Grumman F-14 Tomcat, USA by Gert Hilbink

About "Grumman F-14 Tomcat, USA"

by Gert Hilbink

About the artwork

The Grumman F-14 Tomcat is an American naval interceptor fighter which was supplied at the time by the company Grumman Aerospace. He served as a replacement for the F-4 Phantom II fighter which was phased out by the US Navy in 1986.
Over the years a total of 556 pieces of the F-14A were built for the USN. The much improved F-14B and F-14D versions were later delivered in small numbers to the USN.
The F-14 was equipped with a, for its time, unique weapon system, the AWG-9 radar guidance system coupled to the AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile. This allowed air targets at a distance of more than 150 km to be tracked and shot. The AWG-9 is a pulse Doppler multimoderadar that allows multiple air targets to be tracked and attacked simultaneously.
Although this system was designed in the 1960s and is now one of the oldest air-to-air radar guidance systems, it still shows how far ahead of its time it was. Even now it is still operational in various aircraft and through software upgrades the operational life until 2015 was guaranteed.
The F-14 could follow 24 targets at once with this system and a maximum of six at long range to attack and shoot with the Phoenix missile. For the remaining targets the aircraft had to rely on its AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder missile armament.
In 2000, the strength of the Carrier Air Wings (CVW) was adjusted to the changing situation in the world. Only two airwings (CVW-1 and CVW-2) remained at the old
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