All production versions of carrier-based multi-role interceptor fighters of the F-14A "Tomcat" family have an important tactical advantage - a two-seater cockpit. As on the Su-30SM or F-15E, on the Super Tomkats the 2nd pilot acts as an avionics operator, controlling the AN / APG-71 radar station, the IRSTS infrared-television sighting system, analyzing the radiation sources on the AN / ALR- 67, as well as observing information about the tactical situation received from the deck aircraft AWACS E-2C / D via the Link-16 radio channel. The good information field of the F-14D, based on 2 compact LCD MFIs for the pilot and 3 similar indicators for the system operator (central - large format), in addition to the ability to scan the earth and water surface, allows us to classify the "Super Tomcat" as a generation "4+". A possible modernization of these machines would also include updating the pilot's instrument panels, since despite the presence of MFIs in the front cockpit, their dimensions do not allow to fully duplicate the cockpit of the systems operator, and a large number of electromechanical analog devices, occupying most of the area, would have to be replaced with new MFIs. dashboards. Despite the tandem arrangement of the F-14A / D pilots, there is also a drawback in the cockpit layout: the visual forward view of the systems operator is very limited, since his seat is located at the level of the first pilot's seat
Aircraft of tactical and strategic combat aviation with variable wing geometry began to arouse delight and interest among amateurs and specialists in the field of aerospace technologies, and also fell in love with military pilots more than 52 years ago, when the first prototype took off in the distant December 1964 multipurpose long-range fighter-bomber F-111A "Aardvark", later turned into several universal strike modifications with strategic capabilities specifically for the American and Australian Navy and Air Force. The variable geometry of the wing gave aviation two most important tactical qualities: low-altitude flight in the mode of following the terrain at a transonic or low supersonic speed to overcome the enemy's air defense system (with the wing folded) and medium-altitude or high-altitude flight at subsonic cruising speeds with an open wing, used for the minimum fuel for long-distance flights within the vast regional theater of operations. This category of vehicles also includes the carrier-based interceptor / multipurpose fighters of the F-14A "Tomcat" family, decommissioned from the American fleet, which are being actively replaced by the very questionable F / A-18E / F "Super Hornet" and the terribly slow 1, 3-stroke deck-based multi-role fighters of the 5th generation F-35C.
This review continues the interesting, but very short and summarizing opinion of an unnamed Chinese author-observer in the field of military equipment, which was published on the resource "Military Parity", which briefly described the scale of tactical omissions that came to the US Navy after the decommissioning of all modifications of the deck-based Tomkats "And" Super Tomcat ". A similar situation developed with the F-111 fighter-bombers, which were decommissioned, together with the EF-111A "Raven" electronic warfare versions, in the US Air Force in the late 90s, and in the Australian Air Force in late 2010. The completion of the deployment of these machines, undoubtedly, for the worse affected the operational capabilities of the long-range tactical strike aviation of the US Air Force. The scale of the omissions is neither more nor less akin to the freezing of the program for integrating the AGM-129A / B / C ACM strategic stealth cruise missile into the armament of the B-52H and B-1B "Lancer" strategic bombers, as the Australian Air Force and the US Air Force in Indo have sharply decreased -Asian-Pacific region. Both "Super Tomcats" and "Aardvarks" possessed all the qualities necessary for the implementation of the BSU concept, as well as a huge modernization potential for successful service in the 21st century, but the Americans safely missed this opportunity for us.
Australian F-111C "Aardvark" (RAAF nicknamed them "Pig" - "Pig") in the number of 24 long-range strike fighter-bombers became the main patrol vehicles of the Air Force in the IATR. The huge range of 2000 km, as well as the speed of 2400 km / h, made it possible in a matter of hours to reach this or that point of Southeast Asia, as well as the closest borders in the Indian and Pacific Oceans with a 14-ton missile and bomb "equipment" at 8 knots pendants. It included: PRLR AGM-88 HARM, modifications of tactical missiles of the "air-to-ground" class AGM-65 "Maveric", as well as various high-precision bombs with a semi-active laser seeker, or a satellite guidance system. Today these unique vehicles have been removed from service by the RAAF and are being replaced by "positional" and slow "Super Hornets"
WHAT HAS THE US Navy LOST AFTER THE SUPER TOMKETA'S LEAVE?
