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Bring back the F-14 Tomcat under a Trump Administration!

Dear Congressional leaders and the (presumed) President of the United States,



Please reactivate the Northrop Grumman F-14 Tomcat program. The main bullet points I outline in this petition are as follows: 1)it's cheaper than the f-22 raptor and f-35 lightning II 2)we can repair the frames of, overhaul and reuse the old f-14 tomcats sitting in museums which brings us to 3)getting Northrop Grumman to reinvest in the f-14 tomcat by building hundreds of Brand New F-14s will create many jobs for many many people.



Now allow me to show some background information on the tomcat.



The F-14 tomcat is the only modern Air Superiority jet fighter our navy has ever flown. The f-14 tomcat is a Fourth Generation, all weather inteceptor, air superiority and strike platform jet fighter. The f-14 tomcat is in the same league in range, dogfighting and radar detection and BVR (beyond visual range) combat as the F-15 Eagle, the Su-27 Flanker and the Chinese J-20 fighters.



The f-14 tomcat was replaced by the f/a-18 super hornet in what was said to be a cost saving move. HOwever, the F/A-18 super hornet cannot compete with the F-14 tomcat, thus the other heavy fighters that they are expected to engage in the role of air superiority. Enemy SU-27 flankers and J-20 jet fighters will see the super hornet and engage with missiles long before the super hornet even knows they are there. You cannot remedy this problem with a new radar system as the nose cone of the Super hornet is too small to fit a long range radar capable of detecting an Su-27 or j-20 before alterting the other jets of the super hornet's presence.



The f-14 tomcat possessed the extremely lethal Aim-54 phoenix system that was longer range, faster and deadlier than any other air to air missile in the world, but the F-14D model in particular was also equipped with a very long range Stealth-craft detecting Infra-Red-Search-and-Track (IRST), the AN/AAS-42 IRST which is still one of the most powerful IRSTs in the world. The AN/AAS-42 IRST on the F-14D Tomcat had a detection and tracking radius of nearly 80 miles. THis makes the f-14D tomcat the most capable jet fighter in the world that would be tasked with taking down both the f-22 raptor and the f-35 lightning II. The F-14 Tomcat was also the FIRST interceptor in the world capable of DESTROYING the SR-71 Blackbird with it's AIM-54 phoenix missile system. The Lockheed SR-71 first flew merely a few years prior to the introduction of the F-14, with it's high-altitude, long range and hypersonic AIM-54 missiles making the SR-71 obsolete. The f-14's AIM-54 phoenix missiles could achieve a top speed of Mach 5 and sustain 9gs of turning to follow anything in the sky further and faster than any other missile in the world. The SR-71 would have no chance to escape these missiles, yet, no other existing interceptor at the time had the ability to intercept the blackbird. The AIM-54 Phoenix missile is still as of yet the longest range air to air missile in existence. It has also been reverse engineered and remanufactured by the Iran Air Force and they still use them to this day on their F-14A tomcats.



During the 1970s the Department of Defense attempted to thwart production of the F-14 tomcat which threatened to put Grumman out of business. The only thing that saved Grumman from Bankruptcy was the Iranian purchase of 80 F-14A tomcats of which the Iranians still fly about 40 to this day. By the time the 90s/early 2000s came around the decision to cancel the AIM-54 phoenix missile system was made, and soon after the tomcat was scheduled for a 2008 retirement but in 2006, less than a year after the F-22 raptor was introduced to the U.S. Air Force, the tomcat was retired early and out of over 700 tomcats built almost all of them were completely shredded into pieces. This has never happened to any other retired aircraft in our inventory and the excuse for doing this was to prevent Iran from getting spare parts, which is a very poor excuse as they have completely reverse engineered the F-14 tomcat and are continuously overhauling and resurrecting grounded F-14s and putting them back into service. The Iranian f-14 could effectively intercept the SR-71 blackbird and with the threat of a possible IRST modification the Iranian Tomcats could in theory down Lockheed's F-22 raptor and the future (at the time) planned F-35 lightning II.



Despite the department of defense's decision to destroy one of our most state of the art weapons, the F-14 tomcat, the tomcat was also a very capable dogfighter and strike platform. In fact, even the F-14A had a 2:1 ratio over the F-15 eagle in dogfighting. The f-14B and F-14D were even better after they had received the GE F-110 engine the tomcat was originally designed to use but was blocked by the Department of Defense from getting them until later in it's service life, whereas the F-15 eagle and F-16 falcon got all the upgrades that were asked for. These new GE F-110 jet engines also made it theoretically faster than the F-15 eagle, due to a 30+% increase in total thrust after receiving the new GE F-110 jet engines. The top mach speed of the F-14A tomcats with the under-powered TF-30 engines was mach 2.38. The top speed of the Eagle is currently mach 2.5. You do the math. As for it's strike capabilities, he F-14A could basically travel the same distance for a bombing mission as the f-15 strike eagle on internal fuel ALONE. The F-14D was a SUPERIOR platform for strike missions due to it's more efficient engines and could probably outdo the strike eagle with only internal fuel. THe main reason the F-14 tomcat is a better strike platform than the F-15 eagle is it's ability to conserve fuel by lowering the amount of drag with it's variable geometry wings, similar to the Air Force's F-111 aardvark (pig) strike platform, another plane with variable geometry wings.



