Originally posted by Silver Snake:
Many aircraft are quite capable of recovering from flat spins. The F-14, however, is not one of them. It all comes down to the basic flight control system and areodynamics.
I had the chance to watch spin testing in the NASA spin tunnel at NASA Langley back in college (Aero/Mech double major 
). They used scale models with working flight controls in a verticle wind tunnel. Very cool to watch, and the only test model thay couldn't recover during the demo....the F-14A. 
I wonder if the ability to vary the geometry of individual wings might help in that problem, changing the center of mass just enough to move some air over a control surface.
TB
