Top Gun notwithstanding, the F-14 was one of the biggest pieces of garbage the Navy ever fielded. Incredibly heavy, horrible E-M characteristics, expensive, crappy swing wing (a wing design that was in-vogue in the 60s but has now been discredited). Interestingly the Navy wanted to keep buying more and more of these until the Fighter Mafia foisted the F-16 on the air force, and the Navy reluctantly took a variant of the F-16 and blew it up in size and renamed it the F-18 (the F-18 variant was actually the losing contender to be the F-16). If it wasn't for the Fighter Mafia, the Navy would still be buying pieces of crap like the F-14.

Interesting that nowhere in this article are the capabilities of the F-35 STOVL variant discussed, a weapon that the Navy is paying $100M+ for. That they are skipping that discussion and jumping into why they need NGAD is just disgusting.

Oh well, the Pentagon is just a giant building that buys weapons. Always looking for the next piece of kit to blow cash on.

And just while I'm on this tirade...there are almost no use cases where you need an airplane that goes faster than Mach 2. At that speed you are outside the envelope where you can fire a missile. If you are trying to design a fighter aircraft as an interceptor, you are doing it wrong...