F-14 vs F-18: Why the Navy Traded the Faster Tomcat for the Super Hornet

How we compare the Tomcat and the Super Hornet

These two jets were never rivals in the air. The Super Hornet was bought to replace the Tomcat, so the real question is what the Navy gave up and what it got back.

We compare them on four measures: speed and reach, the close-in fight, versatility, and the cost of keeping them flying. The Tomcat wins the first, pilots give the Super Hornet the second, and the last two are not close.

Where published figures differ, we name the configuration they apply to. Full specifications for the Grumman F-14 Tomcat and the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet sit in our aircraft database.

Where the F-14 Tomcat wins

Speed: Mach 2.34 against Mach 1.8

The Tomcat is the faster jet by a wide margin. Its published top speed is Mach 2.34, about 1,544 mph (2,485 km/h) at 40,000 feet.

The Super Hornet tops out at Mach 1.8, about 1,185 mph (1,908 km/h), and that figure is for a clean jet at 40,000 feet. Carrying two AMRAAMs and two Sidewinders on internal fuel, its published speed drops to Mach 1.62 at 36,000 feet.

The swing wing is what made that speed possible on a carrier jet. The wings moved automatically in flight, spreading wide for low-speed lift around the ship and sweeping back for the dash. For how Mach 2.34 compares across the field, see our ranking of the fastest fighter jets.

It was also a very big fighter. The F-14 was the largest and heaviest US fighter to fly from an aircraft carrier, a consequence of the radar and missiles it was built to carry.

Reach: a radar and missile built for the outer air battle

The Tomcat existed to protect the carrier from Soviet bombers and the anti-ship missiles they carried. The Navy wanted those bombers engaged from well beyond visual range, long before they could launch.

Its Hughes AWG-9 radar and AIM-54 Phoenix missile were built for exactly that. The Navy’s aviation museum says a Tomcat could engage multiple targets more than 90 miles away, and the longest Phoenix test shot, in April 1973, hit a target 110 nautical miles (127 miles) out.

In a November 1973 test, one Tomcat fired six Phoenixes within 38 seconds, and four scored direct hits. In service the full six-missile load was never used, because it was too heavy to bring back aboard a carrier unfired.

The Tomcat also flew farther. Its published fighter-escort radius is 503 nautical miles (579 miles), against 404 nautical miles (465 miles) for a Super Hornet escorting on internal fuel.

On fleet defense it could patrol 150 nautical miles from the ship for 1.91 hours. The Super Hornet is about 11,000 pounds (5,000 kg) lighter empty, and it approaches, but does not match, the Tomcat’s payload and range.

Where the F/A-18 Super Hornet wins

Far cheaper to keep flying

The Tomcat’s biggest weakness was on the ground. A 2003 Aerospaceweb analysis called it the most expensive aircraft in the Navy’s inventory to operate, needing 40 to 60 maintenance man-hours for every flight hour.

The same analysis put the Super Hornet at 10 to 15 hours. It also said the Tomcat’s rising maintenance bill played a large role in the Navy moving the F-14’s retirement forward from 2010 to 2006.

The Super Hornet is still cheap to fly by fighter standards. The Pentagon’s fiscal 2025 reimbursement rates, the hourly price charged to other Defense Department users, put the single-seat F/A-18E at $21,432 and the two-seat F at $23,196, below the $25,392 charged for an older F/A-18C Hornet.

One airframe for four jobs

The Tomcat was a fighter first, and it was only cleared to drop bombs in 1992. The Super Hornet was built as a strike fighter, able to fly air-to-air and air-to-ground missions in the same airframe.

The single-seat E and two-seat F took over the work of the F-14, the A-6 Intruder bomber, the S-3 Viking and the KA-6D tanker. The Navy calls that consolidation a neck-down, and until the F-35C arrived, every Navy combat jet was a Hornet variant.

It refuels other jets, too. Fitted with a buddy store, a Super Hornet becomes an aerial tanker, a job the Navy lost when it retired the KA-6D and the S-3B Viking.

Its 11 weapon stations carry everything from AMRAAM and Sidewinder missiles to JDAM satellite-guided bombs, the JSOW glide weapon and the Harpoon anti-ship missile. Our ranking of the best carrier-based fighter jets shows how that versatility stacks up across the field.

Easier to fly, with newer sensors

Published accounts of the program sum up the trade plainly. The Super Hornet lacks some of the F-14’s raw performance, but it has much better handling and controllability and is significantly more reliable and affordable to operate.

Its sensors are a generation newer. Block II jets carried the AN/APG-79 active electronically scanned array radar from 2005, and Block III jets, first delivered in 2021, add a large touchscreen cockpit and an airframe rated for 10,000 flight hours.

The Tomcat’s best radar was the AN/APG-71 of the F-14D, which replaced the AWG-9 alongside a glass cockpit. Only 55 F-14Ds existed: 37 new-build jets and 18 converted F-14As.

