The F-14A Aircraft is the basic platform of the F-14 series. It is equipped with two TF30-P-414A engines. Sixty "core" F-14A Aircraft are being upgraded with the AN/ALR-67 Countermeasure Warning and Control System, LANTIRN and the Programmable Tactical Information Display (PTID). In all F-14 series aircraft, the Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS) will be replaced by the Digital Flight Control System (DFCS). Designed in 1968 to take the place of the controversial F-111B, then under development for the Navy's carrier fighter inventory, the F-14A used the P&W TF30 engines and AWG-9 system and carried the six Phoenix missiles that had been intended for the F-111B. A completely new fighter system was designed around these with emphasis on close-in fighting "claws" along with standoff missile fighting. From its first flight on 21 December 1970, the F-14A went through five years of development, evaluation, squadron training and initial carrier deployments to become the carrier air wings' most potent fighter. Technical and financial problems that received a great deal of publicity were overcome in achieving this goal. In the late 1970s the Defense Department experienced very substantial engine problems both with the F-14 with the TF-30 engine, and with the F-16 and the F-15 with F-100 engines. They were so serious that there was consideration given to developing new engines for the aircraft, which would have been an enormously difficult undertaking. It was decided instead to make upgrades and improvements in the engines. The engines in the later models of the F-14 are entirely adequate for the purpose. The engines in the F-14As have been improved so that they are also effective, although they are not the engine the Navy would have put in the airplane from the beginning if there had been a more powerful engine design then. In the mid-1990s one change that was made in the F-14 was the introduction of a Digital Flight Control System to the F-14 to prevent the pilot from making an unsafe or unauthorized maneuver, reducing the burden on the pilot to remember what cannot or should not be done under certain conditions. Funding for the new Digital Flight Control System -- about $80 million -- was obtained by reprogramming money in Fiscal 1996. The existing TARPS Pod System will be replaced with the TARPS Digital Imaging System. The Bol Chaff System will be added as part of an integrated modification program. The incorporation of these changes will not change the designation of the F-14A.

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