re: Story behind a famous Navy flyby

quote:

---

The Tomcat was a great Cold War fleet defense interceptor, but by the mid 90's radar and avionics advances were starting to pass it by. We weren't so much worried anymore about the Russian Backfires and Foxbats that could be successfully engaged with the Phoenix and the development of active radar missiles that the enemy could fire and forget negated the Tomcat/Phoenix range advantage. At the same time, the rise of "smart" GPS guided weapons required huge avionics upgrades that weren't cost effective to turn the Tomcat into the Bombcat and they were becoming more maintenance intensive by the day. We flew mixed section with our sister squadron, the VF-21 Freelancers, on a lot of sorties over Iraq. I saw many 14's launch to go over the beach during Southern Watch that I wouldn't have been caught dead in.

---

Didn't the -14 have an advanced camera that could spot/see enemies from 40 miles out? In today's airbattlefield, do you think that would still be a good sensor system to have? I'm assuming that when SHTF in air combat, ECM technologies will negate radar