The launcher is LAU-7, which does not supports AIM-120. Proposed dual racks for F-14 utilized different configuration.
Actually there was an early concept for carrying 6x AMRAAM under fuselage station with new launchers(3 front, 3 rear), so the potential of 10x AMRAAM probably relates to this. However neither of them made it to the stage of a functional prototype due to lack of sufficient funding. In the case of the expanded AMRAAM carriage for the fuselage station, there wasn’t even a single mockup.
So I’d say the 6x AMRAAM would be the limit even under the most generous interpretation of the F-14 and AMRAAM. This is especially true given that the only real meaningful attempt to integrate AMRAAM on the F-14 is the PDU software, which would infer that the AMRAAM would have simply utilized the hardpoints for AIM-7.
I would rather gaijin take the semi historical leap and allow the F-14D to take 8 amraams, 4 underbelly and 4 on the underwing pylons, along with 2 aim-9s to allow the F-14D to act as a sidegrade to the F-15C, trading some maneuverability and an HMD for 2 extra amraams, a great radar, and the cool factor cause its a F-14 ;) . But in all seriousness The F-14D without amraams would honestly, in my opinion be a worse F-14B as it would most likely be 13.3 with the one worst active radar guided missiles in the game. The F-14D with 8 amraams would make it worth the grind, and even make gaijin consider buffing the F-14B (it kinda sucks atm, AIM-7Ps, 9Ms or 54C+ would make it ever-so-slightly less painful)
For this picture,
I think this is a custom rack attached to the LAU-7 launcher.
It doesn’t look like these pylons would be conflicted at all, since the Aim-120s would be on the lower 1B and 8B LAU-93 pylons, and the Aim-9s would be on the higher 1A and 8A LAU-7 pylons.
However the adapter with the AIM-120 dual rack is not a LAU-93, because its shape is lot different and able to accommodate a bomb rack (BRU-32?). This one is most likely a new mock-up made up for the concept demonstration, so we need more material to prove its workability.
F-14A-65-GR BuNo 158625 performed an eject and ignition test for AMRAAM, utilizing a LAU-92 launcher.
During the 1980s to early 1990s, plans called for the F-14D to be equipped with the AMRAAM.
Pre-Deployment Update software was required for the AMRAAM capability, but it was not completed and no F-14D ever had it.
There were several ideas to expand the F-14’s AMRAAM payload up to 8 or 10. However, none of them were proved to be functional and not a part of the actual integration effort.
Therefore, if the F-14D had been equipped with AMRAAM in real life, most realistic loadout would have been 6x AIM-120 + 2x AIM-9.
Yeah, you’re right. It was a distortion due to perspective.
My hypothesis on this is that they were working on integrating LANTIRN into the F-14 at the time, so they modified the LANTIRN adapter for concept demonstration of dual missile launcher. Actually the LANTIRN adapter does not used to accommodate bomb rack, but it doesn’t matter for the demonstration purposes. So I guess that’s what they did.
yeah, about that.
the image has the AIM-120s mounted on station 1B, but afaik the LANTIRN pod was tested only on station 8B and 6.
what i think happened is that both this adapter and the one for the pod are derivatives of the HARM adapters from when they were tested on the tomcat.
thus, no modifications would be required, as it’s already compatible with BRU-32 bomb racks trough the ADU-703A/A adapter (this is the same one used to allow bombs to be carried on the pods for the AIM-54).
furthermore, i found this a few days ago: A study of the integration of the lantirn targeting system on the F-14 tomcat
no modifications to the HARM adapter are mentioned, nor to the ADU-703 adapter. a third adapter between the pod and ADU-703 was developed to provide a more rigid mounting system than the BRU-32 ejector rack. in other words, BRU-32 can still be mounted in its place.
Giving the Tomcat unrivaled performance in a dogfight.
Installed thrust can be estimated to be around 32-33,000 pounds of thrust, given that the regular thrust was going to be 30,000). We know this because the uninstalled thrust of the current F-14B engines saw a boost of around 2000 pounds (from ~28,000 to 30,200). Further upgrades to the IPE/EPE would see this number rise.
This would easily bump the TWR of the ST21 to a very respectable ~1.6. With thrust vectoring though, the performance would be astounding, as that’s on par with the F-22’s TWR.
The ST21 overall would be unrivaled. It would be an F-15EX with the flight performance just shy of the F-22, all while being on a carrier deck.
