Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0

I can draw an analogy for you here. In the early days of PC computing, components are standardized (PCI, etc. etc.) and it's often fashionable to scratchbuild your own system. This was before the era of Dell and other big computer manufacturers stepping in, okay? The casing for PCs then were horrible. They are often a single metal frame with attachment points for hardware, but designed with little thought of maintenance or accessibility. Customizers often end up with nicks and scratches due to the (sharp) frame designed to secure components.. but not for users to reach them. Nowadys, PC casing are much more user friendly. My current system casing can strip out entire cages for easy installation of harddrives and other peripherials, the entire PC power supply can be detached and replaced (previously power supply are as good as welded to the frame...). This makes maintenance MUCH easier, and replacement of parts much easier too. But structurally-wise, externally my PC is still a darn box. In a similar fashion, in theory, ergonomic design of the interior of the airframe, with special emphasis on accessibility, replacability and maintenance, can easily cut maintenance cost down significantly on the ST-14. I agree with Lynx, especially with the technology today, the tomcat could have been made much easier to maintain. Of course to the hornet mafia this was BS. but it is true, it would have been much easier to maintain. THe ST21 is like a dream plane, it SHOULD be used but politics prevents it from even being made. From the MATs page to the research I do on my own all over the net and to even book and TV programs I have watched since childhood, it all leads me to believe(along with david's comments) that ST or quickstrike really should have been the way to go. THe super hornet couldnt do the F14D's job with smoke and mirrors as stated by rear admiral paul ghilchrist in his TOmcat! book, so lets see a superbug try to do the quickstrike tomcat's job. its like this. F-8 was ideal for its time. People and the pencil pushers said HEY!" ACm and all that garbage dont exist no more...so lets take out the gun and make the new plane fast as hell...oh yea make its main armnbament BVR" next thing you know a war hit and phantom pilots were regretting not having a gun and not being able to manuever well(lets face it, though duke and driscoll were the sole aces of that war, do you think theyd really want to dogfight in that thing against a mig 17? no.......they won because they were very skilled and trained after 1969 in ACM at topgun, phantom maybe nice and all but its just not the plane for the dofgfight) People now say "crap dude cold wars done no bear bomber or blackjack will come attacking our carrier...we gotta worry about terrorists in mountains and crap" I only HOPE history does not repeat itself and we see a inevitable screw up where we realize we use the wrong plane and we underestimate threats. Remember in the 60s ACM was thought to be a threat of yesteryear. Bombers can always be a threat. Sure a 3rd world country wont go bankrupt buying bears and blackjacks but wqhos ton say they need to buy a lot, it only takes one bomber to take a fleet down.

Add that and the fact that it would have supercruised, and still retained its manueverability as a FIGHTER, and you have a supersonic supercruising, fuel and bomb laden, A-6 with self defense capability. Add a TARPS pod and BAM add recon and bomb assesment real time imagerey!

yes but see I think it is obvious and I stAted this before, that I am biased towards the cat. Although I feel he is more biased towards the bug.

Hmm never thought it would outdo the bomb cvapacity of the mud hen too! awesome stuff...also from what I read in MATS, the ST21 mounted most of its bombs INBETWEEN the engine nacelles! So it wouldn't ad any drag and it could still move like a fighter with all them bombs! that and like david pointed out, retained SPEED, truly an awesome bird. Loaded with enough bombs close to an A-6, range of an already big tomcat,RETAINED SPEED AND MANUEVERABILITY....wow. Super bug can do that>? mah ass! Coota0 Posted on May 31 2004, 08:48 PM Shin you're being biased too. You claim that Dubois is being illogical, but you couldn't even quote him.

well he said something like "the super bug will outdo the tomcat in strike and other capabilities" ie=tomcat is mucho inferior. NO offense to him of course but to say something of that matter makes me feel like he is ignoring the facts and such. Tomcat is and COULD be a way better platform than it is now but cheney axed it. Even in its present state it is kicking ass. Super bug has not vbeen nor will it be everyones cup of tea and as david pointed out earlier, it cant even outdo the corsair 2 as a bombtruck.

as you said he is biased. From what I read in his posts he is incredibly biased, you can't just right off ST21 and say the super bug will out perform it in EVERY aspect, because that is not true at all. I think he just likes the super just as much as I like the tomcat. But hes more biased.

