So the US Navy is retiring the F-14 Tomcat, arguably the sexiest aircraft of the Cold War era [cue Kenny Loggins]. This, of course, also entails the retirement of the Phoenix long-range AAM, which is decidedly my favorite missile of all time [everyone should have a favorite missile. What's yours?]. In truth, the Phoenix was retired in 2004 but I didn't know that until today, when I read about the last two Tomcat squadrons standing down from active service.
The reasons I like the Phoenix are largely aesthetic and stem mostly from my rocketry habit; it was one of my first model rocket kits and the first I ever flew with a D motor. But aside from the hobby connection, it is just an appealing rocket.
The Phoenix does have a rather interesting history, as well as some impressive capabilities. It can fly at Mach 5 (that's a mile per second) and has a range of over 100 miles. Each F-14 can carry 6 Phoenix missiles, and can fire them all nearly simultaneously with each tracking an independant target.
The F-14 aircraft was designed specifically to carry the Phoenix, and its role was to defend a carrier fleet while at sea, destroying approaching aircraft before they could fire their own weapons. The Cold War, being as it was so... cold, involved precisely zero Phoenix combat firings by the US. In fact, the total number of Phoenix missiles fired at hostile targets by the United States was:
Both were fired during the first Gulf War, and both missed. Not such an impressive track record. Bear in mind that we produced a few thousand of these things at a price tag of $475k each. To be fair to the Phoenix, its real purpoise was as a cold war deterrent. It's success along these lines is tougher to quantify, but there was never a Soviet airstrike against a US carrier group...
Because the Tomcat and the Phoenix were seen as a tremendous tactical advantage over the Soviets, the US was very stringent with who it would sell the technology to. Unlike the F-16, which we sold to practically all of our allies, the F-14 we kept to ourselves. You could make the argument that the F-14 was designed as a carrier fleet defender, and there weren't any other significant navies to whom we could sell one (barring, of course, the Soviet Navy). However, we did make one exception to our no-sharing rule—and it was to a desert country with practically no navy at all. For some reason which completely escapes me, in 1974 we decided to sell 80 F-14's and 714 Phoenix missiles to...
Now at the time, Iran was casually engaging the Soviet Union's MiG-25 reconnaissance aircraft in small skirmishes near the Caspian Sea. Our decision to sell our technology to Iran was a nice way for us to shaft the Soviets without actually getting our hands dirty. Unfortunately for us (and much to the chagrin of the US intelligence community, I imagine), the Iranian Revolution occurred shortly after the sale. Overnight, Iran went from being our buddy to being our enemy, and we had just sent them some of our most coveted military technology. We managed to hold back 1 of the 80 aircraft, and 430 of the missiles, but still... it wasn't long before the Soviet Union had obtained at least one Phoenix and one Tomcat from Iran. Their MiG-31 fighters and AA-9 missiles bear a striking resemblence.
Anyway, the sale of the F-14 and AIM-54 to Iran ended up being a huge mistake, but it did result in the only real combat use of the Phoenix—against Iraq as part of the drawn-out Iran-Iraq war. Whereas the US Navy has used the misssile twice, both times unsuccessfully, the Iranian Air Force has fired the Phoenix in combat approximately 80 times with an estimated success rate of 80%.
When Iran became our enemy in the mid 1970's, it was quickly embargoed which means that they had no official source for spare F-14 parts. There is some question as to how many of these aircraft are still operational. A significant fraction must have been cannibalized for parts by now.
Still, it makes one wonder if we might be facing our own hardware if we end up in some sort of armed conflict with the new, even creepier, Iran.
Great discussion. I'm also a big fan of the Phoenix, in part (hope I'm remembering this right) because of its unorthodox trajectory. It's a sort of air-to-air ballistic missile. You fire it, and it goes straight up about 100,000 feet. Then it turns around and accelerates straight down (well, okay, at quite an angle, really). The motor burns out, and it guides itself in toward the target at Mach 5. So, the poor bastard you're shooting at is tooling around 100 miles away, over the horizon, and suddenly this thing is screaming down at Mach 5 out of outer space.
This goes along with other cool technology of my childhood, like the F-15 variant that can accelerate through Mach 1 while going straight up, and the F-111, which seems to have come from a creative thinker who said, "How bloody huge can we make an airplane and still call it a fighter? Oh, and let's put huge swingable wings on it too, shall we?"
Incidentally, I believe the shortage of sensible customers was even more acute than you suggested; I don't think the USSR ever produced a credible carrier fleet. So there may have been exactly zero customers (including the Russians) for a heavy fleet-defense fighter.
Oh, and... facing our own hardware visavi Iran doesn't seem so surprising. I mean, most of the heavy-duty stuff out there came either from us or the USSR, so the odds are pretty high that if we go to war with anybody we'll face our own hardware. It seems reassuring in this case that we'd be facing hardware that we've already declared obsolete...
It would be mildly humorous to witness a confrontation between a 30-year-old F-14 cobbled together from cannibalized parts vs. a fresh-off-the-conveyor F-22 Raptor. :)
Woo Hoo, Jester's Dead. Get your butts below the flight deck.
Great entry. I'm an idiot when it comes to stuff like this, but I loved reading it.
You can be my wingman anytime.
It is sad to see an old warhorse go, but it was out of date by now. I certainly used up a lot of Phoenix in my Harpoon games. I always suspected that the kill efficiencies shown in the game were a bit over-rated. I think that most pilots probably thought that the Phoenix was more effective against "dumb" targets like cruise missles anyhow. It is actually not all that hard to dodge something coming that fast since it takes it so long to adjust its course. Of course a free flight missle leaves no trail so it is harder to spot if you aren't using radar. Also, taking out a fighter from that far away takes all the fun out of a dogfight. I think that for most fighter pilots the weapon of choice is still the Sidewinder. I haven't really heard what they are hanging on the Raptor. I know they have the AARAM long range missle available and I suspect they will incorporate that as well as possibly Sparrows and Sidewinders.
Maybe now that we have all these surplus F-14's we can sell them to Iran again. Or perhaps we should give them to our friends in Afganistan and Iraq. I understand that those countries have lost their old suppliers of weapons.
Personally, I think it would be poetic if we sold the F-14s to the New Iraq™ so that they can help us deal with the New Iran™. The Raptor does carry up to 6 AMRAAMs and 2 Sidewinders, or it can put a couple of JDAM's in place of some of the AMRAAMs.
I'm waiting for the "Air Superiority Missile Technology" to mature. These things include a solid rocket motor with a ventable thrust chamber, allowing the missile to push some portion of the exhaust out of a side nozzle. This, in turn, allows the missile to make maneuvers previously considered unrealistic—and should make it possible for the missile to actually out-maneuver a fighter.
[everyone should have a favorite missile. What's yours?]
The "Aerobee", because it has a cool name... and a cooler (allegedly) namesake:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/digino/aerobie/