Carrier (1999) (31 page)

The final step in the CVW modernization plan is shown below, and will begin to appear around 2011:

This is an air wing that is almost entirely composed of aircraft that now exist only on paper. Even so, it has several clear advantages over earlier CVW structures, including the fact that this projected CVW has just four basic airframes: the JSF, F/A-18E/F, the CSA, and H-60. This means lower operating and maintenance costs as well as a simpler logistics chain. It will also have the Navy’s first true stealth strike fighter (the JSF), a new EW/ SEAD aircraft (the proposed EF-18F Electric Hornet), as well as new sea control, ESM, and AEW aircraft based upon the new CSA airframe. This likely will be what will go aboard the new CVX when it is commissioned around 2015. Once all eleven CVWs have their first squadron of JSFs, the Super Hornets will begin to be retired, and eventually there will be four JSF squadrons aboard each carrier with ten aircraft each.

None of this will come cheaply or overnight. Just maintaining the existing fleet of aircraft is expensive, and buying something like two thousand new F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, JSFs, CSA derivatives, and any other major airframe that comes along will cost between $20 and $30 billion. And that’s without even beginning to address the spare parts, engines, weapons, and other necessities that these aircraft will consume in their operational lifetimes. Meanwhile, naval aviators will continue to fly the aircraft they’ve flown for most of their careers. The designs of not a few of these aircraft, in fact, date from before many of the men and women who fly them were born.

You always know when you see an F-14 Tomcat that it is a fighter. It is a big, noisy, powerful brute of an airplane that lacks
any
pretense of stealth or subtlety. For over two decades, the F-14 Tomcat has been the king of American carrier flight decks, yet only recently has it realized its full combat potential. It is also one of the most difficult and dangerous of Naval aircraft. As the plane that Tom Cruise “piloted” in the movie Top Gun, it has become the symbol of naval aviation in American popular culture. More tellingly, to date the Tomcat has a perfect air-to-air combat record. Now in the twilight of its career, the F-14 is being asked to buy time for the rest of naval aviation to get its collective act together.

The origins of the F-14 lay back in the 1950’s when American intelligence agencies identified a growing family of Soviet air-launched cruise missiles as a potential threat to NATO fleet units. Carried to their launch points by heavy bombers, aircraft like the Tu-16 Badger or Tu-95 Bear, they could be launched well outside the range of enemy SAMs and antiaircraft (AAA) guns. Designated by NATO intelligence analysts as AS-1 “Kennel,” AS-2 “Kipper,” AS-3 “Kangaroo,” AS-4 “Kitchen,” AS-5 “Kelt,” and AS-6 “Kingfish,” these long-ranged, radar-guided pilotless jet- or rocket-powered weapons packed enormous ship-killing power. Armed with 1,000-kg/ 2,200-lb warheads (or high-yield nuclear warheads), they were capable of destroying a destroyer or frigate with a single hit. By way of comparison, the single AM-39 Exocet air-to-surface missile (ASM) that sank the British guided-missile destroyer HMS Sheffield (D 80) in 1982 had a warhead just one tenth that size. Since a single large bomber might carry two or three such monster ASMs, finding a way to defend the fleet against them became a high-level priority.

Experience in World War II against Japanese Kamikaze planes (which were essentially manned ASMs) showed that the best way to protect a fleet was to shoot down the missile-carrying enemy bombers before they could launch their missiles. Thus the response to the ASM threat was the accelerated development of extremely long-range air-to-air missiles (AAMs), which could maintain an outer ring in a layered defense system. Any missiles that “leaked” through the outer ring would then face an inner barrier of patrolling fighters, ship-launched SAMs, and point-defense missiles launched from surface ships. This was supposed to be the U.S. strategy until the end of the Cold War—a scheme that envisioned an extremely high-performance, long-ranged AAM that could be carried by a relatively slow but long-endurance carrier aircraft, the Douglas F6D Missileer. The Missileer would have carried eight long-range Bendix Eagle AAMs, along with powerful airborne radar. The F6Ds would have acted as airborne SAM sites, and would have been placed hundreds of miles ahead of a carrier group to intercept incoming bombers. However, fiscal realities now began to effect the Navy’s plans.

