The first US Navy unit equipped with digitally upgraded Northrop Grumman F-14Bs was due to be deployed to the Mediterranean Sea for fleet exercises on 3 October.
The event marks the initial operational capability for the upgraded F-14B, which was sanctioned as a programme in December 1991. The upgrade replaces obsolete avionics hardware with modern digital-databus-based technology, allowing improvements in computing, growth, reliability and maintainability.
The upgrade to 67 F-14Bs, which have older avionics, but the newer General Electric F110-400 engines of the D model, is intended to keep the aircraft operational until 2010, when the Boeing F/A-18E/F will be in service in large numbers. The update includes BOL chaff dispensers, AYK-14 mission computer, a new weapons computer and a tactical-information display.
The US Naval Weapons Test Squadron at NAS Point Magu, California, is now in the first phase of flight tests of follow-on navigation software which will enable the use of the global-positioning system (GPS) in the aircraft.
Initial operational capability of aircraft with the GPS and the new software is expected in 1999.
Source: Flight International