Like many Gen-X'ers, when I saw that footage of F-14 Tomcats taking off and landing at dawn in the opening credits of Top Gun, it was love at first sight. I was sad to see the Tomcat replaced by the multirole Super Hornet in the early 1990s, and quite surprised that a few D versions held on long enough to drop bombs (!?!) during the early days of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Apparently, a multirole Super Tomcat was proposed to continue the F-14's USN legacy, in lieu of the Super Hornet that eventually won the job IRL. Anyway, the Super Tomcat sounds pretty flippin' awesome.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ly-looked-like
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