Imagine This: The Navy Decides To Pass on the F-14 Tomcat

Robert Farley

Security,

What would have taken the Tomcat’s place? The F-14 began to enter service in 1974; the F/A-18 would not reach the Navy until 1983. This would leave a nine-year gap, not to mention the substantial capabilities gaps between the two aircraft. How would the Navy have filled it?

The Navy eventually worked out the problems with the F-14, and the Tomcat became a superlative air defense fighter. Eventually, it even gained a ground-attack mission. The temperamental nature of the design, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the success of the Super Hornet made the Tomcat superfluous by the 2000s, however, and the Navy now lacks a long-range interceptor. The main threats to carrier battle groups no longer come from flights of bombers, but rather from ballistic missiles, and no fighter has yet demonstrated much promise at the ABM mission. Nevertheless, the Tomcat contributed a core defensive capability during one of the critical periods of the development of the super carrier.

(This appeared several years ago.)

What if the F-14 Tomcat had never happened? The iconic fighter served the U.S. Navy for more than thirty years before finally (and some say prematurely) being retired in 2006. Over time, the F-14 shifted from its initial long-range fleet air-defense role to a ground-attack mission. But what if the problems that plagued the program in the 1960s and 1970s had proved insoluble? How would the Navy have filled the gap?

The Problem:

The F-14 grew out of the F-111 project, pushed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as a fighter that could serve in both the Navy and the Air Force. USN and USAF needs differed, however; the Navy wanted for a long-range carrier-based interceptor came from concern over Soviet air-launched cruise missiles. Soviet bombers could strike American carrier battle groups from great distance, without entering the envelope either of ship-based SAMs, or short-range fighters. This disrupted the layered missile, interceptor, and gun systems that the Navy had developed for air defense since World War II.

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