The movable wings on the F14 fighter gave it the dual ability to have lots of life with the wings out and lots of speed with the wings swung back. The automatic manipulation of the F14's wings gave it better handling close to stall speeds in a dog fight. Today we use fixed wings but the body of the modern F22 rapors helps with lift at slow turning speeds and the new F22's have vectored thrusters which help control the planes stall parameter at slower speeds and higher angle of attack attitudes.
Beside the F14A has the first generation engines that never were powerful enough to push the F14 around. They were bad performing engines that killed a lot of good F14 pilots. And the electronics of these Iranian F14A is .... well older than Moses. Transistors and resistors have a shelf life when the PNP materials are no longer going to function as designed. They rot over time and materials go bad. So the electrons in those electronics will misbehave and foil Iran's plan to use those planes. And the more the train in them the faster they go bad. So they sit there and don't fly them and don't get the flight time necessary to remain proficient. Not to mention the physical G forces that those planes can deal to a pilot in a 6 G turn.
The F14A's were not a good plane. Only with the addition of newer more powerful engines did this plane start to perform right in the 1980's.
Iran will definitely not be controlling it's air space if the USA goes to war with Iran in the Middle East.
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Originally Posted by SUBMAN1
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Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth
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I don't think the AIM-54 was ever given to Iran in the first place. Even if it was, its not a very good missile against another fighter. Its a slow turner that was designed to take out the overwhelming numbers of Soviet Bombers before they could get close to a carrier (Soviet Doctrine was to overwhelm NATO carriers with shear numbers of bombers in the hopes that one bomber would get through to take the carrier out). The only AIM-54's ever fired in the middle of hostilities all missed - and they were fired against Iraqi fighters. One was the vulnerable MiG-25, and I forgot what the others were. One of the Aim-54's was even fired from AMRAAM range of 20 miles and still missed.
ANyway, this is why the F-14 / Aim-54 were retired. I'd go as far as saying that this was the final nail in the coffin for the F-14 in that it couldn't even get a kill with it's Pheonix missile. Sure they tried to sell it as a bomber later on, but it did not do so hot in this role and it was only an attempt to keep F-14's around I think by the people that loved them. Limited usefulness these days. Sure, you might get your kill with your Pheonix, but nothing is going to spoof the good old Aim-120 AMRAAM which is far better at killing its likely target - the fighter aircraft.
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