Peak carrier air wing.

Sferrin said:
Long-range air-defense, multirole fighter, fixed-wing ASW, long range strike, AWACS, EW. . .they had it all for a while.
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Not clearly visible: the massive pile of technical debt being carried by increasingly outdated F-14s and A-6s, and the capability gap resulting from the withdrawal of the EA-3, KA-3, and RA-5.

Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
 
Yellow Palace said:
Not clearly visible: the massive pile of technical debt being carried by increasingly outdated F-14s and A-6s, and the capability gap resulting from the withdrawal of the EA-3, KA-3, and RA-5.

Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
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You missed the point but that's okay.
 
Peak carrier air wing indeed. Note that the Tomcats are D models (from VF-11 and VF-31). One of the handful of times where a carrier deployed with two F-14D squadrons on board. Originally, all carrier air wings were to have two F-14D squadrons. That was the plan. But then Cheney entered the picture and ruined everything...
 
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Yellow Palace said:
Not clearly visible: the massive pile of technical debt being carried by increasingly outdated F-14s and A-6s, and the capability gap resulting from the withdrawal of the EA-3, KA-3, and RA-5.

Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
Click to expand...
Nothing outdated about those F-14Ds. That picture is from 1994 and the D version had entered service only two years earlier. They were supremely capable and pretty much brand-new. The A-6Es had just been upgraded under the SWIP program and were at the top of their game. Not pictured in that formation but the air wing also has KA-6Ds and ES-3As. That air wing could do everything, could project air power over long distances and still had numbers (80-85 aircraft on board). USN airpower at its finest.

I can agree that the RA-5 never had a proper replacement though (TARPS was a band-aid solution).
 
ST21 said:
Nothing outdated about those F-14Ds. That picture is from 1994 and the D version had entered service only two years earlier. They were supremely capable and pretty much brand-new. The A-6Es had just been upgraded under the SWIP program and were at the top of their game. Not pictured in that formation but the air wing also has KA-6Ds and ES-3As.
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Yep, the F-14D was great – but there were never enough, and the F-14A was distinctly long in the tooth. Likewise the A-6E, whatever avionics upgrades they had, the airframes were 20-plus years old. You can only put so much new wine into an old bottle.

I'll grant the KA-6D, though as I understand it the ES-3 didn't really have the speed or range to fully replace the EA-3.
ST21 said:
That air wing could do everything, could project air power over long distances and still had numbers (80-85 aircraft on board). USN airpower at its finest.
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Certainly very capable. But also very dependent on decades-old aircraft without a good plan to replace them when ATA and NATF fell apart.
 
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