F-14 Tomcat: History, Performance & Discussion

JDAM 1 variants (GBU-31) for F-14B

F-14D mounted GBU-31 & GBU-38

I expect gaijin working Sparrowhawk HUD and to replace current cockpit HUD on F-14B

Luckily, I’m not forgot you posted

Rename on tech tree and stat card at the same time

F-14B → F-14B(U)

2 Likes

its never going to get such a revamp, you will have to wait till the f14d comes like the rest of us

1 Like

In my opinion, gajin could added F-14B(U) as Tier II modification for F-14B

For F-14D, located on group under F-14B

Gonna just add the note here that the Fakour 90 buff is still going through without issues so it seems.

Would be fantastic for the normal AIM-54s to get their historical G loading and the C to get it’s improved digital autopilot.

6 Likes

Pretty clear at this point that all the artificial nerfs to the AIM-54 arent balance consideration, gaijin just has a bone to pick with it for some reason lmao.

Hope we gets F-14B(U) in next update.

3 Likes

The J-7E is going on two years for modeling errors, the F-14B will not be much higher in the list of priorities I imagine.
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/Q3b8uhZKyT8U
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/5pvMI25opIhw

2 Likes

BTW, imgur wasn’t available for me

Great video showing just how brutally the Sedgil/Fakour-90 outperform the AIM-54 in-game, particularly after their recent buff:

AIM-54’s are basically a joke missile at this point, and the F-90 and Sedgil outperform them so badly I’d argue the F-14A IRIAF is just a better aircraft than the F-14B as seen in-game due to how vast the difference in performance between the weapons fielded on the different F-14 variants are.

The iranian F-14 should be thrown up to 13.0 minimum, and arguably 13.3 would be a BR it should realistically go to, as it also outperforms vehicles like the F-4F KWS LV and the Tornado F.3 Late, which both sit at 13.3 currently.

6 Likes

Lmao it does not outperform the ICE and F3, especially because it has… rear aspect IR missiles and the F90 only works head on. The F90s are also heavy. The Iranmobile also has 60 CMs, that’s not surviving in top tier, especially with that abysmal RWR. 12.7 Maximum as a slight side grade to the B.

I know you’re not gonna acknowledge this and something something my teams anyways so there’s no point

You only take in one aspect of the plane (which isn’t even that good anyways), if we balanced off of that the Lancia 3Ro should be 11.7 because it’s HESH frontally OSKs every top tier MBT.

It definitly does… between a vastly superior FM and better ARH’s it has the advantage in both BVR (by quite a lot) and WVR. The KWS LV and F.3 Late both are superior in opportunistic kills, but the 9M is already very reliably flared if you know what you’re doing, and the 9Li-1 is just a worse 9M.

The plane isnt faultless obviously, but the F90’s outperform all other missiles to such an extreme degree that they can largely offset the issue of the poor RWR. Hence why I think 13.0 minimum with 13.3 being more likely the more reasonable BR for it. The KWS LV and F.3 late should both be dropped to 13.0 as well imo, seeing as theyre both effectively 11.0 airframes with 13.7 missiles.

Ive said it before, and ill say it again, the F-14A IRIAF was a stupid addition to the game, and will always be a massive balance issue due to firing missiles from the 2010’s from a 1974 airframe/sensor combo.

Largely irrelevant when you can easily get rid of them pre-merge and they have just about the highest pK% of all radar missiles in-game.

I’m not only taking 1 aspect of the plane into consideration, I very much know what the F-14’s can do. The aircraft in general is rather unergonomic making it difficult to be consistent in for most players, and the F-14A particularly has issues with its large heat signature and poor CM loadout. It does however have a very strong radar, particularly for BVR combat, and has a tremendous, although temperamental airframe. It does not change the fact that the F90’s are so far beyond the performance of every other missile in-game for BVR purposes that it largely offsets those issues. PARTICULARLY in sim, which is what I almost exclusively play due to how bad RB is. large improvements in weapon capability has just about always resulted in BR increases over the baseline aircrafts yet the Iranian F-14 sits at the exact same BR as the TT F-14A, despite being incomparably superior in the weapons department simply from the inclusion of the F-90, while the F-14B sits a BR step above it.