The specialists of the company "Grumman", who won the Pentagon competition on February 3, 1969 for a promising carrier-based interceptor VFX ("Variable geometry Fighter Experimental" or "Navy Fighter Geometry"), announced in 1968, initially relied on the design of the airframe with variable geometry wing, because they knew that it was such a wing that would make of the future F-14A a truly multipurpose carrier-based aviation complex, allowing the fleet not only to effectively defend aircraft carrier strike groups from tactical fighters, strategic bombers and naval aviation of the enemy, but also to escort its missile-carrying bombers to within a radius of up to 1500 km from the AUG without refueling, and also perform shock operations at the same distance from the aircraft carrier. The solid experience accumulated by the Grummanites in the design and serial production of the F-111A / B / C / D was used in relation to the Tomcat, and therefore any questions regarding the aerodynamic qualities of the wing at various sweep angles were quickly resolved, or were absent altogether.
The most important, one might even say, revolutionary, can be considered the design of the power plant and the tail planes of the airframe. Firstly, the engine nacelles of 2 "Pratt & Whitney" TF30-P-414A turbojet engines were separated by a decent distance from each other, which, in comparison with the "Phantoms" and "Aardvarks", dramatically increased the survivability of the vehicle in the event of damage to one of the engines (a similar scheme found its application in our multipurpose fighters of the MiG-29, Su-27 and T-50 PAK-FA families, as well as the Chinese J-11 and J-15). The first design solution entailed the second: the airframe received a tail unit with 2 vertical stabilizers located directly on the nacelles and above the engine nozzles. This solution made it possible to avoid a strong torque in the yaw plane when flying with one engine running. The moment arose due to the decent separation of the engines from the longitudinal axis of the airframe. The large total area of the stabilizers compensated for all these disadvantages. This design was also supported by the arrival of the high-speed interceptor MiG-25P, which also has a large two-fin vertical tail, into service with the USSR Air Force.
As with any high-speed interceptor, the F-14A received variable air intakes for bucket-type engines with external compression, where air flow adjustment is carried out by deflecting the ramp-flaps at the top of the air intake ducts. The air inlet clearance created by the automatic movement of the ramps depends on the height, speed, angle of attack and the current mass of the aircraft. The ramps are fully deployed in high-speed and high-altitude interception modes. Due to the widespread use of titanium alloys (24.4%), aluminum (39.4%) and boron epoxy materials (0.6%) in the design of "Tomket" with a small amount of steel elements (17.4%), the airframe of the machine, even taking into account the drives for changing the geometry of the wing and the V-shaped titanium beam of a coffered structure with a central wing transverse beam, it turned out to be quite light and durable, allowing to realize overloads of up to 7 units. The empty weight of the F-14A was 18.1 tons, and the normal take-off weight with a pair of Phoenixes (AIM-54A / B) and a pair of Sparrows (AIM-7F / M) was approaching 26 tons. This, of course, did not allow to have a thrust-to-weight ratio at the level of 1.0 with engines of the first versions, but it made it possible to reach this level later (in 1986), when the first experimental F-14D "Super Tomcat", which is a serial F -14B with much more powerful turbofan engines "General Electic" F110-GE-400 with a thrust of 12,700 kg / s. The high aerodynamic qualities of the F-14A airframe, as well as the adjustable air intakes, ensured a top speed of 2480 km / h (without suspensions) and about 2200 km / h (with suspensions), which is about 25% higher than the current F / A-18E / F "Super Hornet". But these are only the visible advantages of Super Tomcat.
Having removed the Tomcats from the US Navy on September 23, 2006, the fleet command made bets on the less complicated and expensive Super Hornets to maintain. It is no secret that the accident rate of these aircraft is much lower than that of the first versions of the F-14, and the speed of the established turn in the "dog dump" (close maneuverable air combat) is also higher due to the higher thrust-to-weight ratio and large influxes at the wing root; But this is not the main point when the E-2D Hawkeye detects, 600 km from the AUG, up to hundreds of strategic cruise missiles, which are approaching, for example, a friendly naval base in the Philippines: F / A-18E / F with its 1700 km / h they will not be able to do anything for sure, and the range of 800 km for long-distance interceptions is clearly small. But the F-14D could really "make the weather", especially when using the advanced interceptor missiles AIM-54C "Phoenix" and AIM-120D AMRAAM. And the accident rate of these modifications was no longer at such a critical level as in the first fighters with TF-30 engines from Pratt & Whitney.
