Grumman F-14 Tomcat

Obviously worn-out old F-14As were going to require many more hours of maintenance work to keep flying than Super Hornets. But I don't think the new production F-14Ds would be nearly as bad in that regard.

The F-15 was another fighter built as the switch from fully analogue to digital flight controls was occurring and in some respects was closer to the F-4 than the F-16 and F/A-18. Yet the F-15 has had a longer and more successful career. The latest variants can be considered "fully digital" aircraft as well. In-theory there is no reason the F-14 couldn't have undergone a similar path of development. But sadly, circumstances did not favor the F-14
 
Arguably if the Ayatollah started butting heads over stealing Tomcat parts then that might be a better alternative to IRGC Su-35s.

But it will be funny for sure.
 
Colonial-Marine said:
Obviously worn-out old F-14As were going to require many more hours of maintenance work to keep flying than Super Hornets. But I don't think the new production F-14Ds would be nearly as bad in that regard.

The F-15 was another fighter built as the switch from fully analogue to digital flight controls was occurring and in some respects was closer to the F-4 than the F-16 and F/A-18. Yet the F-15 has had a longer and more successful career. The latest variants can be considered "fully digital" aircraft as well. In-theory there is no reason the F-14 couldn't have undergone a similar path of development. But sadly, circumstances did not favor the F-14
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I think the fault lies in the number.

At the end of its life the Tomcat was very much poorly supported and only kept alive by an IV tube. For all means and purposes it's in the same predicament the Hog fleet faces now.

Had they gotten a good political backing and have consistent modernizations and deep upgrades then I'm sure the Tomcat would've been very competitive to the Rhino. I'm sure @F-14D can attest to that.
 
https://thespacereview.com/article/5254/1

The last days of the Persian Cats
by Dwayne A. Day and Harry Stranger
Monday, June 29, 2026

In Top Gun: Maverick, the hot shot hero saves the day by stealing an F-14 Tomcat, taking out some baddies, and then landing on an aircraft carrier. The movie never states who he stole the Tomcat from, but the only other country that flew them was Iran. In the 1970s, Iran was a close ally of the United States and was supplied with some of the latest and most sophisticated American weapons, including the cutting-edge F-14 Tomcat interceptor aircraft and its highly-capable, long-range Phoenix missile.

In May 1978, an American HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite overflew the major Iranian airbase at Isfahan and photographed many of the brand-new Iranian aircraft parked on the ramp. Forty-eight years later, American and other reconnaissance satellites photographed the last of the ancient Persian Cats as they were destroyed at that same airbase, primarily by Israeli airstrikes. The last of the Tomcats are gone.
 

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Highly doubtful all F-14s have been lost, it makes for dramatic reading though.

Can't wait for Iran to release footage of patrols or training a couple weeks or months down the road and certain people being flabbergasted
 
EmoBirb said:
Highly doubtful all F-14s have been lost, it makes for dramatic reading though.

Can't wait for Iran to release footage of patrols or training a couple weeks or months down the road and certain people being flabbergasted
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It is certainly possible that they have some left. I wish that they had some left. But they did not have many to begin with.
 
What would have happened if Iran had bought f-15s instead of the f-14?
 
AGS-1787 said:
What would have happened if Iran had bought f-15s instead of the f-14?
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F-14 might have faced an even tougher road than it did. It was an expensive bird, and Iranian money helped keep the program palatable for congress. But I think Iran was most concerned with countering Soviet MiG-25 overflights, and the Tomcat/Phoenix combo was a better counter to that threat than the Eagle/Sparrow combo, so I think they were leaning towards the F-14, but I may be wrong.
 
I was wondering what would have been the implications if Iran had been smuggling f-15 parts.
 
AGS-1787 said:
I was wondering what would have been the implications if Iran had been smuggling f-15 parts.
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I don't think it would be that substantial. Much easier to smuggle F-15 parts. The USN was the only other operator of the F-14, but Israel and Saudi are operators, and in the neighborhood. Add to that Japan, with their production, and Korea, who's operating the Strike Eagle, but I gotta imagine there's at least some parts commonality, along with any subcontractors in the US who could be bribed/snookered into giving up spare parts, so all told there're a lot more avenues to keep the fleet flying, even if the process wouldn't be what any of us call "easy."

