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The odd photos in this post show an F-15 Eagle fighter jet carrying an AIM-54 Phoenix long-range air-to-air missile

The Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix missile was the US Navy’s only long-range air-to-air missile. It was an airborne weapons control system with multiple-target handling capabilities, used to kill multiple air targets with conventional warheads. Simultaneous launch was possible against up to six targets in all weather and heavy jamming environments. The improved Phoenix, the AIM-54C, could better counter projected threats from tactical aircraft and cruise missiles.

The only aircraft capable of carrying the Phoenix (in clusters of up to six missiles) was the F-14 Tomcat.

Nevertheless, the odd photos in this post show an F-15 Eagle fighter jet carrying an AIM-54.

At the time these pictures were taken, researchers at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, CA, and the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, CA, investigated the use of surplus demilitarized Navy AIM-54 Phoenix air-launched missiles as possible hypersonic test platforms or testbeds. Hypersonic flight is defined as aerodynamic flight at speeds of Mach 5 or greater, and use of surplus Phoenix missiles was one of the methods being considered to obtain critical flight data in the hypersonic regime.

These missions, conducted over restricted military test ranges, involved launching a missile from a NASA F-15 aircraft flying at speeds up to Mach 2.0, with the missile then accelerating to speeds up to Mach 5.0, depending on its trajectory before fuel is exhausted. The missiles would carry experimental research payloads into the hypersonic regime, something that is currently difficult to achieve.

The Phoenix missiles used for hypersonic research had their explosive warheads removed, and their tracking and guidance systems replaced with a smaller, more lightweight guidance system. The missiles were also heavily instrumented to obtain and transmit test data from experiments in such areas as thermal protection materials, scramjet propulsion, guidance & control, boundary layer transition, and aerodynamics at hypersonic speeds.

NASA performed design, analysis, and testing that lead up to a Critical Design Review at the end of 2007. As part of the preliminary studies, several “captive-carry” flights were be flown by the F-15 with an inactive missile with no propellant carried on the aircraft’s centerline pylon to determine the performance of the aircraft when carrying the missile. However, the project was not been funded to conduct actual launches to obtain hypersonic flight test data.

Since the photos in this post clearly show that the Eagle could be equipped with the mighty Phoenix one might ask why US Air Force (USAF) F-15d never carried the AIM-54.

‘I was with the F-15 program for about 10 years, maybe a little more. I know the airplane extremely well,’ said James Cowan, former F-15 Eagle maintainer, on Quora. ‘To begin with, the F-15A was equipped with the Hughes APG-63 radar, which worked well with both AIM-9 Sidewinders and AIM-7 Sparrow missiles.

‘There have been significant upgrades to that radar and with the AIM-120 replacing the AIM-7, the combination is very adequate in the F-15’s operating environment.

‘The AIM-54 Phoenix and AWG-9 radar were Navy-mission-specific and in and of themselves, were an integrated weapon system. The AWG-9 could also manage AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles. The AWG-9 had the capability to fire missiles at six targets simultaneously, and track 24 more. This was essential because the F-14 at the time had one job: to protect the multi-billion-dollar carriers. So, the F-14 was optimized as an interceptor. And it excelled in that role.

‘The F-15 operates in an entirely different environment, and within Air Force Doctrine. While the F-15 is certainly a potent interceptor, most of all it is a tactical air superiority fighter—made to mix it up with other fighters—dogfighting, usually over land. Desert Storm was a made to order war for the F-15. Everything about the F-15 was virtually perfect for that environment. Of the 36 Iraqi fighters shot down, the F-15 got 34 of them. The Navy F-18’s got the other two. I will also note that both aircraft were built by McDonnell Douglas in St Louis MO, now folded into Boeing.

‘So, while the F-14 and F-15 have some outward similarities and some mission overlap, they’re really apples and oranges when you get right down to it. Because the F-14 is a Navy fighter, it has to be built much more rugged than USAF fighters. The abuse Navy fighters get is much tougher than USAF landing on long concrete runways.’

Cowan concludes: ‘I’m not sure in my own mind whether or not the F-15’s radar is compatible with the AIM-54, and even if it was, it’s too heavy for the F-15 to use and keep all of its fantastic air to air capabilities.’