A swing wing NATF would probably be just as stealthy as the F-22 it is based on is. The wings wouldnt really be curved and such, and plus this is lockheed we are talking about here, if the rockwell B1B lancer can have some stealth characterestics having those exponentially biger arse wings compared to the tomcat , then I am sure the NATF would be a piece of cake to make stealthy. Plus most weapons could be carried internally like the F-22, so no weapons needed on wing to sacrifice stealth. that guy may be a good spokesman but his info on the tomcat doesnt seem too logical nor knowledgeable, I really doubt the super bug would have outdone the ST21 in strike capability. MAts has a lot of info on ST21 and from all accounts only the NATF would have been the better replacement.

DAvid or whoever has the scan or pic on their harddrive, Most of us here have not seen the ASF-14.....there was a proposal(quickstrike or ASF) that was shown in magazines and on the net, it was just a black and white blueprint or greyscale, whichever...but yes tomcat 21 is not the only design actually shown there was ASF or quickstrike, whoever has this can you please do us a favor and post it here? Its not Tomcat 21 I am SURE since it looked radically different and this tomcat proposal was an all new build not a retrofit to older cats.

Heh YES! the only plane that I feel could have legitimiately replace and outdo the tomcat, the NATF. Already planned to have the phoenix or AAAm before being canned, could run circles around existing planes, and swing wings woujld have made it function better as a bomber than thje AIr fporce F-22. but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo for the first time in years the air force now has the navy PWNED. ZTHis hasnt happened since the 50s!

since its not just an upgrade, a legacy hornet cannot be converted to super hornet. Its a totally new airframe and avionics package.

from what i understand toynami works with epoch to distribute stuff in japqan. Kind of like hopw they were to distribute epoch's stuff in teh USA. i dont care how big a beta would be, if yhey made an alpbha 1/32 scale and made it a one shot non combining release it would be worth 80$ and many people cry foul over the VF-0.....read thge latese 1.100 announcement thread news thing from last week./

it wasnt the community that wasnt abl;e to adjust it was the higher ups. Its not the tomcat community's fault at all that the thing got waxed, adter all some of the people(this is documented in rear admiral gilchrist's TOMCAT! book) that were making the decisions to axe the tomcat in favor of the hornet were people who had nothing to do with flying but were stiull high ranking naval officers. Some of these people were submariners, no not the S-3 viking kind but the real sumbamriners who man submarines. So with that some people had no clue of what they were voting for, to them all that mattered was money and political reasons. Tomcat 21 would probably be able to supercruise without a doubt and its manueverability would be increased, after all this was an upgrade to an already existing plane that the grumman engineers already were familiar with, NOT an all new plane like the super hornet. I hate to say it but the super bug can only replace one plane ligeitimately in terms of succession and outdoing, the A-7 corsair. The E/A-18G is nice btu tehy took out the gun. Yea I know its an ECM plane but I dont give a shi*. Guns are always nice. And hell its already a super bug just withøut gun and with pods, it is still a capable strike fighter. Most of you are right the tomcat was built as a dual bonmber and fighter since its inception. Tomcats were chosen to do CAS and FAC in afghanistan and operate from land bases to coordinate with the air force as well as escorting B-52s. And where was the supposedly god like superhornet ready to combat threats of today? Nowhere near it thats what. threats may change, over times enemies get better and smarter, why the hell would you shoot yourself in the foot and settle for less? Some of you got the wrong idea, jsut kuz the tomcat takes longer to repair and maintain dont mean the whole squadron aboard a carrier will be grounded till repairs are done. NO squadron lifts off all at once. they alternate. Otherwise there is no use for alert 5 stance. Neova ffrom what I understand ASF-14 was all new bvuild with a DRAMATICALLY different fueselage(yea it looked awesme but nothing like your normal tomcat) and was to have nuke capability and way miore than the ST21 was to have,. There was also a proposed variant called quickstrike but i forgot what it had. SO yes tomcat was always meant to be a bomber its just the higher ups that consist of hornet mafia and others whoe have no idea whjat fleet premier front line fighters should be made the decisions not to uyse tomcat as bomber later on and made it so they allied with cheney and axed it. F-14tomcat 21, NATF or naval Yf23...I hope to god whatever replaces the hornet can outdo the tomcat and A-6 in its respective roles as well.

