IRIAF | News and Discussions

[drmeson]

Iran is unlikely to be able to build anything except for F-4s until sanctions are removed and then even it will be very challenging. Iran has built some prototypes over the years, the issue is that they don't match or surpass global standards or even a modernized F-4, so then what is the point. The flanker at this point is Iran's most feasible option. Many people here object to such a proposition, but it is what it is. Iran has limited options and its airforce needs a sooner than later.

In modern combat, F-4 has no place.

10 m2 RCS airframe will be tracked from 200 km away by Captor AESA of EF-2000, Rafale, F/A-18EF who will fire barrages of Meteor-BVRAAMS, AIM-120C/D at it from ~150 KM while it can't replicate this attack on them. Even the Dowran upgraded ones have a tracking range of ~100 KM and no low weiht BVR missile on them. Low maneuverability of F-4 ensures it cant survive against modern-era small low RCS maneuverable fighters.

It's only role is as an attack aircraft that can launch AShCM or LACM from Iranian airspace. This can be done from the ground too. IRGC has MaRV GVs that can land at enemy head at 4-5 Mach and UCAVs that can enter enemy airspace undetected.

Iran needs interceptors, not attack aircraft. Lowest possible RCS, small agile airframes with electronics so advanced that they can track+jam+attack enemy from distance and make its life a living hell in the sky. EF-2000, JAS-39, F-16D/V, F/A-18EF, Rafale ... Age of heavy bomb trucks is gone.

 

[Sineva]

That black bomb next to it is huge

There are some other interesting possibilities for these weapons.
One option is to remove the wing kit and use it as a straight short ranged satellite guided bomb.In this role other options would be fitting it with laser or optronic seekers.
Another option in the long range role would be fitting it with a back up optronic or radar imaging seeker to provide it with dsmac in case satellite guidance is being disrupted.
Essentially these could provide both the irgcaf and the iriaf with a common family of locally developed modern air launched pgms.

 

[TheImmortal]

At some point in past, I calculated IRIAF budget to be as low as 200M USD plus whatever funds they make from their various connected companies repairing helicopters and private planes for the civilian sector as a regional maintenance hub in the Middle East.

I highly doubt the IRIAF budget is more than 1B and likely much less. Hence why nearly everything they do is test bed level projects, they don’t have funds for much more when considering most of the funds goes to operating and maintaining the current fleet.

 

[SalarHaqq]

Nasr-1 tested by iran army in 2008 . at best in 2006 it was in development phase

Then with what was known to the broad public in 2006, any of the other cited options was still plausible.

the knowledge can't be incorporated so fast , it take years .

Depends on the type of information.

they find USSR long range radar in eastern russia sooner than usa army .

But they didn't identify the exact type nor its specifics. This is outside the reach of ordinary radio enthusiasts.

but to the question nebu-svu is not exactly new , its radio signature is already well documented after Russia and Belarus used it in eastern Europe

Military intelligence is not made available to the public.

no but he will be busy countering it that give chance to more robust system doing their work

In that case the system does represent a potential threat (of whatever degree) to the enemy. Otherwise the enemy would not bother dedicating time and resources to neutralizing it. Therefore its role is by definition more than just that of a decoy, even if it is limited in scope. The definition of a decoy is something else.

and its what ?, the general science , we knew it from the day we get our first radars, we didn't need to dismantle nebu-svu to learn that

The technical details of present day military radar designs aren't in the public domain.

 

[Joe_Adam]

I personally believe IRIAF has no money to buy anything. Tom Copper and BT claim that there are internal IRIAF groups that pull each other legs through lobbyism for $ which resulted in leadership cutting the budget to 200-400 million for a large force out of defence budget of 24 Billion USD. Strategy has less to do with it. A Cordesmann (Janes) claims that IRIAF offers no value to Iranian doctrine so Strategists just gave up on this force altogather.

Make of it as you will.

