Regarding the Mirages, i'm still of the opinion that Iran cannot afford to throw away a single airframe until a steady supply is 100% assured either from imports or indigenous.
This mentality has hurt IRIAF more than anything. A smaller and efficient functional fleet >> huge circus fleet with no pylons, no radars, no weapons.
I can't see why the Bayyennat radar from the F-4 Dowran cannot be repackaged to fit the MF1 nose, then it can fire whatever missiles the F-4 Dowran can, including an indigenous AIM-7 or PL-12 or whatever, and any antiship missiles/land attack missiles that will fit (the Mirage could carry Exocets already). So suddenly you have another 20 odd BVR capable multirole airframes.
The issue is the $$. Math does not add up at all in case of Mirages.
- A 100% locally built Kowsar from scratch costs 10-12 Million USD (Serial 3-7400). That is without the armaments. A fully operationalized machine flying with a package of the following will cost around 15-17 Million USD:
2 x All Aspect WVR Fattar/Azarakhsh
2 x BVR R-77ER/Local AIM-7F equivalent (Hypothetical)
1 Drop Tank
5 SDB PGM
- A Rebuilt Kowsar from the F-5E/F repository of parts costs around 7.5 Million USD. Fully functionalized one will cost around 13-15 Million USD. The new package includes
New Fuselage skin, reworked interior architecture to house avionics
2 x OWJ Turbojets + new pressure valves/pumps
New Gears, wings, elevators, and tails with composite control surfaces with some level FBW
Cockpit layout, Ejection Seats, Canopy
Radar+ECM, E-warfare (Jammer, RWR, Chaff), Nav-Comm (Radio, TACAN), Bi-Duplex Data L
If the above package minus the turbojets and fuselage work costs around 5-7 Million USD, then this means the same package implementation on ~20-22 MF-1 will cost 150-200 Million USD including the armaments. The aircraft has no deep local infrastructure where its rather complex SNECMA Atar turbojets can be re-built or produced locally like J-85II/OWJ, I for one has never seen a single photo of its fuselage or turbojets being reworked upon the way we see Phantoms, Cats or Tigers being opened up inside Iran. Also, the plane has very less nose and fuselage area to house avionics, it won't be able to house F-4E Dowran's Bayyenat-I. It will only be another faster Kowsar-I.
In those 150-200 Million USD IRIAF rather get the following:
- 2-3 x more SU-35S
- 10-12 x Newly built Kowsar-I
Ideal solution for Mirages will be to hand them over to IRGC-AF or just sell/gift them to whoever takes them.
Same goes for the much maligned F-7, put a repackaged/ resized Bayyennat in the nose and the electronics from Kowsar and voila, a useful addition to IRIAF. But really for the F-7 and F-5/Kowsar to have BVR capability they need a smaller BVR missile like the Derby or MICA, so that the performance penally is not too great.
F-5 airframe can easily house a normal BVR missile of R-77/AIM-7F size. We do not know what is happening behind the scenes. If Su-35S come with excessive R-77ER then they can easily be slaved to local SAIRAN radars both of which come from Grifo origin through Chinese NRIET and we know Chinese radars easily provide track info to Russian BVR.
So between the long range 150-180km Fakkour variants (only for F-14)
Only for F-14AM.
The F-14A => F-14AM upgradation and operationalisation with Fakour-90 itself costs around 5 Million USD.
medium range 100-120km iranian active radar AIM-7 (for F-14, F-4, Mirage F1 and MiG-29)
MIG-29 9.12 in IRIAF service can not fire anything other than the R-27R1 SARH BVR missile. It has a relic radar, even if they get upgraded to SMT standard (quoting BT) then they will get R-77ER as a BVR weapon instead of hypothetical AIM-7.
You are right about Iranian AIM-7E2 or F on Kowsar and F-4 Dowran. That only if we actually get the confirmation of local AIM-7E2/F, right now we only have a pic from an exhibition.
Current Mirages have no functionalized radars. They fly on radio or with chase planes.
and a lighter weight 60-80 km range iranian Derby (F-7 and F-5/Kowsar and possibly the Mirage too), the BVR needs will be covered. Plus the AIM-9X equivalent for WVR combat.
My only true hope is the bold part because we have published + pictorial info about a local CCD imaging missile with four independent motors controlling its canards while the fins have no rollerons, meaning there is steering at fins and there is the installation of a local motor with larger fuel compartment to extend range.
If IRIAF is serious in its interception game then that is the solution for its current and future F-5 derivatives. AIM-9X Block III has a range of 56-60 KM that's well into the BVR envelope
LINK. An Ideal weapon would be an HMD-slaved FnF CCD imaging missile with a no-escape zone within 60 KM. A low RCS fighter carrying IRST, HMD and such a missile will be very hard to deal with.
sam-2 sam-2m and sam-3, i wonder if they could not at least made it compatible with something relevant ?
I guess the designer had the mentioned missiles SARH/ARH illumination reference to test the transponder against so they mentioned it.
I learnt this lesson myself that Lab guys should never try their hands at marketing.
wonder if kowsar radar is not already better than those
The manufacturer designed the system not for single type of plane only. IRIAF F-4 fleet needs this thing more than Kowsar because them being the attack trucks.
and that mirage-f1 is hilarious specially the long list of the weapon they put on it .
the only use i knew for it is dropping iron bomb on the head of Taliban . it literally is useless for anything else
I was literally thinking the same, 17 are currently operational, they are fast and can gain altitude very quickly (45-50K ft/min), they can drop heavy dumb bombs on Talib pedos if housed at Birjand.
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What is going on ?