have to return to the carrier as quickly as possible to re-arm. During that time, its slow speed and lack of dogfighting ability would make it an easy target for any escorting forces in the strike package. These arguments eventually won out, and, when combined with a desire to cut military spending in pursuit of a balanced budget, led to the cancellation of the F6D in December 1961. However, the idea of a long-range interceptor was accepted even by those that did not support the F6D. Around this time, the Air Force had been studying its own interceptor needs and had made some progress on their North American XF-108 Rapier design, along with supporting radars and missiles. With the ending of the Missileer, the Navy turned to these projects to see if they could be adapted to their needs. Hughes had been working on the GAR-9 Falcon, a very large missile design similar to the Eagle in many ways. Hughes was also supplying the AN/ASG-18 radar system for the F-108, and while it was less advanced than the AN/APQ-81 and lacked track-while-scan, it had even greater range. Although the F-108 was cancelled at about the same time as the Missileer, the Air Force was interested in keeping the weapons and radar programs alive for their Lockheed F-12 interceptor project. Hughes proposed that the systems could be adapted for Navy use as well, offering a newer version of the Falcon as the AAM-N-11 Phoenix, and a modified version of the radar as the AN/AWG-9. The Navy was eventually forced to participate in the TFX joint-services program that resulted in the General Dynamics/Grumman F-111B, which would have used these systems. When the F-111B ran into intractable problems in terms of aircraft performance as an air-to-air fighter and operational difficulties as a sea-based aircraft aboard aircraft carriers, the same systems were instead fitted to the F-14 Tomcat. The Missileer's lasting contribution was not only its systems, but its engines. The TF30, with an afterburner, was used on both the F-111 and F-14, and turbofans are now commonplace in military jets. But while the TF30 was well-suited to the land-based fighter-bomber performance parameters of the F-111s and FB-111s operated by the U.S. Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, it was highly susceptible to compressor stalls in high angle-of-attack flight regimes and proved to be a marginal powerplant for the U.S. Navy's air