- The sources mention above such as Tom Copper who is a graphics artist and claims to have access to the inner working/secrets of Iran's air force, is a pretender who cannot be believed since he is neither a military expert nor a reliable source. He simply makes a living on making up fictional stories about Iran, and he hates Iran because his task is to fool Iranian officers to give him tips or insider info about Iran, he is simply an Israeli agent.
- Cordesmann (an old adviser to Sen. McCain) on the other hand is an empty suit who makes his living on collecting open source info from newspapers, magazines, and TV shows. He is a brain-dead old fool who states in many of his annual Iran's military assessment report that Iran is uncapable of matching lowly Jordan in military technologies. I wonder why an old useless fool such as Cordesmann is is still relevant as he is called upon by the Israeli controlled US congress to present his so-called assessments about Iran every year despite the fact that his assessments are exact copies of reports he has done since early 1990s with little or no real change or actual updates? What a surprise, he is a Zionist Jew, and he must make an easy living selling his rubbish at the expense of the US tax payers.

- Lastly, Janes is the favorite publication suitable for fat military semi-illiterate officers in the third world dictatorships who could barely spell (CHEESE). Their countries pay exuberant sums of money to that useless company to obtain their magazines for those useless officers to read as if they are reading real content-rich stuff, but that's not the case. Whatever Janes prints or utters is intended to berate Iran as a nation, and minimize Iran's advances in all aspects of defense technologies. Frankly, Janes is a mere outdated propaganda shop with very low quality output, and most of their info could be obtained from TV and western media for free. But due to its connection to the British MI6, and the Israeli Mossad its kept alive not for any useful intelligence, but for propaganda purposes, which is no longer working effectively due to advances in communication, and higher awareness among people about military matters.

 

[Joe_Adam]

"But if you wanted to simply achieve an “unmanned fighter jet” you could do it today. Turkey is well underway in that regard."

Hi,
With all due respect, I have to disagree with this statement as I see it contrary to reality, and way beyond Turkey's capacity for decades to come.
Is this statement based on reality i. e. verifiable information? If its from Turkish sources, then its a propaganda piece due to lack of any reliable corroboration as it's not known by any observer in the world. Turkey makes a lot of noise about many super Hi-Tech military systems, but such stories are morale boosters and none is based on facts, just day-dreaming by Erdogan and his cohorts.

Despite Turkey's easy access to Western technology, it still has no ability to design or make a SAM system, an effective modern radar, an MBT class diesel engine, or any four stroke engine all of which are much easer to produce than manufacturing an unmanned fighter jet in par with 4th and 5th generation fighter jets.

Turkey's industrial base and technology couldn't handle upgrading their fleet of M60 MBTs which were handled by the Israelis many years ago. Also, their entry into the UAV club 7 years ago is strictly assembly engineering of components and sub-systems imported wholly from UK, Canada, Austria, USA, and Leonardo of Italy. Turkey's only actual engineering contribution in their UAV(s) are the body panels, period.

To this moment, Turkey has no ability to design and manufacture any major part of a UAV including engine, navigation systems, electro-optics, or any significant sub-system. That's true across the board in every defense platform such as MBTs, Helicopters "the one they made "at least they claim" is an Italian Agusta A129 Mangusta) with the exception of the engines LHTEC CTS800-4N which are sourced from Rolls-Royce and Honeywell.

While UAVs are made by dozens of countries including Turkey, the fact remains; Turkey has neither the know-how nor the capacity at least for the next decade or beyond to produce any functional defense system indigenously including UAVs.

 

[drmeson]

.

I care zero for the personal opinions of people, I care for numbers and real evidence. Political affiliations has nothing to do with the evidence at hand which matters. Rest does not.

Tom Cooper's claims regarding inner lobbyism in IRIAF and MoD is supported by the fact that we have seen multiple meaningless good for nothing projects getting funded. According to him that is because of lobbyism.

Examples:

-F-7N offers nothing due to its short range, lack of any decent radar, avionics, no good weapon yet the plane is not being retired and some group (its handling squadrons?) have the balls to waste $ on its continuous overhauls and paintjobs. In a conflict these will serve as sitting ducks for enemies. We have seen its wings, VS being made inside Iran.

-Mirage F1 fleet is even worst than F-7N since the fleet has no radar, weapons or even the pylon to carry weapons. Why is it being overhauled and kept alive is beyond logic. Plane has virtually no value except for jet based aerial tourism perhaps.

F-5E/F fleet has 45-50 years old avionics yet the fleet is not being dismantled to provide help in Saegheh/Kowsar pproduction. They can barely track a F-4 size fighter at ~36 KM with their antique APQ153 (search upgraded). Good luck in a conflict against F-16V, F-18, EF-2000. Then somebody wasted money and years on Saegheh testbeds calling them in production fighters while they were just practice platforms for HESA to test/practice their manufacturing skills on. 6 airframes were wasted on that PR stunt, before that 3 were wasted on Azarakhsh, what could have been achieved by just 1-2 airframes.

