Maverick’s Modernized Top Gun F-14E Tomcat Would Beat F-35C

The F-14E would definitely beat the F-35C in executing the kind of missions our fighters and strike craft have been executing over the last 30 years.

In the original 1986 “Top Gun,” Pete “Maverick” Mitchell famously proclaimed, “I feel the need, the need for speed!” And Tom Cruise’s co-star, the iconic F-14A Tomcat, delivered big time.

However, 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” featured the Navy’s F/A-18ef Super Hornet. While the F/A-18 Super Hornet has been a reliable workhorse for the Navy for over 20 years, it isn’t nearly as fast as the F-14, which many feel was prematurely retired in 2006 due to politics and the mistaken belief that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union a high-speed, high-endurance fleet defense fighter was no longer needed.

But what if instead of prematurely retiring the Tomcat, the U.S. Navy and Department of Defense had opted to move forward with Grumman’s proposal to thoroughly upgrade a significant portion of the Navy’s 700-plus Tomcats to Super Tomcats for the 21st century (ST-21)? Would Maverick have been perhaps a bit more excited about flying a plane much faster than the Super Hornet and even faster than the F-14As featured in the original movie?

The ST-21, according to Grumman’s preliminary designs, would have been faster, more maneuverable, had more range, and would have been able to carry more weapons than the legacy F-14s. It would likely have been formally designated as the F-14E Super Tomcat. But far more important than its name, the F-14E Super Tomcat would have been significantly more reliable with lower operating costs than older Tomcats still saddled with aged 1960s-era technology.

Indeed, just like the Tomcat’s 1970s Air Force sibling, the F-15 that is still flying today, the F-14E would have benefited from an extensive series of upgrades, resulting in a 2024 truly Super Tomcat featuring state-of-the-art avionics and electronics warfare, as well one of the top two or three most powerful AESA radars available on a fighter today. And the Super Tomcat would also feature infrared search and track that would enable it to target stealth jets at short to medium ranges, especially ones with superhot exhaust such as the F-35.

To achieve these impressive advances, the F-14E would go from relying on the notoriously unreliable TF30 engines that powered the vast majority of F-14s to the day of their retirement, to the navalized versions of the much more powerful and vastly more reliable F110-GE-129/132 engines that power modern-day F-16s and F-15s. The F-14E would also feature remanufactured wings with improved aerodynamics and reliability, and more weapons-carrying capacity. The improved wings would also add 4,400 pounds of overall internal fuel capacity to the F-14’s already substantial 16,200 pounds.

Relative to Maverick’s 1986 F-14A, the F-14E Super Tomcat would be faster, an estimated Mach 2.5 (1650 mph) versus Mach 2.34+. Its ferry range, including its new drop tanks, would go from 2,300 miles to at least 2,700 miles, and its weapons payload would be substantially increased as well. Also, by combining its computer-controlled variable sweep wings with thrust vectoring, the ST-21 would have been one of, if not the most, maneuverable jet fighters in the world today. What’s more, its modernized digital flight control system would deliver improved overall aerodynamic responsiveness.

But would Maverick prefer to fly the Navy’s latest fighter—the somewhat stealthy F-35C? Or would a real-life hot-dogger like Pete “Maverick” Mitchell prefer piloting a super-high-performance F-14E that is 450 mph faster, has much greater acceleration, can supercruise, has a greater service ceiling, has swing wings that give it much superior endurance/loiter time, has roughly double the range, and is much superior when engaging in within visual range dog fights, etc.?

The answer seems obvious!

Additionally, with the F-14E being a more powerful twin-engined plane with a bigger more robust airframe, Maverick and other Navy pilots would benefit from the Super Tomcat’s superior ability to provide the power and cooling necessary to take better advantage of state-of-the-art, energy-hungry avionics, computers, and radar than the less-powerful, smaller, single-engined F-35C, which has been struggling with cooling issues.

Moreover, as is the case with all Navy pilots, Maverick would much appreciate the F-14E’s ability to continue flying should it lose an engine to mechanical failure or combat damage—an ability the F-35 does not have. He would also appreciate that the F-14E would be able to deliver far more ordnance over any given period of time than the F-35C.

So, the F-14E would definitely beat the F-35C in executing the kind of missions our fighters and strike craft have been executing over the last 30 years.

And while the F-35C is somewhat stealthy, it doesn’t have the range to conduct real stealth strikes. But what about beyond visual range (BVR) combat? Just how effective would the F-35C’s stealth and still yet to be proven in combat “game-changing” situational awareness fare in a fight with the F-14E? That depends.

While at first blush it would seem that the stealthy F-35C would have a significant advantage over the non-stealthy F-14E, at second blush the advantages might not be a great as initially thought. Indeed, how the F-14E would perform against an F-35C in BVR combat would depend on a whole bunch of factors, such as the kind of radar, ability to use its superior range and speed to come at the F-35C from angles and altitudes for which the F-35 stealth is severely compromised, and electronic support measures to give the F-14E a much-increased chance to get effective missile shots at the F-35. Also, the F-14E, with its much greater range and endurance, is less dependent on non-stealthy air tankers whose presence may give away that stealth planes are incoming.

On the other hand, there could be scenarios in which the F-35C’s low probability of detection radar is not detected by the F-14E’s electronic support measure module and is able to target the Super Tomcat with its four missiles, with one or more of them defeating the F-14E’s jamming and other defensive measures. Given the number of variables, we just don’t know.

But we do know that Maverick would not be all that excited about a plane that has yet to demonstrate its real-world combat capabilities, is nearly a full Mach slower, has far less acceleration, is less agile, has less range, and let’s be frank, is not anywhere near as good looking.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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