The f-14 did experience long maintenance hours in the hangar, but this was due to their not being any funding from the department of defense to remedy the issue. The early f-15 eagle and f-16 falcon blocks also at first experienced much higher maintenance hours than their later revisions, with the eagle taking about 35-40 hours of maintenance per hour of flight compared to the tomcat's 50+ hours per hour of flight. The eagle and falcons were eventually updated to cut down on maintenance, while the tomcat suffered from lack of funding for upgrades. Grumman's proposals to fix the maintenance issues with the F-14 were all shot down in congress, yet, again, they allowed the the f-15 and f-16 fighters to continue to their upgrade programs. This is unfair and is no excuse for why the tomcat was retired. Given the fact that the maintenance crew on the carriers enjoyed working on the plane as both they and the pilots that flew them knew how powerful and cutting edge the tomcat was, there is little evidence to suggest that this would have ever been a real reason on why the tomcat was put into retirement.



The F-14 was rated as being a 7.5g air frame, and later reduced to 6.5gs due to the fighter's old age.... but with newer air frames the tomcat in reality was a 9G sustainable capable air frame, being stronger and more durable than the F-15 eagle and f-22 raptor due to it's design as a navy carrier aircraft. Taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier is extremely violently abusive to any and all aircraft due to the quick acceleration for take off and the heavy impact and rapid deceleration for landing. Many navy planes have had many malfunctions that caused hydraulic control systems to fail when landing and frames have been damaged or worse, because of the violent impact, they just couldn't handle the stress and they cracked open like an egg and crashed, sometimes killing their pilots. But the F-14 tomcat isn't just any plane.



The durability of the F-14 tomcat's frame was demonstrated in flight in 1976 for the Iranian leader, the Shah, in a fly off against the F-15 eagle to allow the Shah decide which jet fighter he wanted to buy for his air force. The tomcat pilot doing the demonstration was in an F-14A, low to the ground and turned a sustained 8.5gs and accelerated through this turn, meaning there was thrust left for perhaps up to 9gs. The Shah was impressed with the tight turn and as he was rather knowledgeable about airplanes and understood technical data, he chose the F-14 Tomcat over the F-15 eagle. This is documented in one of the most credible, thorough and researched resources that contains the most official information about the specifications of the F-14 tomcat - "TOMCAT! The Grumman F-14 Story" book by Rear Admiral PAUL T. GILLCRIST. This is an incredible feat when the f-14A used in the demonstration had the severely under-powered and crash prone TF-30 engines and goes to show that the Tomcat's aerodynamics and lifting body are incredibly versatile even with poor engine power. Of course this is not the only source of this information; there are many videos on youtube that show F-14 tomcat pilots turning 9 or 10gs constantly. This can also be accounted for by asking any of the f-14 pilots who have taken the tomcat through those hard turns. It was pretty common during training to turn that tight and the pilots did it often. The F-14B and F-14D with upgraded and more powerful engines should have had no issues with turning and sustaining 9gs with light loads.



Another point to make is that Japan almost chose the F-14 tomcat over the f-15 eagle as well, due to a well known and circulated photo of Joe "Hoser" Satrapa in an f-14 tomcat looking down with guns locked on an F-15 Eagle in a 2v2 mock dogfight. Japanese officials saw the photo and were impressed to the point that they seriously considered buying F-14 tomcat. But due to politics and the brutal blows that the Department of Defense gave to Grumman, they opted for the 'less security issues' f-15 eagle.



I think you all should reconsider reactivating the F-14 tomcat program instead of the F-22 raptor program which you have recently proposed. For every 1 F-22 raptor you could build 4 maybe 5 tomcats depending on options. You could also reactivate multitudes of remaining mostly-in-tact F-14 tomcats sitting in museums all across the country. Their air-frames would have to be repaired but it would be smarter to do that than to wait for years attempting to get Northrop Grumman into full scale production of brand new f-14 tomcats where they have to make all parts from scratch, whereas the museum tomcats, again, are mostly in tact and capable of returning to service with most of their older structural parts. This obviously makes reactivating the F-14 tomcat program cheaper than to rely only on the time consuming full scale reproduction of brand new f-14 tomcats. Of course, building brand new F-14 tomcats is the main goal, but getting the older ones in service first is not only cheaper but safer for our navy pilots as they will have the capability and air superiority that our navy has not had since the retirement of the F-14 tomcat.



In the end, reactivating the F-14 tomcat instead of building new F-22s for the U.S. air force and F-35s for the navy will save billions of dollars and help to comparatively lower the national debt , while at the same time making our navy the most powerful air to air capable force in the world that it once was. This will create many more engineering/design/manufacturing jobs as each plane is cheaper allowing for more of their revenue to go to the workers. Not only that, but the F-14 tomcat could also be potentially sold to the U.S. air force as a force multiplier, if needed.