Iran is reportedly buying 24 new chinese fighters of J-10 type: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/916335.html J-10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-10 Engine Lyulka-Saturn AL-31FN For scale modellers Trumpeter already produced quite a good kit of this bird in 1/72 scale. Line drawing:
Why spend the money to buy planes which are inferior to those of your appointments? I would rather put the money in SAM's or Anti-Aircraft weapons then buy more planes.
Exact tactical characteristics of J-10 are not yet confirmed so which plane is better or inferior is still questionable. However i agree that 24 J-10 fighter planes will not get them air superiority in eventual war. Also reports about vector thrust and some additional new characteristics of improved J-10 or Super 10 are still a matter of speculation as is the status of the program of Super 10. Take also in consideration that with much smaller fleet they did manage to wrestle at least local air superiority from much larger Iraqi AF in the 80's ( for some time they reigned supreme in Iraqi airspace) and are quite capable to quickly improve tactics (which Iraqis were never quite able to do). BTW they are buying billions of USD worth of anti-aircraft defences material i Russia ( systems Tunguska (confirmed), Thor-M (confirmed), S-300 (unverified reports)...). Nobody realy knows what exactly they bought and what still waits to be delivered. I do know that Chinese are selling them antiship missiles (like the one that hit Israeli ship last year in Lebanese territorial waters), don't know about Russian deliveries of antiship missiles tough. As a scale moddeler i'm quite interested how will they paint them ( desert camo would look great on this bird). same interest in pakistani planes when they are delivered.
have you ever read the book sadams secrets by Georges Sada, he was a pilot during the Iran-Iraq war, its quite interesting. anyways I thought that the Iranian airforce was not inferior but had F-4's but after the American ground crews left the planes were wreck with problems. also a side note was the MiG-17 superior to the F-4D?
Phantoms and Tomcats and also F-5 were flying trough the entire war and are still flying today. Iranian groundcrews were wery capable and well trained. They had huge amounts of spare parts as they were considered as US forward base in case of US-SSSR conventional war. For same reason they had almost more AF bases as they had planes and could rotate almost daily between them. In close combat with a good pilot MiG-17 pilot could kill a Phantom ( Vietnamese did prove that to good effect). MiG was more manourable but slower and depending on version not armed with A-A missiles (PF did have them). Iraqi pilots were we kicked in the arse by Iranians. They did pull themselves up with influx of new eqipment ( MiG-23, Mirage F1, MiG-25, Tu-22...) but they still had huge problems with IRIAF. Basicly IRIAF was extremly well trained ( by US) and regularily took part in excercises with US, Pakistan and did patrol SSSR boder and also cooperated with CIA in their "clak and dagger" activities against soviets. IrAF on the other hand was mostly soviet trained ( not realy good) and did not recive realy modern stuff until 1982. For good and reliable articles on 1. Persian gulf war i.e. Iraq-Iraq air war look here at ACIG: I Persian Gulf War, 1980-1988 By Tom Cooper & Farzad Bishop I Persian Gulf War: Iraqi Invasion of Iran, September 1980 By Tom Cooper & Farzad Bishop, with additional details from N. R. Fire in the Hills: Iranian and Iraqi Battles of Autumn 1982 By Tom Cooper & Farzad Bishop And general their Arab peninsular and Persian gulf database: http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/cat_index_15.shtml
i belive the iranians have the same state of the art , hi tech soviet anti aircraft weaponry that performed so well recently against the israelies when they flew the length of syria ,bombed targets and flew back accross syria again while thumbing their noses ..no wonder the iranians want state of the art "chinese" fighters this time ...and make that a rush order , takeout , and hold the fortune cookies please !
According to my info IDAF went to great lenghts with decoy action on the border at the time. According to my info in decoy action perticipated: 4x F-15 2x F-16 and 3x C-130 In decoy action planes simulated excercise along Syrian border and more than 70 times breeched into Syrian airspace sometimes to the depth of 13km with times of crossing from 2 and up to 12 minutes. Basicly this is quite common ( in 2004 Syria breeched Israeli airspace in coodinated fashion 12 planes to the depht of 22 km) and is normally not a reason to shoot. When Syrians were busy with decoys 1 F-16 flew below radar and bombed what now appears to be storage of long range rockets (according to numerous sources N-Koraean Long-Dong missiles). IDAF however did not do themselves a favour as Syrian AF collected the data from various souces and analised it and pieced together the route and regime of flying and now plugedd the holes in their AA defences. BTW Israel breched Syrian airspace in this manner 6 times ( the bombing run included). Syrians did not manage to get info on Israeli routes and regimes of flying up to this last one. IDAF probably has alternative routes but Syrians will be more watchfull next time as well. BTW flying the lenght of Syria is questionable as IDAF quite commonly breeches in SYrian airspace from Turky or Mediteranian.
wow six breaches in one day , it sounds like the israelis pretty much fly over syrian whenever they feel like it and the syrians dont even really mind .i wonder what happens if syrian jets go wandering 20 miles into israeli airspace ?
