F-14s torn apart to deny Iran parts

Published 9:00 pm Monday, July 2, 2007

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon plans to destroy its dozens of retired F-14 fighter jets to deny Iran a source for desperately needed spare parts, a dramatic move though one that national security experts say is of more symbolic than practical value.

Within a day, a $38 million fighter jet that once soared as a showpiece of U.S. airpower can be reduced to shreds of twisted metal at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz., the military’s aircraft cemetery. Last month, a contractor finished the first phase of the effort, shredding roughly two dozen.

When it retired the F-14 last fall, the Defense Department intended to destroy spare parts unique to the Tomcat but sell thousands of others that could be used on other aircraft. It suspended sales of all F-14 parts after 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.

Among other tactics, middlemen for the countries misrepresented themselves to gain access to Defense Department auctions or bought sensitive surplus from U.S. companies that had acquired it from the Pentagon sales and weren’t supposed to allow its export.

Investigators also found some sensitive items accidentally slipping into surplus auctions.

Iran is the only country trying to keep Tomcats airworthy. The United States let Iran buy the F-14s in the 1970s when it was an ally, long before President Bush named it part of an “axis of evil.”

Iran’s F-14s came from the first of several increasingly sophisticated versions of the Tomcat. The conventional wisdom among national security experts is that though Iran aggressively seeks parts for its fleet, even if the Middle Eastern country could get its jets off the ground, it could do little with them except perhaps make mischief in the region.

“Those planes as they age are maybe the equivalent of Chevrolets in Cuba. They become relics of a past era,” said Larry Johnson, a former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the State Department in President George H.W. Bush’s administration.

“Even if they can put them in the air they are going to face more advanced weapons systems,” Johnson added.

Graham Allison, an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and now director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, sees value in the demolition as an intimidation tactic, showing Iranians how far ahead the United States is in military technology.

“I think actually it can have an important symbolic effect in communication that these crazy Americans are so capable that they have so many aircraft that they can take airplanes that are three generations back and put them through some fantastic machine that eats them up,” Allison said.

How many Tomcats?

The military’s “boneyard” in Arizona, the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base held 165 Tomcats at last count, believed to be the only ones left out of 633 produced for the Navy. The others were scavenged for parts, went to museums or crashed, according to the base.

The Navy plans to destroy all the remaining jets, Lt. Bashon Mann said.