What can you say about the maneuverable qualities of the Tomkats? Like any aircraft with a thrust-to-weight ratio significantly below 1.0, the first modification of the Tomcat cannot be compared with such aces of "energy" maneuvering as the MiG-29S, Su-35S, F-16C, F-15C / E / SE and F / A -18E / F. Nevertheless, the "bully cat" could always "show his teeth", and he often did it in training battles with our front-line fighters MiG-23MLD, based in the 80s. on the Vietnamese AvB Cam Ranh, as part of the 169th mixed air regiment. When our fighters took to the air for patrols, the pilots of the American F-14A, carrying air watch over the South China Sea, took the "Twenty-third" in advance for escort thanks to the powerful onboard pulse-Doppler radar with a slot antenna array (SHAR) AN / AWG- 9, this happened at a distance of up to 200 km, the MiG-31B with its "Zaslon" was then at the stage of pre-production preparation, and we did not have the tools for a worthy answer. And they had "Phoenixes" on their suspensions with an active radar seeker and a range of up to 180 km. Further, according to the logic of things, there was a rapprochement and our machines entered into simulated close air battles with American "Tomkats", half of which often ended in victory for the latter: everything depended on the training and experience of our and American pilots. In other words, the maneuverability of the first version of the F-14A was not so bad, and this is clear from the published documentation of the initial test stage of the carrier-based fighter-interceptor: the maximum angle of attack in horizontal flight reached 41 degrees, a sharp turn in the pitch plane without loss of controllability could reach 90 degrees (almost "Cobra Pugacheva", as proof there is even a video on "YouTube"), the glider confidently withstood 9.5 times positive overload, which is comparable to the performance of most modern tactical fighters. The excellent bearing qualities of the airframe in the mode of maximum wing sweep (68 degrees) are realized due to the combination of the aerodynamic properties of the wing and the surface of the fuselage between the nacelles, the all-turning rear horizontal tail (elevators) also plays its role: due to this, the entire family of deck F-14 shows high maneuverability quality at transonic and supersonic speeds.
An interesting fact is that the aerodynamic quality of the F-14A-D airframe has a coefficient of 9, 1, which is even higher than that of the European multirole fighter EF-2000 Typhoon (the coefficient is 8, 8). It is also known that the new F-110-GE-400 engines from General Electric have increased the afterburner thrust midships by 34% in the F-14D “Super Tomcat” modification: from 1481, 25 kg / sq. m, it increased to 1984 kg / sq. m. The result was an increase in the accelerating qualities of "Tomket", an increase in the rate of climb from 150 to 180 m / s (by 20%), an increase in thrust-to-weight ratio to 0.85 - 1.0 (depending on the type of suspension and the amount of fuel), as well as the possibility flight at low supersonic cruising speed (up to 1.25M), which the pilots of the "Super Hornets" had never dreamed of in their "best dreams." 8 suspension points can accommodate up to 6580 kg of high-precision missile and bomb weapons and various optical-electronic sighting and navigation containers for reconnaissance and target designation at a great distance from the target. But this is the information that can be calculated using simple mathematical operations, a more complex and interesting point is the modernization of all versions of Tomcat, which depends directly on the design of the fuselage.
"F-14D + BLOCK X": VARIATIONS ON THE TOPIC OF MODERNIZATION OR AFTER THE "SILENT NEEDLE"
Deep improvement and integration of the F-15E "Srike Eagle" and F-15C "Eagle" to a single updated version of the F-15SE "Silent Eagle" is today the main "highlight" of the Boeing corporation in achieving numerous billion-dollar contracts among the large list of Arab states of Arabia the peninsula, Israel, as well as the Republic of Korea. Combining the best flight, technical and combat qualities of the two key versions of the "Eagle", the F-15SE received an advanced glider with a vertical tail elevation angle, as well as extensive use of radio-absorbing materials, which reduced the radar signature to EPR values of about 0.7 - 1 sq. m. This is also facilitated by the conformal weapon compartments located immediately behind the air intakes, they hide the radio-contrast active homing heads of the AIM-120C / D missiles from the enemy's radar radiation. The new airborne radar AN / APG-63 (V) 3 with AFAR implemented in the "Silent Eagle" the capabilities of high-precision work both on small airborne and ground targets, probably in the synthetic aperture mode. The parameters of this radar are close to the AN / APG-81 installed on stealth fighters of the F-35 family, in particular, the detection range of an air target of the "Rafale" type of AN / APG-63 (V) 3 is 150 km, and of the "F- 15C "- 215 km. The F-14A "Tomcat" family is also sharpened for a similar improvement.