no thud was the kind of mean joke made when a thud was downed I believe...it stems either from the signal emitted when a thud pilot ejected or when the actual tyhunderchief was sending distress after being hit.

hmmm the closest thing i can think of with air dominance AND swin wing is the XFA27 from ace combat 2. That and the ASF-14.

heh . Seems like the navy's got a hornet fetish like konami has a fetish for flankers in airforce dela strike! but yes I would lke to know if production of an ASF14 or retools of the destroyed tools is even possible. Hopefully someone at grumman was smart enough to keep the documentation included with the information needed to make the tools that were destroyed.

yea like, THANK GOD SOMEONE REALIZES THE role filled by the tomcat is STILL VALID! Awesome lynx! Yes people though russia is poor as hell what a lot of people don't realize is that many nations that the US is not really allied with by a bunch of shi* from russia. Su37 a paper threat that dont exist? RIght. Just kluz russia dont use them yet dont mean one of their customers wont in the near future! threat of longe range bomber attacks over my ass. Scenario. tomcat fleet dead and gone with superbugs instead. Some country not really rich but still aveage in terms of money buys some bear bombers from russia. Attack imenent on carrier. hmmmmm suyper bug cant really target them before the missles come. wait here come the missles. Shi* what to do now. Lets use sea sparrow, wait even with modern advances sparrow has always sucked in terms of past kill ratios, crap missle coming in, phalanx em! 4 missles shot 6 make it bam bam. One carrier decimated. see my point? We still need tomcatrs. just kuz russia aint as big as a threat dont mean we gotta settle for LESS. hey is it not possible to retool the toolings that were destroyed by remolding each piece of the tomcat 1 by 1? Otr did they destroy the paperwork as well? Hmm.....wait guys...GUYS! ASF-14 was to be a tomcat NEW build. It could NOT be built from prexisting tomcat airframes! It had to be all new! Since that was never made, and since it couldnt be made from old tomcat frames, perhaps it can be made in the future when the superbug F***S up!

yea the F-14 was a maintenance hog but thats not the point, ST21 would have cut back on that since it was more digitized and stuff. St21 is 2 the tomcat what the super bug is to legacy....or should i say SHOULD be as the ST231 wouldnt ahve given the tomcat any draw backs...super bug however... maintenance aside id wantt eh better airplane not the air plane that could be maintained faster. ST21 would have used technology from this era not the 70s, a lot of people tend to forget that ST21 would make the F-14 almost all brand new aside from frame. F-14s always were hard to maintain since its so big. And lackof spares is because of cheney. I am not sure if i am correct in saying thias, but I believe ST21 would have been able to outperform some other teen fighters. With thrust vectoring and changes to the front portion of the airframe concerning the wings and gloves it be more manueverable, and plus the engines would enable supercruise so with that I also say quick manuevering energy as well. Possibly be able to outmanuever the superbug. Bear in mind the engines were going to be GE engines from the ATF program I believe with vectoring nozzles. I know cheney axed the tomcat but who is to say we wont see a tomcat st21 upgrade on a northrop grumman private venture tested by VX9? Sure it would require some remolding of tools and would cost a bit but hell well yea you all know im biased for the tomcat. awesome ass plane.Too bad not many of us have seen ASF-14 and the other proposal...(quickstrike?)

