No fighter before or arguably since matched the Tomcat’s fleet-defense reach. The Hughes AN/AWG-9 was a giant pulse-Doppler radar that could track up to 24 targets in track-while-scan and cue six AIM-54 Phoenix missiles against six different targets at once. The Phoenix flew over 100 miles, zoom-climbing to the edge of space before diving on its target — a weapon built to swat down Soviet bombers and cruise missiles far beyond visual range, long before they threatened the carrier. The AWG-9 could pick up bomber-sized targets at 150-plus nautical miles.

In a celebrated 1970s test, a single F-14 salvoed six Phoenix missiles at six drones and hit most in one pass. The upgraded APG-71 radar of the F-14D pushed detection ranges further still. This sensor-and-shooter combination — not raw agility — was the Tomcat’s real superpower, and the AIM-54 remained unique to the F-14 for its entire career.

The F-14A’s Pratt & Whitney TF30 turbofans were the aircraft’s Achilles’ heel — prone to compressor stalls under hard manoeuvring and blamed for numerous losses and fatal flat spins. The Navy itself called them unsuited to the airframe. The General Electric F110-GE-400 re-engine of the F-14B and F-14D finally gave the Tomcat reliable, powerful, carefree-throttle performance — roughly 27,000–28,000 lbf in afterburner per engine — and the aircraft the pilots always felt it deserved.

The heart of the Tomcat was never the airframe — it was the weapon system. The AWG-9 could hold two dozen tracks in track-while-scan and hand six of them to six Phoenix missiles at once. Each AIM-54 climbed above 80,000 ft and dived on its target from more than 100 miles out. It was designed to break up massed Soviet bomber and cruise-missile raids far from the fleet, and its only combat use came in Iranian hands during the Iran–Iraq War. No other fighter of its era — and few since — could reach out and kill at that range.

Hard cost figures for the Tomcat vary widely and are rarely inflation-normalised. A flyaway unit cost of roughly $38 million is commonly cited, but sources give figures from around $38 million to $60 million-plus depending on variant and year — treat any single number with caution. There is no reliably published cost-per-flight-hour: the F-14 was notoriously maintenance-intensive, and figures well above US$30,000 per hour are often repeated but not solidly sourced. That expense — and the fact that the multirole F/A-18E/F Super Hornet could do the same jobs more cheaply — is exactly why the Navy retired the Tomcat in 2006.