Photo by Tom Tschida / NASA

No doubt, ROEs favoured the USAF F-15C crews. However, this did not mean that the US Navy F-14s did not fly fighter sweeps, as widely claimed: they did

While the US Navy already favoured the development of fast interceptors armed with radar guided missiles capable of engaging beyond visual range (BVR) during the second half of the 1950s, resulting in the development of the F-4 Phantom II, experience from local conflicts of the 1960s showed that deploying such weapons could easily result in so-called ‘blue-on-blue’ incidents: cases where friendly forces were misidentified as enemy, and taken under fire. Indeed, both the as Phantoms of the US Navy and of the USAF had several times opened fire on allied fighter jets, sometimes resulting in painful losses. As explained by Tom Cooper in his book In the Claws of the Tomcat: US Navy F-14 Tomcats in Air Combat against Iran and Iraq, 1987-2000, the consequence was a set of rules of engagement (ROEs) dictating that nobody could open fire without visually identifying the target: with this, the F-4 quickly lost its primary advantage vis-à-vis MiGs operated by the North Vietnamese air force. Some of the BVR capability was recovered only during the last years of that conflict through the development and installation of systems like the AN/APX-80 Combat Three enemy-IFF-interrogator. This was capable of `triggering’ and ‘reading’ the (non-decrypted) signals from the Soviet-made SRO-2/Khrom IFF-transponder installed into North Vietnamese MiGs: it enabled their positive identification from dozens of kilometres away, and thus the crews of USAF F-4Ds equipped with it were able to use their AIM-7 Sparrows from beyond visual range. Up to two dozen MiG-kills were scored with help of the ‘Tree’ in the 1971-1972 period, before the North Vietnamese figured out what the Americans were doing, and limited the use of the SRO-2.

While derivatives of the APX-80 subsequently found widespread use in the USAF, and were even exported to Iran and Israel, due to the acquisition of the expensive F-14, the Navy was so starved of funding that it could not afford the acquisition of similar equipment for its Tomcats. Correspondingly, they received only the AN/APX-76 friendly IFF-interrogator. It was rather on the insistence of F-14 crews that a cheaper solution was found in the form of the AN/AXX-1 Television Camera Set (TCS): this was a camera equipped with a telescopic lens capable of providing a reasonable clear image – and thus visual identification — of big aircraft tracked by the AWG-9 out to a range of about 80km (43nm). The TCS entered service in the early 1980s but was still few in numbers even during engagements with Libya in 1986.

Meanwhile, it was foremost the invention of micro and information technologies that resulted in the emergence of the non-cooperative target recognition (NCTR). Decades previously it was known that radar returns contained more information than the available technology could extract. The solid-state processors enabled this to be rectified and the USAF took care to install the NCTR-software on computers supporting the AN/APG-63 radar of the F-15C, in the form of the MSIP-II upgrade in the early 1980s. USN installed similar software into the AN/APG-65 radar of the F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber in the early 1980s, and intended follow-up by doing the same with the F-14D, however, none of these were in operational service as of 1990-1991. Moreover, even the NCTR installed into the F-15C was still far from working perfectly. Correspondingly, when planning for the war against Iraq, Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) was left without choice but to impose very strict ROEs. These dictated:

• that only crews that had two forms of electronic identification on hoard were granted autonomous and independent permission to open fire: they did not require talking to anybody before shooting
• if there was only one form of electronic identification available, the crew had to corelate with, and receive permission from, E-2 or E-3 controllers before they could open fire.

No doubt, such ROEs favoured the USAF F-15C crews, because thanks to the installation of the NCTR they could act quicker.

However, this did not mean that the F-14s did not fly fighter sweeps, as widely claimed: they did.

Finally, a few words ought to be said about the US Navy’s fighter doctrine of 1991. Reading this article might create the impression of this being ‘too conservative’. However, one should keep in mind that there were plenty of excellent reasons why. Primary amongst these was that the doctrine of the US Navy was that of fighting a war against the USSR by striking its major bases on the Kola Peninsula and in the Far East. Because no allies could operate in such a high-threat areas, operations there were to be run by the Navy alone. Moreover, the available intelligence indicated that, despite all its quirks and weak spots, the F-14 provided the US Navy with such vast technological superiority in comparison to for whatever was likely to come its way at the time, that the type was likely to decide the mass of its engagements through deterrent and the intimidation alone, and would do so during operations over the sea, without crossing the enemy coast. Although this was never written in the Navy’s original requirement for the AWG-9, AIM-54, or the F-14, this superiority was of such quality that in any war the type was near-certain to score far more ‘mission kills’ through forcing its opponent away by its sheer presence, or even grounding them, than to actually shoot down its opponents. In other words — and as proven by the operations of Iranian Tomcats during the war with Iraq — the Tomcat did not require scoring 50, 100, 150 or more ‘kills’ to become successful.

