The more I think about it, the more I realize the F-14D Super Tomcat is most likely dead on arrival…
First off, the F-14’s flight performance. The F-14’s have very good FM’s, but more than any top tier aircraft, they’re extremely finnicky. Their top performance in rate and AOA is quite high, but the ideal rate performance for the F-14’s is (or seems to be) more speed dependent than any aircraft in-game, and its ability to pull high AOA so easily compounds these issues. In this manner, it has many of the same “issues” people complain about when playing the Su-27’s, namely that its easy to lose energy and hard to regain it, but the F-14 trades higher highs (better max rate performance) for lower lows (even worse acceleration), making it a deeply punishing airframe to any kind of mistake in a dogfight vs current top tiers. This will be even more obvious when aircrafts with significantly better FM’s, such as the Eurofighter, Rafale, J-10C, etc… are added.
For subsystems;
The F-14D lacks the critical HMD capability to easily lock targets with IR missiles both in an out of dofights and HMD PD locks for its radar. As such, it will always be at a disadvantage within ~20km of an adversary, as almost all other aircrafts it will face will have HMD capabilities.
Its RWR will be fine, though nothing special.
Its countermeasure count is large, but until BOL is unnerfed (F-14’s were collateral damage in gaijins quest to nerf the Gripen), its extremely hot engines and large RCS will continue to be a massive issue with regards to CM’s.
The AN/AXX-1 TCS and AN/AAS-42 IRST are likely to be horridly modelled as well, lacking 90%+ of their capabilities and effectively invalidating their existence on the aircraft.
For radar, not much is publicly known about the AN/APG-71 besides the fact its effectively the unholy offspring of the vaunted AN/APG-70 from the F-15E Strike Eagle, and the AWG-9 from the original F-14. In theory, this radar should be tremendously good, but due to levels of public information and gaijins seeming hatred of the F-14 and horrid track record with modern western tech, I have a sneeaking suspicion the radar will be remarkably unremarkable. It also leads well into the final major issue with the F-14D.
The F-14D’s weapons are shaping up to be truly disappointing.
The AIM-54C ECCM/Sealed, much like all other AIM-54’s before it seen in-game, is going to be another copy paste pure skill check missile, incapable of being a threat at any launch range due to a mix of the highest missile visibility in-game, and some of the lowest missile performance north of 12.0, significantly degrading the aircrafts performance while offering no advantage in return.
The AIM-7P would have already been inferior to the R-27ER when added without fox 3 MRAAMs in-game. Now it will simply be the worst MRAAM missile of any spaded aircraft beyond 13.0, preventing you from disengaging adequately from any short to medium range head-on if you want your missile to connect, and completely unviable in any BVR shot.
The AIM-9M is objectively the only good missile weapon garanteed to come with the F-14D, and is a double edged sword. It has the most reliable form of IRCCM currently in-game on fixed wing jets, but also is the most reliably decoyed IRCCM missile by any good player. Its also likely to be on the lower end of the power curve in the near future as the Python 4 is added, and 4th/5th gen IR missiles begin being made accessible.
The AIM-120A MIGHT come with the F-14D, and would actually allow it to compete to some degree, but is highly unlikely, as it was never used operationally, and would require gaijin to do something positive to an american F-14 for once, which is borderline unheard of.
All in all, if added today, the F-14D would already be arguably one of, if not the single worst 13.7 aircraft in the game, being both punishingly hard to fly compared to its opponents, and having little to no advantage over any of them to boot. A wonderful mix of a very high skill floor and low skill ceiling, along with a high risk, no rewards playstyle.
Idk if the F-14D ever got the V3, I know the V4 got cancelled for the F-14A because it went out of service. That being said, I dont think either offers any capabilities that would make it stand out at top tier in the first place, granted im not super well versed in specific differences.
Doesnt really change the fact its mostly DOA. For the most part, itl be superior in FM but inferior in every other metric to the Tornado F.3 Late in sim, and possibly even the absolute garbage that is the F-4F KWS LV, and both sit at 13.3, which is already arguably too high a BR for them.
It’s not that bad I just got out of the timeout corner for the second time (bros never gonna learn his lesson) but you can still like and view everyone on the forums.
It should, but there is a large, vocal contingent of players who are vehemently against any aircraft that isn’t from their favorite tree getting “what if” weapons.
Plus, the devs are already inconsistent with weaponry. F-14A and B should have better IR missiles (that are already in game), but they don’t. Yet things such as SRAAM arm a few aircraft in game, and aircraft that were never armed also have weapons given to them in game.
Forget not the F-14s failing to get the VTAS HMD even though they were capable of using them and tested with them.
Will probably be an AWG-9 with a slightly better speed gate.
Will be a copy paste of the existing AIM-54C.
Will be a AIM-7M but can actually re-acquire the target.
While it should have a seeker equivalent to the FIM-92C, I highly doubt it will be added / anything more than the existing 9M due to gaijin’s balancing choices.
I’m just amazed that Gajin thinks the F-14B and F-15A are equal. A FM that blows the Tomcat, a better radar (all-aspect), can carry 4 aim-9M and has 240 standard size CMs in a usable Nato pattern . People often point out the number of flares the F-14B can carry but having 320 or 640 bol pod size CMs that finish burning in like 0.5s and only launch in a garbage rear pattern doesn’t mean much. I fly the av8b+ at 13.0 with 180 CMs and rarely run out.
The F-14B is the only aircraft in the game that strictly uses the BOL pods (unlike the Gripen) until they are depleted, then it switches to the internal dispenser. The sea harrier uses the internal ones first I think. I started to remove the pods so I can use the 60x standard right away. Much better imo.
Gaijin nerfed them because of the Gripen and the F-14B happened to be a collateral damage.
I’m sure they will give aim-9M to the F-14B eventually after seeing the horrible stats but the inertia of Gaijin is annoying. Always reactive, never pro-active.
F-14A is a dead aircraft, constantly fighting 13.3.-13.7 with proper fox-3 and IRCCM missiles. The IRIAF at least has the fakour to get some lucky hits early game.
The truth is that there needs to be at least 15.0 BR, there is not enough decompression at all. While I agree F-14B is not equal to F-15A, it is indeed worse in a lot of ways, but I do think that in a downtier the F-14s were a bit too OP, especially the IRIAF.
There is the “Extended Chaff Adapter” that can be mounted onto the LAU-93 tunnel station adapter in place of the AIM-54. That could provide standard caliber countermeasure capability.
But that isn’t modeled in game as an option, it probably couldn’t be equipt with flares though, it would still free up the ALE-39A for Flare carriage so wouldn’t be entirely useless.
