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" Maint, cost and the thing never did live up to its hype. Same as the Tomcat."
Wrong on both counts. Look to the success both the Tom and the AIM-54 had against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war.
"They missed the only time they were used. I discount the Iranian AF claims."
Just because you discount it does not change the fact that by all avialable evidence, the Tom and Phoenix performed very well. If you choose to discount those exploits, you are willingly choosing to bias your opinion on the systems in question.
"The 4 kills made with the Tomcat were with AIMs 7 and 9."
Yep. Sure seems to me that the F-14s lived up to their hype on those two occasions.
"The last version of the 54 was upgraded to intercept low alt, cruise missiles. But the Navy relised that we had cheaper missiles already in the inventory. Ant the AMRAAM has an 80% sucess rate."
The AMRAAM actually has about a 60% combat success rate in real combat(last i checked). And we have NO missile in the inventory that matches the Phoenix's flight performance or range.
None.
In fact, any that we do have are still paper designs.
"Also the mission, intercepting fleets of high alt long range bombers, just isn't there anymore.""
You sure better hope so.
If you're wrong a lot of your Marine pals will end up on the bottom of the ocean some day....
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