F-14 Tomcat: History, Performance & Discussion

[sudo_su1]

@MythicPi

you clearly have a bone to pick with the AIM-54’s anyways, since you only try to nerf one of the worst missiles ingame already while trying to get the best long range missile in-game buffed, i just figured id give you some extra info.

Its pretty pathetic that gaijins going to go ahead with the nerfs you want and is never going to buff the AIM-54’s despite the bug reports that have been acknowledged for years lmao.

LOL
Don’t worry, dual plane maneuvering will come eventually

Warhead is currently fictional and has to be fixed … It has almost twice the filler
(apart from the fact that it’s acting like a fragmentation warhead rather than a continuous rod warhead, allowing it to cause damage at greater distances than it should)

They should also further reduce multipath height, but that’s a general balance thing for now and not specific to any given missile …

[Lolman345]

@sudo_su1

Don’t worry, dual plane maneuvering will come eventually

I’m gonna need a source on that since gaijin has directly said on multiple occasions that will never be the case.

[MBDA_MICA]

It is possible Gaijin increased the filler size because of the missing directional warhead. Keep that in mind if the bug report won’t get to fruition.

[MythicPi]

Dual plane maneuvering is also kind of the least of the AIM-54C’s problems…

1. It still has the 54A’s terrible seeker despite irl using a seeker that is 10-20 years newer
2. It still doesnt have a reduced smoke motor, which makes it significantly more visible than it should be at lower alts
3. It still has the EXTREMELY poorly optimized guidance profile of the 54A, despite using a completely new guidance section, which makes it laughably bad at long range despite that literally being where its supposed to be employed.

The 54C doesnt miss targets because it doesnt pull enough, it misses targets because its massively obvious that its been launched at a target, and its incredibly slow when it gets to the target in just about any launch scenario in WT, which gives said target a ton of time to just notch the terrible seeker. The only people that die to AIM-54’s are those that fly directly into them. Increasing the pull to 25g’s would be historical, but wouldnt really be of any help in anything but “dogfighting” scenarios, where the seeker is much too poor to be of any use anyways.

We know for a fact all of these points were improved irl on the 54C, with the goal of making the missile more capable vs small, fast, and agile targets, particularly at longer ranges, or vs large waves of closely clustered enemies/munitions and targets trying to defeat the missile through maneuvers such as notching, but none of these have been implemented in-game despite the 54C being in-game for over a year.

The general idea people had afaik was that gaijin was holding it back intentionally for “balance” reasons, which imo is a terrible thing to do, but whatever, I could live with that. But then the F-90 was added, and it was equal to or better in every single conceivable way to the AIM-54, and IMMEDIATELY got buffed due to Sudo_su’s work, and it became plain to see that gaijin or one of their devs just has some weird abject hatred of the AIM-54.

I highly doubt the AIM-54C is ever going to be buffed, and the F-14A IRIAF will forever remain the defacto best F-14 variant in-game simply due to how much better the F-90 is. Correcting the AIM-54’s warheads imo is fine, I enjoy accuracy and have stated so before, but I also know for a fact Sudo’s nerfs will come through within months at most and all the things the AIM-54C is underperforming in will never get fixed, and its laughable he pretends they will.

[Fireball_2020]

@MythicPi

It still has the 54A’s terrible seeker despite irl using a seeker that is 10-20 years newer

I would actually expect 54A’s seeker to be worse than it is now, 54C probably slightly better.

[MythicPi]

Yeah ive said this before, the 54A is likely overperforming, its seeker should more be like a quasi-SARH. Fixing this could let the F-14A be dropped in BR a tad and be more “fair” for planes around it. The 54C on the other hand is just missing effectively everything that makes it a 54C in-game, much like two-seaters are missing effectively every positive aspect of being 2 seaters, but retaining all the negatives. Its just gaijins missile devs punching bag at this point.

I also think the fakour 90 was a stupid addition and should never have been added. Gaijin was beyond dumb adding a missile from the mid-late 2010’s to the game when everyone else is using 90’s missile tech at best, (or i guess mid-2000’s in the case of the PL-12, but its still be constrained to 1990’s performance levels) and the fact its on an old airframe like the F-14A just makes it a balancing nightmare. I still stand by the statement that the IRIAF F-14A should be kicked up to 13.0 at minimum, likely more 13.3. If they buff the F-90 like Sudo wants them to, the plane should never ever be seen below 13.7.