Heh not really. Oh yea like I know imode, i made that comment since someone in this thread suggested that the JSF replace the F-22.

yup. Parallels with the commonality first plane, the F-111. That bastard got heavier with its variants. I can only iomagine how heavy if the navy chose it to hold some phoenixes internally while holding bombs on external pylons. Holy crap. HOLE in carrier! BTW it was underpowered as is, it would have been worse with bombs. Oh yea if the JSF does gain more growth weight than it mihgt not even be able to do STOL with munitions on, something the harrier can do/

no JSF aint replacing EVERYTHING just most [;anes. F-22 is far superioor to the JSF which i consider a POS. It cant even match up to the F-22 in a2a...yea i know its not meant to be but for something smaller and envisioned as a F-16 replacement I expect a lot more. At this point it can jsut outmanuever a F-117. JSf cant replace the F-22. Crap...knew it was inevitable jolly rogers would submit. I just hope VF-1 si not reestablished with super bugs. I mean crap they even got to VF-2 bounty hunters!(all squadrons that previously had tomcats were much more beautiful on tomcat.s...hornets make the decvals look boring) VIVA VF-101! I wonder what the RAG for the super bugs will be.

ah yes. F-18F vs F-14 D-tomcat 21-ASF-14....now THAT isa great discussion. I wonder why the hell the mods locked the topic i made on that before. I mean it rocked. It was getting real good going 5 pages long...I cant remember if i was the same thread someone kept bringing up how the F-15 was better but that had nothing to do with it. Kind of weird but yes it was an awesome discussion. I could tell by looking at the super bug that it really had a lot of drag on it. It just doesnt give off the impression of an agile high alpha fighter like the legacy one does. I mean the legacy one gives off the impression that its swift quick and very agile. the super bug looks like it has to take its time doin what the legacy one can...or trying 2. there are only 2 things which could successfully out do a tomcat with no regrets. THe NATF(sadly never made), and whichever fighter replaces the superbug since as it seems it would probably be capable enough to take on the F-14s task and roles and out do it as well by the time a repalcement fgior the hornet is needed. I guess in terms of dogfighing we will know for sure how the superbug is when some crews go to topgun in the plane. Not sure if any of them went to fallon yet. Its just sad seeing some awesome tomcat sqaudrons with kick ass decals switch over to hornets...when that happens the superbug just doesnt look as good with decals. VFA-101 grim reapers? shiver..............................................WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY SUPER BUG!>?

uh...hey guys lets keep this convo on jets. Back on topic. JSF SUCKS. ok cool continue Ewilen, yea thats kind ofg what i meant they werent heavily involved, from what i understand all pilots in the program and the brass were all air force. Topmcat 21 and A-12 were axed either a year apart or close to each other starting in 91. Kind of the reason I beleive the true successor to the tomcat will show up when a super hornet replacement is needed in the coming 2 decades.

The navy really wasnt for the ATF program to begin with. it was primarily air force. THe navy did want a NATF which is documented in the F-14 books, and it was a swing wing F-22 variant but it did not materialize due to cost. But see the navy never really was involved in the ATF program. It just wanted a variant and to my knowledge no navy brass or pilots even touched or handeled with the F-22 and its program.

because max didnt do much in that plane /..//sure he kiled the zentran pretty gruesomely but in DYRL he kicked mopre ass with the S. before the toy came out there were 2 1/48s with similar color schemes already out so by the time his toy came out people may have been bored seeing already 2 previous skull squad figures.

nope. NATF was a lockheed proposal. Yf23 was a dogfighter, A-12 wasnt. Y-23 was on par if not better than the F-16 and F-18, but in terms of low speed high AOA manuevers the F-22 was better. This is taken from what david said earlier in thread. From what I can tell the YF23 would have kicked all kinds of ass. It looks more intersting than the F-22 since its sucha radical design, the F-22 seems more like a progressive stealth where as the Yf--23 seems more of a risky design. Which kicks ass. I love that plane. If anything it would have been lovely if the navy got it but they were notn involved in ATF> they only wanted the ATF engines and possibly the NATF but it got canned. I could give a Sh** about stealth. one day there will be passive sensors in radar that can detect stealths so I bet in the future stealth wont really matter . I want a plane with all out power and manueverability. F-22 doesnt grand a hand of god on your shoulder it just makes you less susceptible to being shot down and detected. It also helps that its incredibly manueverable and has supercruise. F-22 and commanche are keepers the super hornet is not. Allwoul be well if the F-14D program was in effect to upgrading to tomcat 21 or ASF-14.