The main emphasis during modernization is placed precisely on reducing the radar signature of the aircraft. With regard to the F-14D "Super Tomcat", this is giving the vertical tail stabilizers a dilution angle within 20-30 degrees for the most effective spread of the irradiating electromagnetic wave of the enemy radar, the introduction of radio-absorbing materials into the air intakes edge contours and fixed pre-wing nodules, changing the geometry of the air intake channels directly in front of the compressor blades of the engines in order to avoid the reflection of the radar radiation of the enemy radar, the creation of an improved design of the cockpit canopy (departure from right angles and roundings in the model of the cover of the canopy, radio-absorbing materials in the cover elements).
The second point is the installation of the internal weapons compartment. Both the F-14D "Super Tomcat" and early versions of the carrier-based multi-role fighter have a fairly capacious niche between the engine nacelles; its width is about 1.6 m, thanks to which a large armament compartment with a length of more than 4.5 m could be built here, which could fit from 4 to 6 long-range air-to-air missiles AIM-120D. Firstly, this would significantly increase the importance of the Super Tomkat as a long-range interceptor and carrier-based fighter for gaining air supremacy, and secondly, it would eliminate external suspension in operations where it is required to overcome enemy ground and air defense decrease in ESR. The armament compartment could also accommodate such high-precision weapons as small-size GBU-39 SDB gliding bombs, and up to 10 units, making the F-14D an excellent tactical strike fighter of the 4 ++ generation.
No less interesting is the consideration of a possible upgrade of the onboard avionics of the F-14 D "Super Tomcat", where the radar of the fighter comes to the fore. Super Tomcats were equipped with AN / APG-71 airborne radar, which, in contrast to the purely anti-aircraft AN / AWG-9, became the first multi-mode radar, the most powerful in the history of carrier-based aviation, capable of operating against ground, sea and air targets within a radius of up to 250 km, its instrumental range reached 370 km. The fact is, the AN / APG-71 is a modification of the AN / APG-70 station installed on the F-15E "Strike Eagle" tactical fighters, but with improved energy performance. The diameter of the AN / APG-71 antenna array is 914 mm, with an azimuth viewing area of 160 degrees (for the AN / AWG-9 radar it is 130 degrees). Later it was planned to improve the software for controlling the onboard radar modes, including the algorithms used on the Strike Needle: this is the SAR (synthesized aperture) mode, and the terrain-following mode, and the Doppler mode; the latter, as you know, allows you to accurately calculate the radial velocities of tracked objects, and also boasts a high degree of noise immunity. But all work was "frozen" simultaneously with the completion of the combat deployment of "Tomkats" and "Super Tomkats" based on the US Navy AUG, while the modernized F-14D could get radar of a fundamentally new type.
The internal dimensions of the radio-transparent fairing of the F-14D carrier-based fighter are adapted to the installation of almost any version of the American airborne radar. The favorites could be the AN / APG-63 (V) 3, AN / APG-81 and even AN / APG-77 stations installed on the Raptors, the combat power and tactical features of such a deck would many times surpass those with which we are familiar in "Super Hornets", with the exception, of course, of stable maneuverability in a long-term BVB, because the controllable thrust vector for the F110-GE-400 has not yet been developed, but "lit up" only in conjunction with the F100-PW-100 TRDDF for an experimental super-maneuverable American fighter F-15 ACTIVE, which never appeared in the series.
The combined optoelectronic sighting system IRSTS installed under the radar nose cone, which allows observation of ground, surface and air targets in infrared and television channels at a distance of up to 80 km in day and night conditions, could be replaced with an optoelectronic IR system with the DAS aperture distributed over the fighter's airframe, used in the F-35A avionics, or its analogue. Such an F-14D + would be an excellent reconnaissance and strike deck unit of the US Navy, capable of performing air defense functions. With regards to the DAS, the growth of the stealth capabilities of the aircraft that possesses it can be noted. As in the case with our optical-electronic sighting systems OLS-UEM (MiG-35), 8TK (MiG-31), 36Sh / OLS-27K (Su-27/33) and OLS-35 (Su-35S / T- 50), the AN / AAQ-37 DAS is capable in passive mode (with the radar off) to detect and track air targets at a distance of 100 (tactical aviation) to 1000 kilometers or more (launching OTBR and ICBMs), AIM missiles can be launched at targets. 120D, which will be detected already on the approach to the target either by its radar means, or according to the STR data, notifying of the ARGSN irradiation. "Tomcat" with full 2-stroke afterburner could start leaving with the included EW complex. The F-14D + would have an order of magnitude more anti-aircraft / anti-missile, anti-ship and purely strike capabilities, confidently supported by a large range, speed and number of hardpoints, but the Americans leaned towards simplicity, “dubious” cheapness and limited merits of the “Super Hornets”, depriving its strategically important "long arm" fleet for decades, which is beneficial for us and China.