All the while the actual fighters that we need are facing severe $ shortages.

- 60 airframes of F-14A yet only 34 are flyable. Only 10-16 are F-14AM upgraded which have the duty to .. get this .. provide Quick Reaction Alert from 4 TABs. Stretched out force !
- 23 airframes of MIG-29 fleet lack ARH BVR, E-warfare suites, they fly with MIG-23ML's radar
- Saegheh/Kowsar program is moving very slow despite the fact that these fighters can provide lots of value in E-warfare CAPs.
- No local light weight BVR
- Delayed local modern WVR
- Delayed Turbofans for next generation of Saeghe/Kowsar

Now Tom Cooper, BT, Cordesman may all be Zionists but these above written words are facts that we saw with our own eyes. We can sit here and call eveyone a liar but can we deny what we ourselves are seeing ? I would not.

 

[drmeson]

Is this statement based on reality i. e. verifiable information? If its based on Turkish information or sources its a propaganda piece since it is not obvious nor known to any observer in this world. Turkey makes a lot of noise about many super hi-Tech military systems, but such stories are morale booster and none is based on reality, just day-dreaming by Erdogan and his cohorts.

Turkey's industrial base and technology couldn't handle upgrading their fleet of M60 MBTs which were handled by the Israelis many years ago. Also, their entry into the UAV club 7 years ago is strictly assembly engineering of components and sub-systems imported from UK, Canada, Austria, USA, and Leonardo of Italy. Turkey's only actual engineering contribution in their UAV(s) are the body panels, period.

To this moment, Turkey has no ability to design and manufacture any major part of a UAV including engine, navigation systems, electro-optics, or any significant sub-system. That's true across the board in every defense platform such as MBT, Helicopters "the one they made "at least they claim" is an Italian Agusta A129 Mangusta) with the exception of the engines LHTEC CTS800-4N which are sourced from Rolls-Royce and Honeywell.

While UAVs are made by dozens of countries including Turkey, the fact remains; Turkey has neither the know-how nor the capacity at least for a next decade or beyond to produce any functional defense system indigenously including Drones "UAV".

Most of what you are saying is correct but Turkey has two big advantages over Iran in combat aviation

1) Its leadership focuses on TAF because they have no missile forces. Turkish AF is the only arm of Turkey that can attack an enemy so they have to maintain a large fleet.

2) Despite bipolar incomprehensible politics by Erdogan, Turkey still is part of the western alliance and has access to western vendors. Read BT's work on gymnastics Iran has to pull to keep its aircrafts flying. Just for a radar, Iran had to get China to copy an Italian smugled system for its fighters. When China ran away due to sanctions, Iran had to look for black market parts and eventually had to resort to local production. It took years to copy an Italian Leonardo Grifo-346 while Turkey can just get the system by placing orders. Its a huge advantage they have over Iran.

 

[lydian fall]

@waz

 

[TheImmortal]

Hi,
With all due respect, I have to disagree with this statement as I see it contrary to reality, and way beyond Turkey's capacity for decades to come.
Is this statement based on reality i. e. verifiable information? If its from Turkish sources, then its a propaganda piece due to lack of any reliable corroboration as it's not known by any observer in the world. Turkey makes a lot of noise about many super Hi-Tech military systems, but such stories are morale boosters and none is based on facts, just day-dreaming by Erdogan and his cohorts.

Despite Turkey's easy access to Western technology, it still has no ability to design or make a SAM system, an effective modern radar, an MBT class diesel engine, or any four stroke engine all of which are much easer to produce than manufacturing an unmanned fighter jet in par with 4th and 5th generation fighter jets.

Turkey's industrial base and technology couldn't handle upgrading their fleet of M60 MBTs which were handled by the Israelis many years ago. Also, their entry into the UAV club 7 years ago is strictly assembly engineering of components and sub-systems imported wholly from UK, Canada, Austria, USA, and Leonardo of Italy. Turkey's only actual engineering contribution in their UAV(s) are the body panels, period.

