The United States Marine Corps.
It left the USN without a proper fleet defence fighter, even the superhornet is slow as hell fully loaded.
No wonder the debate of refurbishing F-14s went on for years after they was taken out of service
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The Superhornet replaced the F-14D*, the F-18A/C replaced the F-14A/B.
F-18Es replaced 2 strike aircraft, and 2 multi-role aircraft.
F-18A/C replaced 3 fighters, and 1 strike aircraft.
@UrMumSaysHi
The carrier fleet should bring back F-18Cs with modern avionics.
F-18C is the perfect fleet defense fighter.
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Imagine this: naval F-15EX.
Good luck getting near a carrier then
Incorrect. The legacy F/A-18C worked alongside all F-14s and was considered primarily to be a strike/attack platform when they coexisted. The Superhornet was a politically favoured attempt to replace the capabilities of the F-14 after it was pushed out of service.
No? The F-14 was created with fleet defense adaptability in mind. The F/A-18 was created with attack capabilities in mind.
The earliest F-14 models decimated Mig-25s in Iraq. On the flipside, the Mig-25 killed a hornet (with ease)
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That’s called the ST-21 or ASF-14.
If that was the case the F-18s would’ve caused the retirement of all strike aircraft, but that wasn’t the case.
F-14B/D, A-6, A-4 at the least were retained as strike platforms.
It wouldn’t be until the F-18E where strike platforms were retired and replaced with F-18E.
F-18A/C however replaced F-4D/J, F-8 Crusader [all], and of course F-14A [along with some F-14Bs].
These facts do not change no matter how much your posts deny them.
F-18A/C was created with fleet defense in mind, as well as making a standardized platform that could replace multiple fighter platforms, and a singular [A-7] strike aircraft.
Cause, it was for later variant. The air force is pretty much done on the striker aircraft line unless they decided to move F15 on that, otherwise Hornet will be the end of line. Folks waited least more then half a year till a more modern variant showed up like F-16A to F-16C/ or 14A to 14B.
lets be real the f-18 was created because congress didnt want to keep paying for the f-14
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The F-18 was created over 30 years before the retirement of the final F-14.
Peddling myths is Tomcope.
damn kinda crazy that congress wanted the navy to get a cheaper fighter/ strike craft instead of the f-14
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They wanted a universal platform that would exceed all previous fighters, and that’s what they got.
The primary reason F-14 stuck around so long is cause AIM-120 wasn’t put on carriers until the F-18C.
Then the F-14 lobby group kept convincing the Navy it was still necessary.
Similar to how the F-18E lobby group is doing today, making the primary carrier fleet regret getting rid of the F-18C.
Update vehicles? what update vehicles?
it still started with the congress wanting a cheaper alternitive to the f-14
weird that the pilots themself most of the time preferred the f-14 over the f-18
like wtf how can you sell the military an upgrade that has makes one of the primary problems of the f-18 even worse:
the low twr
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The F/A-18 was developed to be a multi-role fighter which primarily was used for ground attack and secondarily to help the F-14.For the Navy the legacy hornet replaced the A-7 corsair II and for the marines it replaced the F-4 phantom though for the marines they used their planes to support their ground forces.
The F/A-18A should have gone after the A-10C and the F/A-18C after the AV-8B plus and the Super Hornet which did replace the F-14 after the F-14D.
The A-6 stayed because it had EW and the hornet didn’t. The A-4s were pretty low in numbers for most of the tail-end of their service.
Again, this is false. All F-14s (A, B, B(U), A(+), D, D(R) ) were in service during the F/A-18 era, and none of them were pushed out or favored over the F-14s for AtA missions.
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet - Wikipedia.
The F/A-18 has no characteristics of a fleet defense fighter. Very limited range (missiles and airtime), slow with a loadout, short-ranged radar, very bad speed retention, no ECM/EW abilities, etc… It’s a (at best) midrange missile truck that’s somewhat of a dogfighter once you use the missiles up.
@ItzMikeyzWRLD-psn
So F-18’s on-par range was poor range to you? lol
F-14s were operated below the speed of sound as well.
F-18Cs had the best speed retention the navy ever used, easily beating the F-14B with its wings out.
The F-14 had the Phoenix for bombers and missiles, and F-18s had the anti-fighter design that would later also be anti-bomber.
And missile defense systems made Phoenix obsolete in that role.
F-14 combat radius: “Deck launched intercept F-14D - 656 nautical miles radius combat range with two 280-gallon drop tanks”
F/A-18C combat radius: 330 nmi
F/A-18E/F combat radius: ~600 nmi
This is the case for almost all jets because of the rule of no going supersonic over land. The difference is that the F-14B/D can accelerate much faster than the F/A-18C and actually get to speeds of Mach 2.35.
Me when I lie:
The Phoenix could hit fighters. This was easily proven during the Iraq War. The Aim-54C was specifically designed to improve the missile against maneuvering, fighter-sized targets. Moving on, the Aim-54C+ ECCM (Electronic Counter-Counter Measures) countered those missile defense systems and was in no way obsolete.
@ItzMikeyzWRLD-psn
19.2 degrees per second, would you look at that.
F-14B’s is less BTW.
You know you can do math… F-14B has 2 GE engines that consume all the fuel at max military thrust in just over 1 hour. 3 hours at high altitude.
F-18 will go just under 1 hour. 2 hours 40 minutes at high altitude.
On afterburner, F-18 will last longer due to the more efficient reheat chambers.
As for total speed, that stopped being necessary the moment interceptors didn’t need to get within 6km of a bomber.
No it’s not… it’s slightly more at just below 21 degrees per second… And that’s with 4 Aim-7s and 4 Aim-9s. A perfectly good loadout for actual combat.
Here are the F/A-18C’s: Weapons load is 2 AIM-9 and 2 AIM-120 carried externally, no external fuel tanks and 60 percent fuel remaining. Not only is this not a good combat load, it’s also inaccurate to reality, as Hornets will never leave the carrier without 1-3 tanks. Meaning not only is the range in this config bad, but it can’t even perform like this in a real engagement.
Brother the F-14 can supercruise at high alts on mil power and overall goes faster than the Hornet on mil power.
I don’t really believe that (especially without tanks) but I’d like to see your source on this. Maybe you could do some math and see how far the F-14D/D would go compared to the F/A-18C/E on full afterburner.
The F-14 didn’t need to get within 6km?? Infact, interceptors are typically designed to be the longest ranged planes in the fleet. And the F-14B/D was not an exception. (Aim-54C is still the longest-ranged American AtA missile used by a singular platform btw)
If you’re talking about engagement rules, the TCS camera could see and identify targets from almost 40km away.