Dan's Papers - June 19, 2009 - FROM THE F-14 TO THE F-22, NOW CANCELLED

Those of us who have been in the Hamptons since the 1960s can recall with a thrill the thunderous roar of Navy jets flying low over the Hamptons every day. The Hamptons was just 30 miles from the main Navy testing grounds for Grumman supersonic fighter planes in Calverton. As a teenage boy at that time, it was a great thrill to see what soon appeared up in our skies, the F-14 Tomcat, the best fighter plane in the world, doing loop de loops and other maneuvers as each one of them prepared for service aboard American aircraft carriers around the world.

All together, nearly 800 F-14s were built between 1971 and 2003 when they were finally retired. They thrilled the nation when they starred in the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun. They had twin tails, adjustable swept wings, an awesome arsenal of rockets and cannons, and a supersonic top speed of Mach 1.4 that would match or beat any other fighter made at that time. Watching one streak just 2,000 feet over Southampton certainly made your hair stand on end.

Eastern Long Island was a center for the production of military hardware during that era. Republic was building Sabre Jets, Grumman was building the F-9 Phantom, and the Brookhaven Lab was producing the moon walker and splitting the atom in the cyclotron. It is fair to say that, at that time, more scientific advancements were taking place here than any place in the world.

My favorite plane, of course, was the F-14. It was not only powerful enough to leap off safely from the deck of an aircraft carrier, but it was nimble and smart and - no other aircraft had this - had the ability to see an enemy aircraft beyond the horizon and shoot it down with the press of a button before the enemy could see them. It was probably, considering its longevity with the title of best of the best, the most successful military aircraft ever made.

I was thinking of the F-14 the other day. As the plane aged, it had to share its stage with the McConnell Douglas F-18, a smaller version of the F-14. One advantage of the F-18 was that it could be flown by one pilot rather than two. The F-18 was supposed to be the cheaper version of the F-14, but in the end, the cost of an F-18 was as much as the F-14. Experts in the field said that the F-14 could shoot down the F-18 if they went head to head. No contest.

While the Navy tried, and did not succeed, in replacing the F-14, the Air Force developed the Lockheed F-15 as its standard fighter jet in 1980. It also was no match for the F-14, but it was lighter and more maneuverable than the Navy plane. The Air Force built 700 over the years and it was the main fighter plane all through the 1980s.

In 1991, Lockheed began to build for the Air Force what they believed would be the successor to the F-14 as the greatest fighter in the world. They called it the F-22 Raptor, and they said that not only would it be faster, more maneuverable and better armed than the F-14, it would also be the world's first Stealth Fighter. However, they had a world of trouble developing it, largely in southern California and Marietta, Georgia. Jet engine blades got sucked into the intakes. Other engines stalled in turns. In one 1995 test, the stealth paint got peeled off in a sheet and sucked into the air intake. Lockheed tinkered with it and did allow a few to go into service by 1995, but they were still working on it when the century ended.

Experts I talked to - I was still rooting for the F-14 - said that this was no contest. The Raptor could do everything the F-14 could do twice as fast and with more rocketry. The crown had been passed.

Or had it? In 1995, the Air Force ordered 750 Raptors. By the time President Obama was elected a generation later, Lockheed had only managed to turn out 100 of them. They cost $140 million each. And much of their hi-tech components, based on science that was now nearly 20 years old, was outdated.

President Obama ordered a review of the Raptor the first week he was in office. And last week he cancelled it. Those on the assembly line today would be finished and delivered. There would be no more. In total, there are going to be only 187 Raptors built.

At the same time that President Obama cancelled future construction of any more Raptors, he also ordered full speed ahead for what is being called the Joint Strike Fighter - a fighter plane that should be ready for service in 2012 that would be far superior to the Raptor and therefore far, far superior to anything that came earlier, such as the F-14.

It does seem like a dream, however. The plane, with minor modifications, is to be used by the Navy, the Army and the Air Force and have specifications that would be adjustable for each. The Navy plane would be strong and heavy to take the beating that planes take when they take off from or land on aircraft carriers. The Air Force plane would be nimble and heavily armed. The plane for the Marines would be able to jump straight up out of a swamp, and later land back down there. It would replace the British built Harrier jets that the Marines currently use. Best of all, the F-35 would cost just $35 million each.

They say history repeats itself, and it would be worth remembering an aircraft that many, many years ago, when the F-14 was just doing loop de loops over the East End in the testing phases in the early 1960s, that Secretary of Defense Frank MacNamara got this idea to develop. He ran it by President Johnson who approved of it. It would be a single aircraft that could be used by all the three services, thus saving lots of money. Think about it. Instead of three airplanes, they would buy one. The Vietnam War was heating up. MacNamara called it the F-111. And it went into design planning just as the Vietnam War was heating up.

You've never heard of the F-111. It never happened. As it began to go through development, so much squabbling started up between Navy admirals, who wanted a strong undercarriage, the generals from the Army who needed a plane with a lightweight frame and fantastic maneuverability, and the Marines, who demanded low cover capabilities and nimbleness, that, in the end, the military just threw in the towel.

Today, the F-14s, now retired, are lined up out in the desert of Arizona, waiting for what I don't know. Grumman is gone, absorbed by Northrop and moved to southern California where, in deference to the extraordinary debt owed by the country to Grumman, has caused Northrop to change its name to Northrop-Grumman.

At the site of the old Grumman test facilities will be a 3,500-foot high artificial ski mountain, which is now in the design phase. That project, a six-theme resort park for kids of all ages, is scheduled to open to the public in the same year that the first F-35 Joint Strike Fighter rolls off the assembly line.