[sudo_su1]

@MBDA_MICA

It is possible Gaijin increased the filler size because of the missing directional warhead. Keep that in mind if the bug report won’t get to fruition.

There is no directional warhead.
AIM-54A uses a continuous rod warhead (which was eventually phased out due to poor performance) and AIM-54C uses a regular HE fragmentation warhead.

https://forum.warthunder.com/t/f-14-tomcat-history-performance-discussion/911/756

[Lolman345]

@MythicPi

Dual plane maneuvering is also kind of the least of the AIM-54C’s problems…

Oh I know and agree, its just that I’ve seen people both here and on reddit go “dont worry dual plane is coming” which has been a flat out cope / lie for a long while now.

[MiG_23M]

At the time they began saying this - dual plane came to surface launched missiles. None of them would be any good without it. Although we already ascertained that the Phoenix DOES NOT use bank to turn or dual plane exclusively. Much like the I-HAWK it maneuvers in + or x configuration as needed, and prioritizes one or the other depending on what the specific autopilot commands are. A high angle of attack would require X. Else, lower loads and AoA would not need a specific configuration, closes axis of symmetry in either + or x configuration is pointed towards target before pitching. It is then happenstance whether or not that is + or x.

I should also say, the I-HAWK is autopilot limited in G pull and AoA, the Phoenix is also likely limited and should pull the maximum overload of 25G’s in either + or x configuration if its’ anything like the I-HAWK.

[sudo_su1]

New bug report :

AIM-54A should continue receiving datalink updates after going active:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/ZSTO5XEmnNov

Most likely applies to basically all ARH missiles … Same was reported for AAM-4 using a patent.

[NestleKitkat]

@MythicPi

I also think the fakour 90 was a stupid addition and should never have been added. Gaijin was beyond dumb adding a missile from the mid-late 2010’s to the game when everyone else is using 90’s missile tech at best, (or i guess mid-2000’s in the case of the PL-12, but its still be constrained to 1990’s performance levels) and the fact its on an old airframe like the F-14A just makes it a balancing nightmare. I still stand by the statement that the IRIAF F-14A should be kicked up to 13.0 at minimum, likely more 13.3. If they buff the F-90 like Sudo wants them to, the plane should never ever be seen below 13.7.

At this point it should be possible to give the AIM-9Ls for American F-14A and AIM-9Ms for B model.
The event vehicle should be just a side grade of the TT vehicle just like FJ-4B VMF-232.

[MythicPi]

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.

[kitsune_qq]

@MythicPi

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.

well, ability to sneak to camp airfield(in SB for example) will be enough, to be very strong combination with 9M’s ofc

@MythicPi

• Its RWR will be fine, though nothing special.

wasnt there 67V3/V4?

@MythicPi

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.

well, gaijin may need to do another decompression - put ALL current 13.7 to 14.0, maybe put some 13.3 to 13.7 too.
and it will be fine at 13.7

[MythicPi]

@kitsune_qq

wasnt there 67V3/V4?

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.

@kitsune_qq

well, gaijin may need to do another decompression - put ALL current 13.7 to 14.0, maybe put some 13.3 to 13.7 too.
and it will be fine at 13.7

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.

[kitsune_qq]

@MythicPi

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.

at same time theres JF-17 and MiG-29SMT at 13.3

[MythicPi]

Both of which have access to better weapons, similar performance for FM’s, and one of the 2 has HMD…

[Apollo_1641]

@MythicPi

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.

This suggestion would address that issue

Mouse designated radar lock for 2 seater jets

poll In real life, 2 seater aircrafts have some advantages and disadvantages compared to their single seat competitors. The primary advantage 2 seater aircrafts have in real life is the workload separation between the pilot and RIO/WSO, as the pilot can focus on flying while the RIO/WSO can focus on the task of operating complex weapons and sensors accurately in high stress situations. The primary disadvantage, particularly for aircrafts which only come in 2 seat variants such as the Tornado, …

Then again you probably know this, since you made it :D

[MythicPi]

Figured ive plugged it in enough places enough time some mod might get mad at me if i did it again 😅

[SidewaysCube946]

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.

[ACOMETS]

it would have 120s