What finally retired the Tomcat was the fact that:
1) It was a maintenance hog.The Tomcat was a beautiful aircraft in the 70's and 80's. The hours and dollars required to maintain it subjected it to political pressures it could not as a program sustain in the 90's.
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Having worked on F-14's in the Navy I have to admit to being a bit biased. Was the F-14 a handful maintenance wise? Yes it was, there were many a night when I wondered if a Grumman engineer caught his wife in bed with a Navy jet mech. When it comes right down to it the F-14 was ahead of it's time. And like a lot of planes in this category it had it's share of issues. The AWG-9 is a good example of this. When it worked it was unbeatable, when it worked, Our coneheads spent a lot of time keeping that system up and running. Then there was the complexity of the flight control system with all it's mechanical linkages. Flap/slat lockouts were a common problem with the F-14. And of course there were the problems with the TF-30.
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The decision to incorporate the Super Hornet and decommission the F-14 is mainly due to high amount of maintenance required to keep the Tomcats operational. On average, an F-14 requires nearly 50 maintenance hours for every flight hour, while the Super Hornet requires five to 10 maintenance hours for every flight hour.
2) It had a bad rep for unreliability.what I've heard from the former Tomcat jocks (pilots) is that toward the end you took off with 80% of the systems functioning just post launch, and returned with something less than half of them working the way Grumman said they would.
3) The threat changed and it's main role disappeared.The Phoenix missile system and AWG 9 in the 70's and 80's carried by the Tomcat was designed to destroy a mass attack of bombers (Soviet Backfires, Bisons, Blinders and Bears). Destroy the bombers before they launched their anti-shipping missiles. The Phoenix was capable of destroying the bombers easily and had a good chance destroying the huge "anti-aircraft carrier" missiles used by the Soviets. By the time of the Falklands in 1982, the missile threat was extremely small low level cruise missiles that barely skimmed the surface of the water like the Exocet, Harpoon and Tomahawks (and Russian equivalents) - relatively small low level threats that the Phoenix wasn't really able to tackle reliably (it's a hypersonic missile optimized to take out high / medium level threats). Then the Soviet Union collapsed in the 90s and the need for a specialized dedicated fleet based interceptor became moot. A multi-role aircraft like the FA-18E/F/G Super Hornet (which is actually a completely different aircraft compared to the old FA-18A/B) became a cheaper, more versatile alternative to the old Tomcats.
What do you reckon for the current RMAF tender for new jet. I am hopping they get the rafale because its has the best package in terms of tech transfer and support package that came with it.It aslo had lowest operating cost among the competition. In my opinion, Eurofighther is an overprice stuff.
Malaysia arms procurement philosophy is all over the place. We seem to buy our Fighters and AFVs nilly willy. We have Soviet Planes, we have American Planes, we have French Subs, we have British, Russian and French/Euro AFVs. Now we are looking at buying the latest stuff from Euro-zone and the French? Like the above there is a hidden cost to such a diverse lot. Maintenance procedures and philosophy vary from country to country, spare parts procurements and maintenance training (HUGE MONEY BURNERS) is going to be a pain to keep track of. Its hard enough keeping track of 1 or 2 companies, now we have to deal with a united nations worth of suppliers and vendors. I run a factory using huge expensive heavy machinery not unlike military equipment; I can tell you from personal experience - someone is GETTING VERY RICH from spare parts.
