THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996 TAG: 9606140553
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 97 lines
Nearly a quarter century after it joined the fleet, the Navy's F-14 Tomcat is getting a new set of claws.
They come in the form of a dark gray, torpedo-shaped cylinder slung under the fighter's starboard wing, a tube crammed with electronic gadgetry that turns the venerable jet into the Navy's newest precision bomber.
The pod gives the Tomcat the power to scream along at more than 500 mph, find a target from 20 miles away and blow it to bits with a laser-guided bomb. It enables the fighter's crew to see what lies ahead in far more detail than with radar or the naked eye, day or night.
And it does this while keeping the F-14 the same fast, dogfight-ready, carrier-based scrapper it's been since its introduction in 1972.
Dubbed LANTIRN - for Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night - the pod makes its debut with the Jolly Rogers of Fighter Squadron VF-103 in a ceremony today at Oceana Naval Air Station.
``This really is the single greatest weapons system improvement in the history of the aircraft,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Pat Cleary, an F-14 pilot with the Virginia Beach-based squadron. ``What we've seen using it are just phenomenal results.''
``It gives us extended eyes,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Keith Menz, a radar intercept officer who will use the LANTIRN from a Tomcat's back seat. ``It gives us electronic guidance.
``We can fight our way in, drop our bomb on target and on time, and fight our way back out.''
Today's 1 p.m. unveiling, featuring remarks from Navy Secretary John H. Dalton and a flyover by LANTIRN-equipped F-14s, comes two weeks before the system's first deployment aboard the carrier Enterprise.
Nine of VF-103's 14 Tomcats will be adapted to use the system. The carrier, which leaves Norfolk for the Mediterranean on June 28, will carry six LANTIRN pods for use on those jets.
Produced by Orlando, Fla.-based Lockheed Martin Electronics & Missiles, the pod uses an infrared eye to extend the fighter's vision and a laser to lock onto ground targets and guide the plane's ``smart'' bombs.
It also houses a global-positioning system, separate from the F-14's own electronics, that enables it to determine its position, the target's location and the route a bomb should take to hit its mark.
Those features promise to give the F-14 a new raison d'etre: Rather than a fighter designed to drop ``dumb'' bombs and fight other aircraft, the LANTIRN-modified Tomcat Strike Fighter will be able to share surgical bombing duties with the F/A-18 Hornet.
``The public is starting to demand this kind of capability,'' said Cmdr. Jim Greene, VF-103's executive officer. ``Not having that meant there probably weren't going to be too many places where you'd get used.''
``Before, when we were using dumb bombs, you could hit it if you could see it,'' Cleary said. ``But this thing just shacks its targets, and the aircraft is 5 1/2 miles away when it impacts.''
From the fighter's back seat, the radar intercept officer controls the system with a joystick beside his left thigh. Before him, an 8-by-8-inch screen, huge by warplane standards, displays the infrared picture or information gleaned from the pod's other systems.
``If I get a radar contact from, say, 25 miles away, I can use the (infrared) to find out whether it's a large airliner or three smaller aircraft flying in formation,'' said Greene, who has flown the F-14 since 1979.
``I won't be able to ID it until I'm closer, but it gives me that much more information to work with.''
Because the pod's ``brains'' are self-contained, hangar-deck crews can remove it from one jet and bolt it to another with a minimum of fuss.
Already used in slightly different form on Air Force F-15s and F-16s, LANTIRN may signal the style of many future weapons systems: As the cost of replacing aged planes heads for the heavens, the military may turn increasingly to self-contained, strap-on pods that make it possible to upgrade fighters and bombers without redesigning the planes themselves.
That means big savings. The Navy has requested $358 million over the next year to outfit 210 Tomcats with the system, according to Jane's Defence Weekly, while a new plane with the strike fighter's muscle would cost tens of millions of dollars apiece.
``That's increasingly the trend now, with low budget availability and the high cost of equipment,'' said Lockheed Martin spokesman Douglas McCurrach. ``I think you're going to see more and more of this.''
The approach saves not only money, but time: The LANTIRN pod reaches the Jolly Rogers less than three years after the Navy and Lockheed Martin began discussing it, and just seven months after the two signed a contract to produce the system.
``Lockheed Martin sent down three or four wizards,'' said Capt. Dale Snodgrass, commander of Fighter Wing Atlantic. ``We sent in some wizards of our own. We had a bunch of really smart guys, took the bridles off 'em, and let 'em go.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MORT FRYMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
With the LANTIRN system, F-14s will be able to extend their
usefulness in day and night operations. Before, they dropped bombs
on visible targets - now they'll shoot from a distance.
Color photo by MORT FRYMAN\The Virginian-Pilot
Jolly Rogers Squadron's Lt. Cmdr. Pat Cleary says the LANTIRN system
is the F-14's single greatest weapons improvement.
KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVY F-14 TOMCAT by CNB