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Currently, the retired F-14s are sitting in a sort of "airplane graveyard" in Arizona with hundreds of other retired aircraft. This is a US Air Force facility and guarded with the same standards of security as every major US Base. Among the other airframes are old B-52 airframes that have been decommissioned as well as numerous other bombers and fighters from various different decades. They currently sit in the sun, collecting dust, on the off chance we need to remobilize them all at a moment's notice. The given reason for wanting to spend close to a million dollars scrapping some of them is the fear that they might fall into the wrong hands. This fear is misplaced, as it has already happened.

The Islamic Republic of Iran currently possess over 70 F-14s that date back from a time when we had better diplomatic relations with them. These craft are still painstakingly maintained, and yet, if we were to go to war with Iran, there is little chance we'd see them used against us. Why? Because Iran lacks the parts to keep these aircraft running. They do not have access to the companies that produced the planes and even those companies no longer make the parts necessary to maintain and repair F-14s.

Airplane maintenance is not a simple matter of having a few extra bolts and screws in case something pops. Airframes, to say nothing of electronics or hydraulics within the frames, are incredibly difficult to maintain. Jet engine maintenance is not an activity the novice technician should try his hand at. If, for the sake of arguement, a terrorist organization was able, somehow, to steal a dozen F-14s they would also need to steal the spare parts to keep them operational, the weapons that the F-14 can mount (different from the bombs and missiles we use today), the computers to network this together, the fuel for the planes and of course, some place to house them. In addition, they'd need to learn how to fly the F-14, something you can't just pick up Microsoft Flight Simulator and learn in an hour. Once all this is accomplished, they would then need to fly missions against US or allied forces. And then they would discover a problem in the form of the F-22.

The F-22 is the most sophisticated stealth fighter used by any airforce in the world. And the United States has, at last count, over 100 in service. These planes are so stealthy, that F-16s cannot spot them on radar. In simulations they have a kill record of over 300 to 0. And this is against F-16s, a significantly more sophisticated fighter than the F-14. This is to say nothing of the numerous F-16s, F-18s, and soon coming F-35s that are in operation with both the Navy and Airforce. The F-14 would lose, hands down, in an engagement with any of these planes.

So if the terrorists want to try to steal American hardware and use out of date planes against the state of the art ones we currently use, I say they can knock themselves out, it'll be that many fewer terrorists we have to deal with, and another $1 million we don't add to the national deficit.

Learn more about this author, Bryan Jennings.
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