The F6D program was canceled in December 1960, mostly due to the fact that it was a single-mission aircraft only for fleet air defense. Even so, the Eagle missile was eventually resurrected as the Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix, which today is carried by the F-14. Already strapped for funds, the Navy decided that its next fighter should do the job of the F6D, as well as provide air superiority and other missions. Then high-level politics stepped in. In the early 1960’s, then-Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara, frustrated by seemingly endless inter-service rivalries and hoping to save money, tried to force the Air Force and Navy to procure common types of aircraft. Out of this dream came the TFX (Tactical Fighter, Experimental) program—which became the Air Force’s F-111 swing-wing bomber. To meet its fighter missions, the Navy was directed to develop a variant of the F-111 that would be suitable for carrier operations. It was expected that it would accomplish its fleet air defense and air-superiority missions with the planned F-111B, which would replace the classic F-4 Phantom II.

The problem was that the “navalized” F-111B (which was built by Grumman in partnership with General Dynamics, the USAF “prime” contractor) was just too heavy, fragile, and complex for carrier operations, and its landing speed was too high for a safe landing on a carrier deck. Furthermore, the F-111B, with little maneuverability and thrust from its overworked engines, was not much of a fighter. For all of these reasons, the Navy rejected the F-111B, and the program was scrapped, though not without a fight. In those days, one did not go against a man as powerful as Secretary MacNamara without paying a price. The Navy paid in blood. In a scene reminiscent of the 1940’s “Revolt of the Admirals” a generation earlier, a senior naval aviator, Rear Admiral Tom “Tomcat” Connelly, sacrificed his own career by standing up to MacNamara in Congressional testimony. He stated flatly in an open session, “Senator, there is not enough thrust in all of Christendom to make a fighter out of the F-111!” With this legendary remark, the F-111B died, and the F-14 Tomcat was born.

Politics aside, the Navy still had the problem of those Soviet ASM armed bombers to deal with. As if to amplify the problem further, the Russians had deployed a new supersonic swing-wing bomber in the late 1960s that caused a near panic in U.S./NATO defense planners: the Tu-22M Backfire. The eventual answer to the Navy’s problem came after a series of fighter studies funded by the Navy and run by Grumman. The plan was to wrap a completely new, state-of-the-art airframe around the basic avionics, weapons, and propulsion package that had been intended for the F-111B (including the Phoenix missile system), and then run a series of product improvements upon the new bird. One of the aircraft’s most notable features would be a variable geometry “swing-wing” design that would allow it to “redesign” itself in flight. For good slow-speed performance during landing and cruise the wings would be set forward, and be swept back for supersonic dashes.

It was an ambitious design for the late 1960s. The new fighter would not only carry up to six of the massive AIM-54 Phoenix missiles and the AWG-9 radar to guide them, but it would
also
be a superb dogfighter. In Vietnam the F-4 Phantom II had severe shortcomings during close-in air-to-air engagements. The Phantoms weren’t very maneuverable, were easy to see (both big and smoky), and didn’t have much range. The new fighter would be very different.

The Request for Proposals went out in 1968, and a number of airframe manufacturers submitted responses to build the new bird. However, with their fighter study and F-111B experience, Grumman had a clear edge, and early in 1969 they won the contract to build what would become known as the F-14. Quickly, Grumman got to work and began to cut metal, and the new bird rapidly came together. The first flight of the F-14A prototype occurred almost a month ahead of schedule, on December 21st, 1970, at Grumman’s Calverton plant on Long Island. Though three of the preproduction aircraft were lost in testing (including the prototype on its second flight), the program progressed well. The new fighter moved along on schedule, with the first two fleet squadrons, VF-1 (the “Wolfpack”) and VF-2 (the “Bounty Hunters”), standing up in 1974. In honor of Admiral Connelly’s role in its creation, the Navy named the new bird the “Tomcat.”
⁴⁸