But as expensive as the F-14 was, it's not like it was 5 times more expensive than the eagle. You'd have a bigger fleet, but it's not like you would have three or four hundred fighters in service, and any which way, that fleet would probably see some losses over nearly 10 years worth of the Iran-Iraq War (goodbye "the F-15 has a perfect combat record"), and all the decades since would see at least some planes rendered incapable of service, so by the start of our recent misadventures around Hormuz, you would likely have a larger fleet of combat worthy F-15s (as per the reasons stated above) than they actually had of F-14s, but they'd still be 1970s manufactured birds kept in the air by hook or by crook going up against two of the most advanced air forces in the world operating 5th generation stealth fighters. I think the big what if for a more substantial air battle would be if the Iranians had cozied up to the Russians earlier and gotten their hands on more Sukhois, sooner.
 
AGS-1787 said:
What would have happened if Iran had bought f-15s instead of the f-14?
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F-15s likely would have been delivered a bit later, so depending on delivery rate, they probably would have received fewer Eagles before the embargo.
The consequences for Grumman and consequently for the USN could have been pretty bad, as Grumman was on the brink of bankruptcy and could really use the Shah's money.
 
FighterJock said:
I would have thought that when the Super Tomcat 21 was doing the rounds back in the day the US Navy would have gone with that when the NATF was cancled.
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For some reason, the SecDef at the time (Dick Cheney) had an absolute hate-boner for Grumman in general. As long as he was SecDef, there was zero chance the ST21 would get bought.

Remove him as SecDef and you have a chance of getting Super Tomcats.
 
Didn't he have some notion that in the post-Cold War world there wasn't enough room for all of the aerospace contractors that existed at the time, so by whatever logic it's worth accelerating the process for Grumman since McDonnell Douglas can just build strike fighters for the Navy instead.

Surely McDonnell Douglas with the AV-8B, F-15, F/A-18, C-17, and many other important contracts will remain a well-run and well-managed company long into the 21st century. Right?
 
This just popped up on YT concerning the possibility of a single F-14 being restored to flight-worthy status:


The US paid nearly $1 million to shred its retired F-14 Tomcats so no part could ever reach Iran. Now Congress wants to save three of them and get one flying again.

The Maverick Act, introduced in March 2026 by Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), passed the Senate unanimously on April 28. It would let the Navy hand over three Tomcats from the Davis-Monthan boneyard (two F-14Ds and a MiG-killing F-14A) to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Justin Taylor breaks down why the Tomcat mattered and how Iran became its only export customer. Iran kept its F-14s flying for 40-plus years on black-market parts, which pushed the US to destroy its own fleet. Then Israeli strikes hit Iran's remaining Tomcats. Plus: what it would actually take to get a Tomcat that's sat in the desert for 20 years past the FAA and back in the air.​


#F14Tomcat #MaverickAct #MilitaryAviationhttps://www.youtube.com/hashtag/militaryaviation

Chapters​

0:00 Congress wants to save the F-14
1:01 What the Maverick Act does
3:01 A quick history of the Tomcat
4:34 Built to hunt Soviet bombers
6:00 How Iran ended up with F-14s
8:16 Why the US shredded its Tomcats
9:19 What happened to Iran's Tomcats
10:18 Why flying one again is so hard
11:53 20 years in the boneyard, plus the FAA
13:01 Engines and spare parts
13:52 The people problem
14:34 Who could pull this off
15:47 What happens next
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Given that the IRIAF fleet is still operational to this day despite attempted efforts to strangle it and more recently directly destroy the aircraft, maybe the Americans can ask Iran for a pristine example in exchange for acknowledging Irans claim over the Strait of Hormuz? x)

Seems like a fair trade to me.
 
Scott Kenny said:
For some reason, the SecDef at the time (Dick Cheney) had an absolute hate-boner for Grumman in general. As long as he was SecDef, there was zero chance the ST21 would get bought.

Remove him as SecDef and you have a chance of getting Super Tomcats.
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I hate Cheney so much for this...

Iran having F-15s would have made the recent conflict alot more interesting... Considering that 3 US F-15s got shot down in a friendly fire incident, imagine the mess if Israel, US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are all flying F-15s at the same time...
 
AGS-1787 said:
I was under the impression that their f-14 were destroyed this year.
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Destroying a couple F-14s that sat outside not moving for years didn't mean the fleet was destroyed. Especially when Iran much later released various footage, among which F-14s taking off. They have vast underground hangars and bunkers where they keep more valuable things like operational aircraft and missiles. Obviously things like their C-130s or P-3s didn't fit inside. But their F-4s, F-5s and F-14s are known to operate in and out of those bases.
 
I just found out something that was scratching my head for years, concerning the twin AMRAAM launcher seen during trials on the F-14.
It was not the LAU-115/127 combination (as later used on F/A-18 Hornet), but an experimental launcher known as the DALA/DRA-1 (Dual AIM-120 Launcher / Dual Rail Adapter - 1).

For some reason I can't get a link from the IG page where I found the answer, so here is a screenshot.
 

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