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But what if the problems that plagued the program in the 1960s and 1970s had proved insoluble? How would the Navy have filled the gap?

Could the Navy have filled the gap? Here's What You Need to Know: The Tomcat faced a number of problems in its early years. What if the F-14 Tomcat had never happened? The iconic fighter served the U.S. Navy for more than thirty years before finally (and some say prematurely) being retired in 2006. Over time, the F-14 shifted from its initial long-range fleet air-defense role to a ground-attack mission. But what if the problems that plagued the program in the 1960s and 1970s had proved insoluble? How would the Navy have filled the gap? The Problem: The F-14 grew out of the F-111 project, pus...

One alternative, though not as balanced, would simply have been to retain the F-4 The Navy eventually worked out the problems with the F-14, and the Tomcat became a superlative air defense fighter. Eventually, it even gained a ground-attack mission. The temperamental nature of the design, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the success of the Super Hornet made the Tomcat superfluous by the 2000s, however, and the Navy now lacks a long-range interceptor. The main threats to carrier battle groups no longer come from flights of bombers, but rather from ballistic missiles, and no fighter has ye...