The Tomcat is a two-seat, twin-engined fighter that measures 62 feet, 8 inches/19.1 meters in length. Its height to the tip of the vertical stabilizer is 16 feet/4.88 meters. The maximum wingspan is 64 feet, 1.5 inches/19.54 meters at a minimum sweep angle of 20°. Minimum wingspan in flight is 38 feet, 2.5 inches/11.65 meters at a maximum flight sweep angle of 68°. For storage in the cramped confines of the flight hangar decks, the wings can “oversweep” (only on deck for stowage) to an angle of 75°, overlapping the horizontal tail surfaces and reducing the span to only 33 feet, 3.5 inches/ 10.15 meters. The Tomcat’s empty weight is 40,150 lb/18,212 kg, with a maximum takeoff weight of 74,500 lb/33,793 kg. The F-14 is by far the heaviest aircraft flying on and off a carrier these days. You can actually feel an aircraft carrier shudder whenever one is catapulted off.

The famous Grumman “Iron Works” has a well-earned reputation for producing the most durable and robust aircraft in the world. Much of the plane’s structure, including the critical “wing box” (containing the swing-wing mechanism), is made of titanium, a metal lighter than aluminum, stronger than steel, and notoriously difficult to weld. The Tomcat’s horizontal tail surfaces were built from boron-epoxy composite—a very costly and advanced material that was used for the first time on any aircraft.

The F-14 is the Navy’s only “variable geometry” aircraft, a trait it inherited from its predecessor, the F-111B. While complex, the swing wing was a valid engineering solution to a difficult design problem for the Navy. The F-14 had to be both a long-range interceptor that could “loiter” (fly slow and wait) and a high-performance fighter for air-superiority missions. If one aircraft was to do both jobs and still be capable of operating off aircraft carriers, it had to be able to literally “redesign” itself in flight. This was the job of the swing wing. The Tomcat’s wings sweep forward for increased lift in low-speed flight, particularly the critical takeoff and landing phases of a carrier-based mission, but when the wings sweep back for reduced drag at high speed, the F-14 can move like a scalded cat.

Unlike other variable-geometry aircraft like the F-111 Aardvark and MiG-23/27 Flogger, the F-14’s wing sweep is controlled automatically by a computer known as the “Mach Sweep Programmer.” This means that the pilot does not have to worry about it—the plane dynamically reconfigures itself from moment to moment for the optimum solution to the complex equations governing lift and drag. The wings then pivot on immensely strong bearings, moved by jackscrews driven by powerful hydraulic motors, giving the flight crew the best possible “design” for any situation they are in. The result is an aircraft that is always being optimized, whether it is making a low-level, high-speed reconnaissance dash, or digging into a cornering turn pulling “lead” on an enemy fighter. Along with the swing wings, the F-14’s engineers managed to provide the flight crew with a full array of control surfaces, including full-span flaps along the trailing edge, leading edge slats, and spoilers on the upper surface of the wings. The speed brake is positioned far aft, between the twin vertical stabilizers. In fact, it was the seemingly random movement of these surfaces that caused Landing Signals Officers (LSOs) to dub the F-14 “the Turkey” during tests.

Visually, the F-14 is an imposing aircraft. The topside of the Tomcat’s forward fuselage and two huge engine pods blend into a flat structure called the “pancake,” which supports the tail surfaces and the tailhook. The pancake itself is a form of “lifting body,” and provides a significant amount of the aircraft’s total lift. The large canopy offers superb all-around visibility—a great improvement over previous Navy fighters like the F-4 Phantom, which had a deadly blind spot to the rear. This was one of the design criteria that helped make the Tomcat a much better dogfighter than the F-4, or the MiGs that it was designed to kill. The two-person flight crew (a pilot and Radar Intercept Officer or “RIO”) enters the cockpit using a retractable boarding ladder and cleverly designed “kick-in” steps. Both positions have Martin-Baker “zero-zero” ejection seats, meaning that they can actually save an air crew if the aircraft is sitting still (zero speed) on the ground (zero altitude). Three rearview mirrors are positioned around the canopy frame to help the pilot with rear visibility.