This is ignoring the fact that many still believe the baseline F-14’s are somewhat under tiered (once again, particularly in sim). The Iranian F-14A going to 13.0 would be much MUCH healthier for the game, once there it could be reassessed.

As an additional sidenote, I have my doubts the Iranian F-14 actually will ever go up in BR, because the vast majority of pilots who play it are absolutely god-awful at the game, thanks to the ease of acquiring the plane due to its event plane status, which is going to abnormally skew its stats down.

1 Like

Whole ass thesis paper damn

The AIM-120s are better, the F90s are faster and have more range but you will never use that range, if you launch them at 40km you can launch an AIM-120 too. The F-14As RWR is horrible in that situation, the only way they would know if it was a missile or not is if it was the only ping on their RWR. The AIM-120s have better tracking, can track cold targets, have way more G pull, are harder to notch, have more AOA and are actually viable at close ranges.

The AIM-9M is just a 9L with tracking suspension, the AIM-9L can already hit shots on Tomcats even when they are flaring. A Tomcat will have to dump a considerable amount of flares to decoy an AIM-9M.

You’re saying the F-14A IRIAF should go up because of its F90s, which is only one aspect.
image

Should that be 10.0? It would be the same BR as the other flare less Magic 1 carriers.

The Iranmobile is a hard to balance plane because it is a pretty mid plane with ARHs, as bad as they are, they are still ARHs, 12.7 is the right place for a plane like that, it won’t see planes that have absolutely no defense against it but it won’t be completely DOA in the slightest of uptiers.

2 Likes

Is it? Virtually every aircraft past 12.0 have all-aspect PD. The tomcat only has HDN mode. The theoretical extra range of the AWG-9 means next to nothing in Warthunder when maps are this small. All top tier radar sets are perflectly able to spot and lock each other right after take off. The F-14 is incapable of locking someone in cold aspect - unless there’s a massive speed difference of course. That’s a pretty big deal if you want to stay in the fight past the first merge.

Radar is one thing, then there’s also the lack of HMD that is also pretty much standard at 12.0+. And then there’s the abysmal alr-45 RWR.

The Iranian F-14A could maybe go 12.7 I don’t necessarily disagree but 13.0? 13.3 ?? How do you expect this thing to regularly face 13.7 jets with top of the line radar sets, fully digital RWR, HMD, irccm missiles, 35G-50G fox-3 and maneuverability (F-16, F-15, JAS39 at the very least)?

The one and only play of the IRIAF would be to take off, spam fakours, pray and immediately land. You would have zero chance to survive in a merge. Your also forgetting that a big part of what makes both the fakour and the phoenix deadly is the fact that you’re fighting against jets with RWR just a bad. At top tier long range fox-3 joust are nowhere near as effective when everyone can tell what type of aircraft is locking you and can differentiate between a simple radar lock vs a missile launch.

1 Like

120s have functionally no energy if you launch above 15km my guy unless you are cruising at nearly mach 2, same goes for all the medium range BVRAAMs, except the Fakour 90, which is till burning by 15km even from a near stand still.

Thing is hilariously broken and I hope they dont fix it because it is so fun to just seal club people with actual good AIM-54s now.

Who the hell climbs to 15km in a war thunder match

Anyways ignoring that uhh no, that’s not how it works, they retain energy very well and at that altitude are heavily assisted by gravity. Even the R-77 and MICA have enough energy to hit pretty far shots if you climb to 15km.

He’s saying they don’t have the energy to hit an aware target beyond 15km range in head-on conditions. He didn’t say anything about altitude and judging by the comment he means medium to low altitude targets.

1 Like

The Fakour 90 has more than double 15km range when launched from a stationary ground based launch platform at sea level.

1 Like

Oh oh oh oh oh that explains it, idk why he worded it that way 🤷‍♂️

But yeah idk about how aware you can be with this

image

Is this bait?? The Aim120 is perfectly capable of hitting targets at even 40km when above just 3000m/10k feets at mach 0.9 - 1. I regularly use the R-27R at 15km-20km and you’re telling me the aim-120 can’t? Are you launching them from the harrier??

I think you might call that an exaggeration.