To this moment, Turkey has no ability to design and manufacture any major part of a UAV including engine, navigation systems, electro-optics, or any significant sub-system. That's true across the board in every defense platform such as MBTs, Helicopters "the one they made "at least they claim" is an Italian Agusta A129 Mangusta) with the exception of the engines LHTEC CTS800-4N which are sourced from Rolls-Royce and Honeywell.

While UAVs are made by dozens of countries including Turkey, the fact remains; Turkey has neither the know-how nor the capacity at least for the next decade or beyond to produce any functional defense system indigenously including UAVs.

While I am inclined to agree with you that Turkey routinely engages in propaganda and has not yet been able to build its own domestic supply chain for various high tech products, certain companies are pushing the envelope for what is possible within the confines of Turkish military sector.

My reference to Turkey building an unmanned jet was Barayktar Kizilelma

Again such a project is also within Iran’s capability today. But the question becomes are you merely building something for looks with limited capability increase over a standard heavy MALE UCAV?

We are still quite far away from the type of AI driven fighter jets people seem to think are just around the corner.z

 

[jauk]

- The sources mention above such as Tom Copper who is a graphics artist and claims to have access to the inner working/secrets of Iran's air force, is a pretender who cannot be believed since he is neither a military expert nor a reliable source. He simply makes a living on making up fictional stories about Iran, and he hates Iran because his task is to fool Iranian officers to give him tips or insider info about Iran, he is simply an Israeli agent.
- Cordesmann (an old adviser to Sen. McCain) on the other hand is an empty suit who makes his living on collecting open source info from newspapers, magazines, and TV shows. He is a brain-dead old fool who states in many of his annual Iran's military assessment report that Iran is uncapable of matching lowly Jordan in military technologies. I wonder why an old useless fool such as Cordesmann is is still relevant as he is called upon by the Israeli controlled US congress to present his so-called assessments about Iran every year despite the fact that his assessments are exact copies of reports he has done since early 1990s with little or no real change or actual updates? What a surprise, he is a Zionist Jew, and he must make an easy living selling his rubbish at the expense of the US tax payers.

- Lastly, Janes is the favorite publication suitable for fat military semi-illiterate officers in the third world dictatorships who could barely spell (CHEESE). Their countries pay exuberant sums of money to that useless company to obtain their magazines for those useless officers to read as if they are reading real content-rich stuff, but that's not the case. Whatever Janes prints or utters is intended to berate Iran as a nation, and minimize Iran's advances in all aspects of defense technologies. Frankly, Janes is a mere outdated propaganda shop with very low quality output, and most of their info could be obtained from TV and western media for free. But due to its connection to the British MI6, and the Israeli Mossad its kept alive not for any useful intelligence, but for propaganda purposes, which is no longer working effectively due to advances in communication, and higher awareness among people about military matters.

I agree all the sources are invalid at best and ludicrous at worst. These days quoting any non Iranian source as seminal is an exercise in futility.

While I am inclined to agree with you that Turkey routinely engages in propaganda and has not yet been able to build its own domestic supply chain for various high tech products, certain companies are pushing the envelope for what is possible within the confines of Turkish military sector.

My reference to Turkey building an unmanned jet was Barayktar Kizilelma

View attachment 874121
View attachment 874122


Again such a project is also within Iran’s capability today. But the question becomes are you merely building something for looks with limited capability increase over a standard heavy MALE UCAV?

We are still quite far away from the type of AI driven fighter jets people seem to think are just around the corner.z

Ahh gaslighting with simplistic interpretations of valid rationale from those ‘people’. Nope, that’s not what those ‘people’ have said through the years.

 

[sanel1412]

This should be home made AIM 7

 

[SalarHaqq]

It looks like analysis of the 80s, you are really not serious. No one answered my question which is why Iran has made a new F-4 cell.

Because no one understands what the word cell is referring to. The actual English translation for the French "cellule" in this context is air frame.

 

[Mr Iran Eye]

You really have to wait for the new announcements that will surprise because the speakers in this section are very painful to read, it is total forfeiture. Make war with them and you will instantly lose with their ridiculous analyzes.

 

[drmeson]

This should be home made AIM 7


View attachment 874135

Looks like a local made AIM-7E2.

could be the basis of local light weight BVR for F-14AM, F-4E/D, Kowsar-I.

I hope it has an ARH seeker and a longer range