A person has to love the irony in how the United States government works. The F-14 Tomcats are being retired from service in the U.S. Navy. It is being replaced by the F/A-18E "Super Hornets" and the soon to become available F-35 Joint Strike fighters.
Iran was the only country to whom the United States sold this aircraft in export-arms agreements. This was back in 1976 (as touted by first paragraph in the Wikipedia article.. [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-14 ]). Now two things are occurring at about the same time. The U.S. Pentagon is banned from selling parts that are only useful on the F-14's and having them destroyed. They are paying $900,000 to have some of them and their particular parts destroyed. [
http://www.kxmb.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=140266 ]
In another wikipedia article, it was mentioned that 8 of the aircraft will be leased or donated to the Dominican Republic. Here is the particular reference in that article...
[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_t...inican_Republic ]
Since Iran and the United States are on such terrible terms, our Congress had banned sales to that country. And naturally, they are sold anyways, regardless of any bans in place. [
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Aug01/0,4...sStings,00.html ] Three F-14's were discovered as sold to a
"scrap" dealer. [
http://blogs.wsj.com/informedreader/2007/0...s-online-store/ ]
Now either the F-14 is still a very viable air-weaponry platform or it isn't. If it isn't good enough for us YET too good for other nations, what sense does that make to either give them away to inconsequential countries or to destroy our inventory?? And due to their size and weight, only a few of the world's aircraft carriers are even able to launch them safely. Even the newly planned carriers ordered by the U.K. will not handle them, since they will be configured for short-take off and vertical landing aircraft.[See caption above photo...
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/cvf/cvf12.html]
So we either have to pay to destroy them or give them away? And if we do the latter, we worry that much that Iran will get the aircraft or their spare parts? When we don't have the means to insure that hasn't happened or doesn't happen again. It sounds as if our country fails to look at a larger picture when trying to figure out what to do with our obsolete military arsenal. And I'm not too sure that the 8 Tomcats in the Dominican Republic don't pose a bigger threat to the U.S. than any number that Iran may own/operate.
