Word: tomcats
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Long Island-based Grumman, which has produced military jets since World War II, builds the Navy's F-14D, the highly maneuverable fighter featured in the 1986 film Top Gun. Because Congress has slowed annual production of the Tomcat to just twelve jets, Grumman is reducing its 19,000 work force by 3,100. If Cheney's proposal to cut production even further is carried out, many of the 5,600 Grumman workers who make Tomcats will be put in jeopardy...
...radar-intercept officer (RIO), seated behind the lead Tomcat pilot, armed his plane's short-range Sidewinder missiles and its longer-range Sparrow rockets. Outmanned and outgunned in their less maneuverable Floggers, the lone Libyan pilots had to fly their planes, watch their radars and handle their weapons without airborne help...
...noon the trailing Tomcat flying in the wing position locked its radar on one of the Floggers. In numerous past skirmishes, Libyan pilots had reported any such radar targeting to their ground controller, who had always told them to break off and head home. This time, U.S. authorities insisted, the pilot did not send any such alarm...
...pilots really act in self-defense last week? Were they justified in firing the first shots? No question about it, say former Navy pilots and other experts familiar with the F-14 Tomcat. "I know it sounds strange to the layman to say, 'He pointed his nose at me five times so I shot him,' " conceded a jet-fighter technician. "But it makes sense in aerial combat. Furthermore, if some guy aims a gun at you in a dark alley, you don't ask him whether it's loaded...
...some of the old tactics remain valid. "Pilots still like to have the sun at their back," explains Kurt Schroeder, the chief test pilot of Grumman Corp., which makes the Tomcat. "The speeds and altitudes, turning radius and weapons have changed dramatically, but the basic maneuvers are still very similar to World War I." So too is a pilot's need for fast thinking. "Aviation by its very nature frequently requires very quick assessments, judgments and actions," says Schroeder. "And the penalty for making the wrong decision is severe...