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Although the Phantom was unquestionably Phabulous, here would be little value to the USN in developing a Super Phantom using Spey. Although its higher thrust did benefit the F-4 down low, the increased drag at medium and high altitudes negated the gains and the J79 Phantoms actually outperformed the Spey ones in those situations. Plus, you're adding a whole new engine not used anywhere else in the US to the supportability and logistics chain. Just adding thrust without updating other systems, improving maintainability (there was a reason that one of its nicknames was "The Beast")and making aerodynamic and fuselage changes to take advantage of the thrust would mean you'd end up with simply a noisier Phantom. Making those changes would be very expensive. Not to be overlooked is the reality that some members of Congress would use work on a Super Phantom as a rationale for killing the far superior F-14. USAF faces a similar situation; they didn't want too much more development going into the F-4 lest that be used as an excuse to kill the F-15. As an alternative to the Congressionally imposed Hornet, a better and probably cheaper choice would have been to continue with the F-14 into the original F-14B & C series (If they could have gotten the F401 to work) and move forward with the A-7X, the latter aircraft discussed elsewhere in this forum. As far as exports go, of the aircraft listed there was no export interest, except for a country with Australia's needs, for the F-111. It wasn't that other nations couldn't afford the F-14, it's that except for Iran (where we wanted the Shah's cash to overcome a funding shortfall early in the Tomcat program), we wouldn't allow any other nation to buy the F-14. In any case, it would become an issue of cost vs. benefit for vastly reworking the F-4. A princely sum would be needed to produce a true Super Phantom and who would fund that? And of course Dassault was out there with a whole family of modern Mirages which might be cheaper to buy and operate than a vastly updated Phantom. Boeing partnered with Pratt for a Super Phantom powered by two PW1120s (which would have been a much better choice than the Spey), but abandoned it early in the program when they saw what it would cost and how small the market would be. Similarly, Israel built and flew a prototype of their Super Phantom 2000 using the PW1120 but abandoned it because of the cost, a withdrawl of support by MDD and the fact that they could buy F15s and -16s which gave them more bang for the buck.
Although the Phantom was unquestionably Phabulous, here would be little value to the USN in developing a Super Phantom using Spey. Although its higher thrust did benefit the F-4 down low, the increased drag at medium and high altitudes negated the gains and the J79 Phantoms actually outperformed the Spey ones in those situations. Plus, you're adding a whole new engine not used anywhere else in the US to the supportability and logistics chain. Just adding thrust without updating other systems, improving maintainability (there was a reason that one of its nicknames was "The Beast")and making aerodynamic and fuselage changes to take advantage of the thrust would mean you'd end up with simply a noisier Phantom. Making those changes would be very expensive. Not to be overlooked is the reality that some members of Congress would use work on a Super Phantom as a rationale for killing the far superior F-14. USAF faces a similar situation; they didn't want too much more development going into the F-4 lest that be used as an excuse to kill the F-15. As an alternative to the Congressionally imposed Hornet, a better and probably cheaper choice would have been to continue with the F-14 into the original F-14B & C series (If they could have gotten the F401 to work) and move forward with the A-7X, the latter aircraft discussed elsewhere in this forum.
As far as exports go, of the aircraft listed there was no export interest, except for a country with Australia's needs, for the F-111. It wasn't that other nations couldn't afford the F-14, it's that except for Iran (where we wanted the Shah's cash to overcome a funding shortfall early in the Tomcat program), we wouldn't allow any other nation to buy the F-14. In any case, it would become an issue of cost vs. benefit for vastly reworking the F-4. A princely sum would be needed to produce a true Super Phantom and who would fund that? And of course Dassault was out there with a whole family of modern Mirages which might be cheaper to buy and operate than a vastly updated Phantom.
Boeing partnered with Pratt for a Super Phantom powered by two PW1120s (which would have been a much better choice than the Spey), but abandoned it early in the program when they saw what it would cost and how small the market would be. Similarly, Israel built and flew a prototype of their Super Phantom 2000 using the PW1120 but abandoned it because of the cost, a withdrawl of support by MDD and the fact that they could buy F15s and -16s which gave them more bang for the buck.