Unsurprisingly, the Topgun courses of the late 1980s taught not only F-14 crews, but also squadron commanders (COs) and deputy commanders (XOs), airwing staff and even CVBG commanders, that the job of Tomcats during offensive operations was to stay with the strike package — with fighter-bombers, electronic warfare and other aircraft they were supposed to protect — to ‘delay and disrupt’, instead of ‘chasing MiGs’. This even more so because in combat there was always the chance of the enemy deploying a demonstrative group of aircraft to decoy F-14s away, and then hitting the strike package they were supposed to protect. The intensive and thorough training of US Navy Tomcat crews resulted in this idea sinking into everybody to a degree where it greatly influenced their planning for and conduct of operations against Iraq in 1991. As a result in thousands of sorties flown by F-14s during 42 days of the Second Persian Gulf War, not one F-14 crew decided to abandon the formation it was tasked with protecting, regardless what was going on around it, or what kind of threat was it facing.

In the Claws of the Tomcat: US Navy F-14 Tomcats in Air Combat against Iran and Iraq, 1987-2000 is published by Helion & Company and is available to order here.

Photo by U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and Tom Cooper

It was later determined that the mishap was caused by one of the four cables was not set to the correct F-14 Tomcat weight

Dave “Bio” Baranek enjoyed a successful and satisfying 20-year career in the Navy, starting with assignments to F-14 Tomcat squadrons and the elite TOPGUN training program, and later assignment to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US 7th Fleet. At one point, he commanded an F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron, responsible for nearly 300 people and 14 aircraft worth about $700 million. He completed his career with 2,499.7 F-14 Tomcat flight hours and 688 carrier landings. His logbook also records 461.8 flight hours in the F-5F Tiger II.

While serving as a TOPGUN air-to-air combat instructor in 1985, he had the unusual experience of flying aerial sequences used in the film “Top Gun,” starring Tom Cruise and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. He also served as a dialogue advisor on the project, and took some of the few available photographs of the movie’s black F-5 fighters in flight.

He retired from the Navy in 1999.

In 2010 Bio decided to make an outstanding gift to the aviation geeks worldwide when, publishing his first book Topgun Days: Dogfighting, Cheating Death and Hollywood Glory as One of America’s Best Fighter Jocks, he revealed the adrenaline experienced by US Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers (NFOs) during their day to day life in a Fleet Squadron.

As described in the chapter “Rocket Rider,” on Dec. 19, 1981 Bio experienced one of the most exciting moments of his 3 ½ year assignment to Fighter Squadron (VF) 24 Fighting Renegades. On that day he and Commander Bill Switzer (then VF-24 Commanding Officer, CO) were scheduled to fly a series of 2v2 radar intercepts, F-14 Tomcats against A-7 Corsairs. Baranek and Switzer completed their mission and at 5:15 PM were ready to land aboard their aircraft carrier USS Constellation (CV-64), sailing in the Indian Ocean.

But just after they slammed onto the flight deck, Bio realized that something was wrong. As Baranek recalls “I should have been thrown forward into my shoulder straps by the sudden deceleration of the trap, but instead I was still sitting upright. […] We rolled along the deck. There was some resistance slowing us down, but nowhere near enough to bring Renegade 205 to a stop. In a normal trap, the arresting wire plays out like a fishing line under tension, and the rollout of several hundred feet of cable takes about two seconds. […] Then there was one last feeble tug, but we continued rolling toward the end of the landing area. We were traveling about fifty knots – too fast to stop, too slow to fly. Skipper Switzer called, ‘Eject! Eject!’ His voice had taken on a new urgency, almost impatience – What are you waiting for? His hand was on the stick, still trying to fly, so it was my job to pull the handle that would eject both of us.”

Bio reacted on Switzer’s first syllable, yanking the yellow-and-black striped ejection handle. Once Baranek pulled the handle, everything that followed was automatic as he explains in detail. “When the ejection sequence control mechanism determined the canopy had cleared the aircraft, the rocket in my seat fired. I instantaneously experienced an acceleration force of about 20 g – outside the recommended operating range of the human brain-and blacked out for a few seconds.”

Bio and Switzer were recovered by one of the SH-3 Sea King rescue helicopters of the ship and it was later determined that the mishap was caused by one of the four cables (the one engaged by Switzer and Bio’s Tomcat) was not set to the correct F-14 weight.

For this reason, as you can see in the following video (which is the footage of the actual incident) since the arresting gear mechanism was completely overwhelmed, the cable snapped and the Tomcat (Renegade 205, F-14A BuNo 159623) went over the side. And in Topgun Days we get an instant-by-instant description by one who personally experienced it.

Photo by Dave “Bio” Baranek