Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Interesting topic that I would like to here peoples' input on. I was watching Glenn Beck on CNN and he reported on this story. Everyone knows that the US Navy recently retired their fleet of F-14s. What does this mean? A huge surplus of F-14 Tomcat parts. He reported that these parts are to be sold by the US GOVERNMENT to a private company who will then PUBLICALLY AUCTION THESE PARTS OFF!!!!

You have to ask yourself, "Who is the only country in the world that still flies the Tomcat?" IT'S FRICKIN IRAN!!!! Who do you think will be buying these surplus parts at the public auction? Joe Blow from the midwest building his very own Tomcat, or IRAN?? You gotta be kidding me!

This has gotta be the biggest boner move by the govenment in recent years, especially with that nut job that's runing Iran right now.

I am appaled, would like to here what everone else thinks.

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Forum Veteran Joined: Dec 25, 2003 - 10:03 PM Posts: 679

Can they be that stupid? I thought they torched em all. We just got a F-14D for our local museum and they stripped the thing in a few days.

You think Iran torched their Tomcats? I used o think that too. I had heard a story a couple years back that when Iatolla Khomani took power from the Shah that the advisors we had their sobotaged the jets beyond repair but oviously that wasn't the case. This story is no bull, it was on the news tonight.

I saw a program on Discovery a while ago that talked about this in detail. Not the retirement and auction aspect but about the fact that Iran had them and about how they were disabled. The story goes that once all the expertise left they were very limited in their (Iranians) abilities to repair the tomcats. Not to mention the Tomcats were sabotaged by the departing tech reps. From the moment they left the Tomcats were unable to fire missles. So, not only have their Tomcats not been upgraded in 27 years but they are unable to attack anything. Even if they get parts to fly them they will just be glorified transports! The show said that it was still unknown how they were sabotaged....sure!?! Whatever....do you really think those parts would be auctioned. I doubt the Iranians would even know what parts to be looking for even if they were up for auction. If they did don't you think they could have had a suitable sub part made by now?? Even if they do get them back in full working order....guess what is sitting on the tarmac at langely afb! Good luck Iran!! LoL.... Evil or Very Mad

If the parts are available I'm sure they can find a way to make them work. I think (prolly speculation) the tech reps might have done something with the software coding of the fire control systems so they could not fire missiles. You would think though that they (Iranians) would have some technical skills to get them in working order again, maybe not, I don't know. It is still a scary thought that they might be able to get their hands on US surplus parts. Hopefully the government will see this folly and not sell the parts to the private company to be auctioned of.

tis true. I wonder how much important "stuff" they received?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ ... CTION=HOME

MechFromHell, what you wrote is the typical US (public) lack of knowledge when it comes to Iranian Tomcats. Forget about Discovery channel stories, look up "Combat Aircraft" Vol 7 No 6 (April, 2006):

1. The total number of F-14A in Iranian AF now: 56
2. The number of flyable F-14A in Iranian AF now: 44
3. The number of operational F-14A in Iranian AF now: 29"

The article mentioned was written by USN Lt.Cdr. Rick Burges (ret.), it also mentiones that over 100 Iraqi planes were downed by Tomcats in the 1980-88 war, including with Phoenix missiles.

The Iranians are not a bunch of stupid monkies, you (US) built for them arms factories, repair and overhaul facilities,... They had before the Islamic revolution assembly lines for Huey helos, Maverick missiles, depot level maintenance capability for F-5 and F-4. They had (still have) know how, money and qualified personnel.

But I guess it's just not politically correct to mention all these because of the current political situation, so I'll stop here.

Last edited by TC on Jan 27, 2011 - 06:50 AM; edited 1 time in total

The knowledge of Iranian military equipment actually goes both ways. The IRIAF does indeed have approx. 17 Tomcats which remain in flyable condition, but exactly in what condition, is unknown. However, stories and numbers of Iranian combat experience in the Tomcat have also been inflated and/or exaggerated over the years.

At various times, some will suffer from engine, avionics, hydraulic, or weapon problems, or any combintation thereof. Parts are continuously rebuilt, reverse-engineered, canned, swapped, and even jury-rigged.

Iran indeed has Tomcats, F-4s, F-5s, and Cobras which still fly. Flyable condition, however, is far from combat-capable condition. A four ship of Eagles, Vipers, or Raptors would eliminate their entire fleet of Tomcats. This is, assuming they could even get off of the ground before the initial strike. Suffice it to say, that the IRIAF as we know it would not survive the first day of the war.

Of course numbers are debatable, but what I wanted to point out is that they are flyable. That in itself is a performance. Of course they wouldn't last long in a full blown airwar against the US, but I'd give them more than a day (Iran is a big country...)

There are controls as to who parts can be sold to and exported to. Specifically there are ITAR regulations governing this.

Evidently those 'controls' are not being uniformly enforced. Recent articles have detailed numerous cases where buyers has direct links to the Iranian and Chinese government/military. Here is a link to a recent article on cnn.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/16/military.surplus.ap/index.html

The US government recently reclaimed ownership of 4 Tomcats that had been sold from Point Magu for scrap, but the scrapper didnt scrap them. One was used by the JAG TV show and the other 3 went to two East Coast museums. A few weeks ago the Govenment took back all 4 to make sure they are scrapped. last week a friend of mine saw 2 of them being hauled to AMARC as he was towing the 707 Air Force One sim to the Reagan Library. I didnt save the URL to the online newspages that had the pics and details, sorry. Justin

Iranian Timcats are still running, that's for sure, in a small number, but are stil active and may pose as a general threat to American troops if the strike was ever made, the thing about the auctioned Tomcats, these are persumably very old airframes that can serve a relatively little effect as a spare part to up and running F-14s, that's gotta be in mind I think if the there is actually a public auction

You also have to factor in the currency of their SandCat* pilots, not just the airframes. For a driver to be truly "combat capable", they would have to train to take the airframe to its limits. Yank it, bank it, and crank it. And do it on a regular basis because as we all know, air combat skills are extremely perishable.

My gut feelin' is that even tho they can fly the jets (and are highly skilled at it), they don't train hard enough in 'em to be effective in combat against a modern Western adversary. Some might say they fear losing what flyable jets they have to the inevitable accident that kind of hard training can incur.

*SandCat: If it hasn't been claimed yet...I own that term starting now! Wink

Since they are destroying all of them, wonder why not turn them into QF-14's and blow them out of the sky for fun and excitement. Seems to be ok for the Phantoms. This being our 14's not Irans, they'll meet thier fate soon enough.

Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Iran and their Tomcats (and U.S. surplus parts)