F-14 vs. F/A-18

Which Plane is Superior

  • F-14 Tomcat

    Votes: 18 51.4%

  • F/A-18 Hornet

    Votes: 17 48.6%
  • Total voters
    35
Light fighters aren't good for fleet defense ? what even with the CIWS ? Come on, do you want to stack the odds further in your favour ? .
 
the Phalanx might not be enough.
Exocet can hit the fleet at over 150km the Harpoon at over 200km.
what you need is the ability to intercept at greater ranges, or shot down those missiles. the Phalanx can take care of a limited number, but will this be enough?
 
While several missiles can overwhelm a carrier, but a CVG ? Come on, you've got several cruisers and gunboats, I'm sure the CIWS's on those can be trained on missiles with the proper co ordination, (E-2/3 Hawkeye or AWACS ?) Hell, even a Wedgetail might be able to do it.
 
it would depend on the scale of the engagement. the US obviously think that large scale attacks are no longer a threat, i.e. they don't expect to fight an enemy that can dedicate enough air units to threaten a carrier group. only time will tell if it's a good call.
my greatest fear is that they might consider the carrier groups absolite within the next 1/2 a century.
 
Challenger78 said:
Light fighters aren't good for fleet defense ? what even with the CIWS ? Come on, do you want to stack the odds further in your favour ? .
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In the layered defense of a CSG, the carrier's CAP aircraft are its first line of defense, and they're generally allocated in two tiers somewhere between 40-150nm outboard of the strike group's center mass. That way they can spot airborne threats well over the horizon, before they get into launch range. In this application the most important performance attributes for a dedicated fleet defense aircraft are top speed (to intercept threats quickly), sensor capacity (to track many threats at long ranges) and weapon loadout (to engage threats at extreme range). If you look at the F-14, it is easily the best fleet defense fighter ever produced. It has a high top speed so it can get on top of things with a quickness, the AWG-9 X-band radar and combat system can detect and track a ridiculous number of targets at extreme range, and the Phoenix gives it a means to hit them.

Point defense stuff like CIWS, RAM, and Sea Sparrow ideally will never have to fire a shot if the CAP aircraft do their job. This is why you'll hear CIWS jokingly referred to as the abandon ship alarm.

antaran_1979 said:
it would depend on the scale of the engagement. the US obviously think that large scale attacks are no longer a threat, i.e. they don't expect to fight an enemy that can dedicate enough air units to threaten a carrier group. only time will tell if it's a good call.
my greatest fear is that they might consider the carrier groups absolite within the next 1/2 a century.
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone will consider them obsolete any time soon. Without carriers we never could have waded into Afghanistan like we did in late 2001, and every few years there seems to be some crisis that validates their usefulness. Although you are right that they have been changing the composition in recent years. They're no longer referred to as battle groups, but strike groups. The CSG is smaller, with only 2-3 surface combatants (almost entirely AEGIS platforms now), an oiler/ammo ship, and a single fast attack sub. The reason for this is that there really aren't any threats to a carrier out on the blue water, now that the Cold War is over and the only other navies with any significant power projection capacity are those of our allies. A strike group costs less to train, deploy, and support logistically while in-theater, and even though the Navy is hurting for ships, we can still move our carriers through the train-deploy-refit cycle without waiting until the zillions of other ships in a bigass battle group are ready to sail. Whether it seems like an advantageous choice or a forced hand due to other factors (I personally think it is a bit of both), the number one priority continues to be keeping a few carrier groups on station in the hot place.
 
The F-14 is a pretty maneuverable jet and way better the the F-18 but, both of those jets could not beat the F-22.
 
F-14+Phoenix= Death for F-18.

If they got into knifefighting range-hard to say. Like asking which is better-F-15C or F-16C.... You get in close at high mach numbers, it's pure skill.
 
Most are forgetting that in ACM (Air Combat Maneuver) training, pilots are trained to use the advantages of their aircraft. Therefore the F-14 would be using high-speed/ slashing attacks and the F-18 would be trying to lure the F-14 into a turning battle, now the F-14 can carry 6 Phoenix missiles (4 if from a carrier) either way an experienced F-18 pilot could only evade 2-3 Phoenix missiles while evading slashing attacks, therefore the pilot would wear out and most likely be shot down. So the F-14 would most likely end up winning, also just to further the point during the Vietnam War there was an Air Force Colonel named Robin Olds, he tricked the Viet Kong into thinking they were flying F-111 Thuds when they were in their F-4 Phantom II's while the MiG's were better dogfighters, they had very short legs, menaing they could not stay in the air long, rather than trying to dogfight with the MiGs the pilots started circling the airfields preventing the MiG's from landing. Most of the MiG's either got shot down or were forced to crash land. My point is that the longer fuel range of the F-4's allowed them to win so even if the F-18 could dodge all the missiles, the F-14 could simply park above the airfield/ carrier and force the F-18 to crash land.

And in regards to the F-22, from the perspective of an aspiring pilot, I'd much rather fly a plane that isn't second guessing my control inputs. (The Raptors control governer)
 
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