PUBLISHED ON 10/2/2025 – 8:05 AM – Key Points and Summary – Grumman’s Super Tomcat 21 (ST21) was a credible evolution of the F-14D: more fuel, stronger engines, digital flight controls, new sensors, and strike upgrades to push the carrier’s defensive bubble outward and add long-range punch.
-It answered the Navy’s 1990s needs after the A-12 died and before a next-gen stealth jet could mature.
-Budgets, maintenance costs, and a pivot to the F/A-18E/F ended the idea.
-With China’s long-range bomber and missile threat now central, a limited ST21 buy looks like the kind of bridge the fleet lacked—one that could have bought time, reach, and deterrence while today’s force evolved.
-BONUS – National Security Journal has travelled to see quite a few F-14 Tomcats over the years. We present some of our original photos from those various visits.
Super Tomcat 21: The Navy’s Best Fighter That Never Flew
As a boy, and maybe just like you, I worshiped Top Gun and read everything I possibly could about the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet. I built models of it. I read anything I could at my local library in Rhode Island, where I grew up.
But I always wondered: did the F-14 Tomcat really need to be retired so soon? There was, of course, another path.
There’s a reason the Super Tomcat 21 still haunts naval aviation debates. It wasn’t a nostalgia project; it was a shrewd answer to a specific gap.
When the A-12 stealth attack jet imploded, the Navy found itself with an air wing built around aging A-6s and F-14s, a smaller Cold War budget, and threats migrating outward—long-range bombers and cruise missiles that would have to be defeated far from the carrier.
F-14 Missiles at Smithsonian Outside of DC. National Security Journal Photo. All Rights Reserved.
The F-14D proved the Tomcat’s bones were still world-class: big radar, long legs, and a weapons bay designed for heavy air-to-air ordnance. Grumman’s pitch was simple: keep the bones, fix the costs, and leap the jet a generation.
In other words, don’t worship the Tomcat—finish it.
Why the Navy Wanted It
The post-Cold War Navy still needed “outer air battle” effects: long-reach patrols that find and kill the archer before he looses the arrow. That meant speed without tankers, sensors that could search wide without tipping off their presence, and a magazine that could credibly thin a raid before it formed.
F-14D Tomcat Onboard USS Intrepid in NYC. Image Taken by National Security Journal on 9/19/2025.
At the same time, strike became a first-team mission for the fighter after A-6 retirement. The F-14D could drop LANTIRN-guided munitions, but it remained an air-to-air thoroughbred with high maintenance needs and analog ghosts in its wiring. The ST21 promised reach, reliability, and relevance in a single airframe—and a way to keep the carrier’s crown jewel, its air wing, lethal at the distances a Pacific fight would demand.
What the Super Tomcat 21 Was—And Wasn’t
Super Tomcat 21 wasn’t a clean-sheet fantasy. It was a path to remanufacture and new-build jets from F-14D tooling with a suite of targeted changes. Think of four buckets:
Airframe and Aerodynamics. Recontoured glove leading edges, refined control surfaces, and digital flight controls to lower approach speeds, improve takeoff performance, and squeeze out more range—without throwing away variable geometry’s flexibility at sea. More internal fuel in the glove area and plumbing for conformal tanks gave the jet the legs the Pacific demands.
Propulsion. Updated F110 engines with higher thrust and better reliability promised supercruise under the right conditions and far sturdier logistics than the early Tomcat era. The selling point was less brochure Mach and more combat radius without nursing a tanker.
Sensors and Avionics. An evolved Tomcat radar—on a path toward active electronically scanned array performance—paired with modern electronic support measures, an infrared search-and-track set, and a glass cockpit that put fusion in front of the crew. The philosophy: see first, classify first, and shoot decisively while staying radio-quiet.
F-14D Tomcat in NYC on USS Intrepid. Image Credit: National Security Journal Taken on 9/19/2025.
Weapons and Roles. A long-reach air-to-air loadout remained the heart of the jet, but ST21’s concept embraced precision strike as a native mission, not an afterthought—internal carriage where possible, and smart external options when stealth wasn’t decisive. The idea wasn’t to build a bomber; it was to build a fleet defender that could also kick doors when opportunities appeared.
That balance—air dominance first, strike as a true second—was the Tomcat’s destiny finally realized.
What It Would Have Done to the Air Wing
Put an ST21 detachment on a carrier in WESTPAC and the air wing changes character overnight.
The Defensive Dome Moves Out. Far-forward BARCAPs in stealth-disciplined profiles, hunting bombers and shooters before they enter release baskets. E-2D feeds the picture; ST21 quietly refines it and kills at range. The result: fewer inbound missiles for Aegis to solve and more time for the group to maneuver.
The Network Gets Meaner. The Super Tomcat acts as a silent quarterback. It sees and sorts without shouting on the air; it cues Super Hornets, F-35Cs, and the cruisers and destroyers in the screen; it takes high-value shots and leaves mop-up to others. Sensor-shooter separation stops being a concept and becomes doctrine.
