with his "Peace in our time" thing holding a note. It wasn't his fault that he didn't realize the level of Hitler's ambitions. No one did, really.
Churchill was always aggressive and many times too much so, and had some foolish ideas of his own. Think the Dardanalles campaign or the expensive mire of the WWII Italian campaign. Both were primarily the result of Churchill's impetus and were fairly original ideas of his own. And both were costly in human lives and misery and were beneficial to the enemy in tying down Allied forces with minimal Central Powers/Axis involvement.
In any event, Churchill only took over as Prime Minister after the active phase of the 1940 campaign started, in May.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
F14 Tomcat it's a ugly airplane. Great problems with engines, big airplane to sea operations. F18 is a choice, but I believe that VSTOL airplane is the best airplane to sea operations. Weber Ress
According to this timeframe .... http://www.robotech.com/infopedia/timeline/vieweve nts.php?primaryseries=MAC, aliens are bound to attack our planet! The VF-1 mechs are clearly based on the F-14 design. If production stops of the F-14s, then we won't be able to rapdily build the VF-1. So, we are screwed!
I getcha, and I was aware that if the F-14 was in Vietnam it would have only been there for a very short time before we were completely gone. I was just pointing out that the F-14 did at some point have air-to-ground capability, though limited and seldom used. Heck, even with the capability, using it made little sense unless (as in Bosnia where the A-6 was either gone or almost gone and there still weren't yet enough F/A-18s to cover the lack) the number of available airframes was very limited
http://www.payvand.com/news/06/sep/Scenarios-of-Wa r.pdf
College professor out of Norways info. Long.
He's probably the kind who thinks that cluster bombs contain diluted unobtanium and are consequently a chemical weapon.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
See if you have been eating Mexican beans, and feeling a bit gassy yourself, would you launch a "gas seeking missle" that can home in on your ass as well?
Yes I know the Mexican bean part was unecessary... that is why this is +5 Funny!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
And what is soylent green made out of? PEOPLE!
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Awesome, its been a pain to quote since they screwed up how paragraph break tags worked. Thanks!
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"Yeah, such as end all human life. Obviously we needed the bombers and subs too."
If I can place bombers over your command and control facilities and have hunter/killer "shadows" on your nuclear subs, I can eliminate your second-strike capability and feel free to launch all the ICBMs I want without the threat of your retaliation oblitering me.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I'd mod you insightful if I had points. You're spot on.
JP-7 is what the SR-71 drank.
I just got a practical question, when have you been there? Is it reasonably save for westerners to go there? It is supposedly pretty appart from the human dimension. My government doesn't say don't go there. I was pondering to go there in a couple of months. The craziest country I have seen is Romania before in '86 or '87 I guess Simbabwe might be worse.
I was just there a week ago. I was basically in and around the Victoria Falls area (driving in from Botswana), which if you are going to go anywhere there is the place to go as a visitor as most areas are much worse off and some even very dangerous with the whole farm redistribution fiasco. Victoria Falls also has a lot of "tourist police" nowadays that prevent local people from harrasing you too much, as that was getting to be quite a problem.
The loss of the primary internet connection is pretty concernign as it's hard to say what ripple effects we might see. On the other hand it really helps the locals to visit and spend a little money, and Victoria Falls is likley going to remain fairly safe for visitors for some time.
If you are truly concerned and want to visit Victoria Falls, you might want to consider visiting the Zambian side, though you do not get as good a view of the falls from there. But you could cross over the bridge and enter for a day trip. If you are just thinking about places to go on safari, the other areas nearby are probably a lot better idea (like Botswana or Zambia or even South Africa, though that's a lot more tame by comparison).
Also visitng any of these countries speaking english will work just fine, it always amazes me how many people in other countries speak english so well. US dollars are also pretty widley accepted as currency, which is good news as it's illegal to have Zimbabwe money outside the country and so you cannot exchange it beforehand at a better rate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, but they do blow up. Oh, and the US did use white phosphorus in Fallujah.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
My grandfather was instrumental in this. HE helped build the model of the tomcat at grumman out of wood to show. The he and the people building the model where joking and said that it would never fly lol . My father also worked on them till he got laid off by grumman. I was there at republic airport here on Long Island when they did this huge going away ceremony with grumman. I will miss these planes greatly. I do not udnerstand why the super hornets won out over the new tomcats that grumman showed they could build. 'UGh I Hate politics.
Fine, if the original statement had been "ICBMs don't have first-strike capability." What was said was "ICBMs can do but so much damage." ICBMs can do many times more damage than could ever be needed by anybody - not enough firepower is not a reason to have some other kind of nuclear weapon delivery. Maybe I'm just picking nits, and that's what the your GP (not sure if that was you) meant.
As much as I consider myself a progressive, I find it odd that people still don't understand that humans are violent. And probably always will be. The need to have armies and weapons will continue until we are all dead.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
Yeah, you were just trying to do your job ferrying nukes to cities, and those dicks in F14s kept trying to shoot you down.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Yep, Tibetans should certainly feel grateful, as should Palestinians. Nobody'd dare mess with them since good ol' America is willing to fight for law and order. Yep, I feel safer already.
They do? Shit, I should have spotted that from the word "bomb". Phosphorus, hmm. That's made of atoms, isn't it? OMG, the evil united Zionstates of amerikKKKans used a nuke again one one one eleventyexclamationmark.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The real replacement for the F-14.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Differing opinions are great. It's the people that oppose the existence of differing opinions that are a problem. They're the ones that need to go. And in general, I think most people agree on a jackass when they see it. For instance, the guy that steals a hundred bucks worth of gas from my work every couple of days. It's not like he can't afford gas: he drives a brand spanking new Ford Explorer. Needless theft -> jackass. Likewise, the suicide bomber that attacked some soldiers that were standing in a crowd of Afghani children. Blowing up children -> complete jackass. The guy that decided that Osama Bin Laden wasn't worth pursuing anymore and that inciting terrorism in Iraq would make America safer? Inciting terrorism -> absolute jackass. Letting the world's most notorious terrorist go free -> supreme jackass. They're pretty easy to spot once you know what to look for.
That I immediately thought about Apache Tomcat?
Clinton enjoyed an economic boom that had nothing to do with his own policies. Balancing the budget under such conditions is fairly easy.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
...so that US Navy won't confuse its own tomcats with Iranian tomcats when they get engaged later this year
Talking about this things as if life was a game...
I don't recall ever actually trying to ferry a nuke to a city...
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