F-14 vs F-18 in a dogfight

The two never fought for real, so the best evidence is what the crews who flew them say. Tom “Trots” Trotter, a former Navy pilot qualified on both jets, gave the close fight to the Hornet.

He put it this way on the Fighter Pilot Podcast: “I think any Tomcat can give a Hornet a run, but you know, the Hornet’s way better in the phone booth. The slow fight, gunning a guy, going a high angle of attack.”

Tomcat crews had an answer. Former F-14 radar intercept officer Dave “Bio” Baranek called the Hornet and Super Hornet “challenging opponents,” and said the Tomcat would turn hard toward one to force a one-circle fight while staying nose-low to keep its energy.

From there, he said, the Tomcat would try to drag the fight down to lower altitude, where the denser air helped it more than its opponent. Slow and close favors the Super Hornet; fast and far favors the Tomcat.

The Tomcat was designed so that it would rarely come to that. Its radar and Phoenix were meant to settle a fight well beyond visual range, long before either jet needed to turn.

Why did the F-18 replace the F-14?

Money, mostly, and a threat that was disappearing. In 1989 Defense Secretary Dick Cheney refused to buy any more F-14Ds, calling the Tomcat 1960s technology, and in 1991 he cancelled production altogether in favor of the updated F/A-18.

Grumman proposed substantially improved Tomcats, but Congress rejected them as too costly and backed the cheaper Super Hornet. The Navy ordered it in 1992, and it flew for the first time on November 29, 1995.

The decision was controversial. Vietnam War ace and Congressman Duke Cunningham criticized the Super Hornet as an unproven design that compromised air superiority.

The Super Hornet entered fleet service in 1999, and the two served side by side for several years. The Navy held the F-14’s official retirement ceremony at Naval Air Station Oceana on September 22, 2006, and the last flight in US service was a ferry to Long Island on October 4, 2006.

Why did the US destroy all its F-14s?

To keep the parts away from Iran. Iran was the only other country to fly the Tomcat, and in 2007 the Navy announced it would shred its stored F-14s so no components could reach Tehran.

In August 2009 the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona said the last of them had been taken away for shredding. Only 11 F-14s were still in desert storage by then.

A few survive as museum pieces, and Congress may put one back in the air. The Maverick Act would transfer three F-14Ds to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with spare parts to make one of them flyable or ready for static display.

The Senate passed it by unanimous consent on April 28, 2026. It reached the House on May 4 and had seen no further action as of September 2026.

Iran’s Tomcats are the last question mark. Israeli strikes hit their base at Isfahan on March 7 and 8, 2026, and satellite imagery confirmed at least two, and more likely three, destroyed F-14s.

Israel said it had destroyed Iran’s last Tomcats, but in June 2026 Iranian state media released footage presented as an F-14 returning from a mission. The clip has never been independently dated or located, so whether any Tomcat still flies is unresolved.

The Super Hornet today

The Super Hornet is still the backbone of US carrier aviation, but its production line is closing. Northrop Grumman confirmed on January 27, 2026 that it had finished its last structural parts for new jets, and Boeing is due to deliver the final new-build aircraft by 2027.

More than 600 were built for the US Navy, Australia and Kuwait. It now shares the deck with the F-35C, a pairing we cover in our F-35 vs F/A-18 comparison.

Its replacement is the F/A-XX, a sixth-generation carrier fighter that will also replace the EA-18G Growler. The Navy missed its own August 2026 target to choose between Boeing and Northrop Grumman, and no winner had been named as of September 10, 2026.

Is an F-14 faster than an F-35?

Yes, by a wide margin. The Tomcat’s published top speed is Mach 2.34, while the US Naval Academy lists the carrier-based F-35C at Mach 1.6.

Top speed is one of the few measures where the 1970s jet still comes out ahead. It is also one of the least useful ones in modern air combat, which is decided mostly by who detects whom first.

Could an F-14 beat an F-22?

Very unlikely, and the two never met in combat. The Air Force says the F-22’s low-observable design and sensor suite let its pilot “track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected.”

The Tomcat has no stealth, and its speed edge counts for little against a jet that cruises above Mach 1.5 without afterburner. We compare the pair in detail in our F-22 vs F-14 comparison.

The verdict

For the job it was built to do, defending a carrier against a Cold War bomber raid, the F-14 was the better aircraft. It was faster, flew farther and carried a missile designed for exactly that fight.

For the Navy it actually had after 1991, the Super Hornet was the better buy. It does fighter, strike and tanker work from one airframe, needs a fraction of the maintenance, and more than 600 were built.

Even Tomcat crews came round to it. More than 14 years after the last F-14 retired, Baranek said “nothing bad has happened, so it looks like the decision wasn’t a major error.” For where both sit in the wider field, see our ranking of the best fighter jets in the world.