[IonImplantGuru]

One of the last five F-14A Tomcats taxis into Tucson's Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center. The Navy plane made famous in the moving "Top Gun" was retired from military service in September 2004 and flown to its final desert resting place.

[Jeff Head]

Very sad to see this...and just plain stupid if you ask me. Aircraft, tanks, naval vessels, many of them with many years service life remaining are being destroyed, sunk, doen away with, when at least some good part of them should be a part of our reserve in case of a major military confrontation. Lord knows we would need them until we could get our own manufacturing and steel production back up to speed in that event.

[puppypusher]

It’s terrible seeing such a beautiful aircraft being shredded but its better than having the parts going to our potential enemies,mainly Iran.

Iran had a large fleet of Tomcats and I'm sure they would love to get the parts to make those planes flyable again.

[ConorMacNessa]

[bybybill]

Did you have to show the picture of the F-14 being destroyed? It was an incredible platform. Wish some had been saved and hope the Iranians don`t have any that still fly.

[Technogeeb]

The work includes the recent demolition of 23 Tomcats in Arizona, accounting for about $900,000 of TRI-Rinse's contract.

Am I the only one who feels a bit sick when I see those beautiful birds being destroyed?

[sinanju]

A decade ago the Navy’s A-6’s were all made into octopuses’ gardens.

I.e. “artificial reefs.”

[IonImplantGuru]

Must be a maudlin experience, flying a one way final flight in birds like these, knowing that after lunch at the Davis-Montham O-club you're going to have to fly as passenger in some nondescript USAF biz jet to get back to home base.

One nice thing if one works around TUS (Tucson Int'l) is that the guys in the tower regularly invite incoming 'last flight' birds to come on over for a low-level pass in review, after which the planes head over to D-M (about 5 miles NE) to their last landing.

If a plane is going into storage, the pilot and whoever is along for the ride will usually sign the fuselage under a 'goodbye' note ... but if AMARG is just going to grind up the bird right away, even that little grace note seems a bit futile.

[MindBender26]

If the cost to destroy them is more than the salvage income from the scrap metal, why don’t then simply remove engines, weapons and avionics (and any other spooky stuff) and give them to VFW and Legion posts, etc.

We have a B-52 (a Dog model, I believe) on display at Orlando International. She looks great.

[WorkingClassFilth]

The Associated Press reported in January that buyers for Iran, China and other countries had exploited gaps in surplus-sale security to acquire sensitive U.S. military gear, including F-14 parts.

This has been done a long time before now. Back during the reign of krinton, US News & World Report ran a story on just this kind of problem. The Chinese were buying and reverse engineering US military avionics and advanced weapons systems despite prohibitions on the sale of sensitive technology or surplus items that were not destroyed beyond use. Krinton paid the Chinese handsomely by deliberately nixing the prohibitions even when informed of them by Sandy Burglar.

No mention of this...

[ovrtaxt]

I guess my dream of someday owning an old decommissioned fighter jet is growing dimmer.

A friend of mine had a MiG21, but he sold it.

[GBA]

What a waste. A sad, unnecessary waste. There must be a pylon to sit on or a gate to guard or a museum that has some space for everyone of the remaining F-14s. The PTB are supposedly worried that Iran is going to get some spare parts? C’mon, Iran could get new Sukhois and MiGs easier than replacement parts for their remaining F-14s. Cutting them up is a historical waste.

[Vision]

This sucks. When I was a kid this is the only jet I waned to fly.

RIP Tomcats, you didn’t get the respect you deserved. It's America's loss.

[rednesss]

Scrap titanium prices must be up. This story saddens me.

[bill1952]

Actually, I can’t believe that Pukin is gone.

He was okay, and I miss him.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Grumman in Decline

"..The decline and fall of the region's most prominent business was a landmark in the economic as well as social history of postwar Long Island. It came amid massive consolidation in the nation's aerospace and defense industry, which was responding to vastly reduced Pentagon spending after the Cold War ended. Only six months after that morning in Washington when Cheney said he was ending the F-14 program, the Berlin Wall fell. What was good for the advance of democracy was not necessarily good for jobs on Long Island..."

F-14D cancellation

"..Indeed, it was circa 1990 that the New York Congessional Delegation went up against SECDEF Cheney and boasted that they would simply "fix" the F-14D program the way they wanted on the hill. SECDEF retaliated by cancelling it altogether and ordering the production tooling broken up (ie termination with prejudice). .."

[Chode]

wonderful, now i can go throw up my supper...

[FlyVet]

A simpler solution would have been “Anyone caught selling F-14 parts to Iran will be waterboarded hourly for a week, then horsewhipped, then lynched.”

[rmlew]

That's just depressing. I don't have the heart to ping Pukingdog.

All hail Admiral Dick Cheney's F-18 navy.

[AFreeBird]

OMG! The pic in that article is so wrong on so many levels..... A proud, strong, beautiful warrior like that, sent off to that fate. It's down right criminal I tell you.

CRIMINAL!

[dynoman]

Video of the shredding;

Video: Mechanical Monsters Attack Fighter Jet