Strike Gets Opportunistic Reach. When the route is right, ST21 carries a surgical internal load to take a shot without dragging the entire wing forward. When stealth isn’t essential, the jet brings the kind of payload-plus-speed that compresses enemy decision time along a coastline.
F-14D Tomcat Photo Onboard USS Intrepid. National Security Journal Photo.
F-14D Tomcat Up Close on USS Intrepid. Image Credit: National Security Journal.
None of this makes a carrier invulnerable. It makes it harder to find, harder to plan against, and harder to overwhelm—which is the point.
Why It Wasn’t Built
The answer is not a plot; it’s arithmetic and scar tissue.
Costs and Maintenance. By the early 1990s, the F-14 family had a reputation: exceptional in the air, expensive and temperamental on the deck. Keeping the D-model combat systems reliable took work; the Navy and GAO traded memoranda about software maturity and sustainment costs. The prospect of building a small fleet of bespoke ST21s—new line, new spares, new training—looked like a bill the Navy couldn’t carry under “peace dividend” budgets.
A Safer Path Beckoned. The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet promised an all-digital backbone, maintainability, and commonality with an aircraft the Navy already knew how to fly and fix. It would never match the Tomcat on raw reach, radar aperture, or endgame kinematics. It didn’t have to. It only had to be good enough across many missions while being easier to own.
Politics and Timing. The A-12’s implosion scorched procurement credibility. Senior leaders were disinclined to fund another high-risk naval aviation leap when a lower-risk multi-role jet could be bought in numbers. Production lines matter: keeping one warm can outweigh restoring another.
The result: a sensible near-term choice that created a long-term capability debt at the high end of carrier air defense.
The Case for “Should Have”
It’s easy to fight yesterday’s budget war with today’s threat map. But some bets age well. Super Tomcat 21 looks like one of them.
Range Is Strategy in the Pacific. Everything about a China contingency punishes short legs: tanker vulnerability, vast patrol boxes, and long “go/no-go” distances. ST21’s fuel fraction and engines would have given the air wing organic reach to meet archers where they live.
Salvo Competition Starts Before Launch. The cleanest way to beat massed cruise-missile fires is to thin the bombers. A stealth-disciplined, fast interceptor with a heavy internal air-to-air magazine shrinks the problem Aegis must solve later.
Deterrence Loves Certainty. The knowledge that a carrier brings fifth-generation-class counter-air—not only stealthy strike—raises the bar for any planner thinking about pushing long-range raids at sea. ST21 would have made the first night of any war a scarier proposition for the other guy.
Does that mean the Navy should have bought hundreds? No. But a limited buy, seeded into East and West Coast air wings, could have given the fleet a high-end tool the Super Hornet would never be, while buying time for the F-35C and the Navy’s next-generation air dominance program to mature.
The Counterargument, Fairly Stated
There were (and are) reasons to pass.
Two Fleets, Two Supply Chains. A small ST21 force would have meant unique parts, software, and training pipelines—small-fleet economics that bite forever.
Digital Backbones Matter. Super Hornet’s open systems enabled rapid upgrades and weapons integration at scale; Tomcat’s architecture would have needed continuous surgery to keep pace. Even with ST21’s avionics refresh, the Navy might have spent a lot just to stand still five or ten years later.
Stealth Struck Back. The F-35C plays a different role—penetrating ISR/strike and quarterbacking—but its arrival meant the carrier would get stealth. Leaders bet on a cleaner break rather than a bespoke bridge.
Those aren’t straw men. They are the logic of adults who must make choices under uncertainty. But even accepting them, an op-ed truth remains: the bill for passing on high-end carrier counter-air came due as China’s long-range kill chains hardened.
What We Should Steal From the Super Tomcat
The lesson isn’t to resurrect a 1990s design. It’s to harvest what made the proposal attractive and weld it into what comes next.
Fuel Fraction First. Design for reach. If a Navy fighter can’t patrol far forward with margin, it is a hostage to the tanker plan.
Magazine Depth Under LO. The outer-air mission demands internal air-to-air mass and rapid reattack. Build the bays and software to support that as a first principle, not a retrofit.
Cognitive Margin. The Tomcat’s two-crew heritage reflected the workload of counter-air. Whether through crew or human-machine teaming, make bandwidth a weapon.
Network-Native. ST21’s real value was as a node that let the air wing and escort ships fight like a single organism. Bake that into the next design at the electrical-power and cooling levels, not just in a PowerPoint stack.
Call it the Super Tomcat effect—not a shape, but a set of imperatives.
Super Tomcat 21: A Last Word, From the Future We Got
The F-14D retired; the Super Hornet filled decks; the F-35C arrived; the Navy now races toward a new carrier fighter and a family of uncrewed teammates. That path is defensible. Still, when you spread a map of the Philippine Sea and overlay bomber routes, tanker tracks, and the timelines of modern salvos, the absence of a truly long-range, stealth-savvy carrier counter-air jet is loud. Super Tomcat 21 was an answer to that silence.
F-14D Tomcat. National Security Journal Photo.
We didn’t buy it. We should ensure the next program buys the effects it promised: push the fight outward, see before you’re seen, and erase the threat before it coheres.
That’s not nostalgia. That’s strategy.
About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.
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