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A comment on Why Did the F-14 Tomcat Retire Decades Before Its Peers? (2021). Parent comment

Re:Why Did the F-14 Tomcat Retire Decades Before Its Peers? ... by rjsw on Sunday October 30, 2022 @12:07PM (#33395641)
Apparently, a comment on the TSR-2 [1] was that it was too heavy. The problem was that the manufacturer misinterpreted this and instead of just going away and designing a smaller aircraft they spent a lot of money trying to make the existing one lighter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2

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Re:Why Did the F-14 Tomcat Retire Decades Before Its Peers? ... by tengwar2 on Monday October 31, 2022 @08:02PM (#33415153)
It's not exactly practical to throw away a design and start on completely different aircraft! Also consider that the size was fixed by the fuel requirements and the wavelength of the sideways-looking radar. The second point was a dominant consideration in the earlier competition which led to the Avro 730 selection.
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