<story><title>Why did the F-14 Tomcat retire decades before its peers? (2021)</title><url>https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/why-did-the-f-14-tomcat-retire-decades-before-its-peers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CH1jZci6jV</author><text>I served in the last F-14 squadron, VF-31.  When President Bush landed on our carrier (Mission Accomplished!) they had the inferior F-18s in the background for the political shots.  We were told that was because the US taxpayers would be pissed if they knew how ripped off they got for the F-18, which was replacing the F-14 in all of the squadrons.&lt;p&gt;This might be just F-14 bravado, of course, but I do also remember that like the second week of &amp;quot;shock and awe&amp;quot; (the initial Iraq campaign bombing) they stopped all F-14 flights for the same reasons. F-14s were trouncing the sorties of the F-18s, even though we were one squadron vs four or five of their squadrons, because we were the only jets capable of actually reaching Bagdad from the carrier and we were able to convert our bombs to &amp;quot;smart bombs&amp;quot; much faster (F-14s break a lot more so our techs were more skilled).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>darksaints</author><text>By the time of the second gulf war, the F-14D cost 20% more per unit than the F-18E, and some 80-100% more to maintain. I&amp;#x27;m not sure how you&amp;#x27;re concluding that the taxpayers were ripped off by that.&lt;p&gt;Also, didn&amp;#x27;t we have airbases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? Why were we relying on carrier aircraft for bombing Bagdad when we could have been using F-15s and F-16s?</text></comment>
<story><title>Why did the F-14 Tomcat retire decades before its peers? (2021)</title><url>https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/why-did-the-f-14-tomcat-retire-decades-before-its-peers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CH1jZci6jV</author><text>I served in the last F-14 squadron, VF-31.  When President Bush landed on our carrier (Mission Accomplished!) they had the inferior F-18s in the background for the political shots.  We were told that was because the US taxpayers would be pissed if they knew how ripped off they got for the F-18, which was replacing the F-14 in all of the squadrons.&lt;p&gt;This might be just F-14 bravado, of course, but I do also remember that like the second week of &amp;quot;shock and awe&amp;quot; (the initial Iraq campaign bombing) they stopped all F-14 flights for the same reasons. F-14s were trouncing the sorties of the F-18s, even though we were one squadron vs four or five of their squadrons, because we were the only jets capable of actually reaching Bagdad from the carrier and we were able to convert our bombs to &amp;quot;smart bombs&amp;quot; much faster (F-14s break a lot more so our techs were more skilled).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Mikeb85</author><text>&amp;gt; F-14s break a lot more&lt;p&gt;Pretty sure this is the answer lol...</text></comment>