Nothing ussualy happens on either side even if Syrians fly 20km into Israel. It seems you realy didn't read my post. There was 70+ breaches that day. Breaches like bombing run were 6 in number and spanning across few years. Breaches like those 70 + are normally not a couse for shooting and are regular occurance between Syria and Israel from both sides (Greece and Turkey too but that is another topic). Basicly they end with target locks and/or scrambling fighters of opposing side and are ment to get info on opposing sides defences or just getting them to react and not ment to provoke war which neither side wants.
BTW Israeli bombing could be a casus beli for war and Syrians would be quite within the borders of international law to retaliate.
TISO: My understading was that, after the fall of the Shah of Iran, the Iranian Tomcats had their claws removed by Grumman avionics tech-support, who removed sensitive electronic boards. This negated their superior air-to-air abilities and more or less neutered the Iranian "Cats." I'm not sure they have been flyable since that time... That J-10 looks--in many respects--like a hybrid F-16 with canards. Tim
Tomcats were and are still flying. As is wrote Shah was a main US ally in the region and as such bought way too much spare parts - sensitive electronic eqipment included. In case of war with SSSR such deliveries would not be possible or would at least be difficoult. Iranian pilots and ground crews were very well trained. US advisors did sabotage tomcats but Iranians were able to get them operating. As the word goes Iraqis were by the end of the war so scared of Tomcats radar signature which ment that Phoenix missile will soon follow, that USN in II. gulf war (1991) had a problem aquiring radar lock as they would run like hell. IRIAF Tomcats also served as FAC for low flying F-5's (flying low in the mountains...) and later also as fighter bombers. BTW don't forget Oliver North (now correspondant for FOX News) and his crew selling spare parts in mid 80's to Iran.
TISO: Interesting site... I did some reading there myself. Suffice to say, it appears Iranian Tomcats ruled the airspace in the Iran-Iraq War. Interestingly, many of the Iranian Tomcat aircrews were released from prison to return to flying duty... But from another site: "By 1987, however, the air force faced an acute shortage of spare parts and replacement equipment. Perhaps 35 of the 190 Phantoms were serviceable in 1986. One F-4 had been shot down by Saudi F-15s, and two pilots had defected to Iraq with their F-4s in 1984. The number of F-5s dwindled from 166 to perhaps 45, and the F-14 Tomcats from 77 to perhaps 10. The latter were hardest hit because maintenance posed special difficulties after the United States embargo on military sales." ---from globalsecurity.org website. It's a good thing the presence of only one Iranian "Tomcat" was enough to send the Iraqi's running at high-speed for home." It doesn't appear they were available in great numbers, though it appears their presence was felt through most of the Iran-Iraq War. Another source says they bought critical parts on the "black market" and learned to manufacture some of the stuff themselves. Tim
Iran were forced to start canabilizing their F-14's in the late 80's, just to keep them flying... Yet despite this and the amount of sorties it restricted for the Iranian pilots, they logged up to 80 kills at the loss of only one aircraft lost in combat in the Iran-Iraq War... More were lost to the unreliable engines... The last time any significant number of Iranian Tomcats was seen was in a 1985 flyover by 25... http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_211.shtml The Russians offered to replace the US Pratt&Whitney engines with the Al-31F back in the 90's, so I wouldn't be suprised if they were behind whatever amount of Iranian Tomcats remain airworthy I was also suprised to hear that Iran has produced a home-grown Stealth fighter, the Shafaq (yet to fly...)... This makes Iran the second country after the US to implement Stealth technology, if I'm not mistaken... it seems like a real rabbit out of the arms-embargo hat! of course, the limitations of the Iranian aeroscape industry show in that it is such a small jet, but nevertheless I find it amazing that Iran has designed a fighter which ISN'T just an F-5E with two vertical stablizers instead of one let alone a stealth aircraft
tiso , are you saying that syrian jets routinely fly 22 killometers into irsraeli airspace without incident ?
Given how so many world governments have a coniption fit if the Israelis give the Arabs so much as a dirty look, that's not terribly surprising.
Don't remeber someone going into a fit over this. Even the recent bombing almost nobody compalined (except usual suspects of Russia, China, N.Korea). BTW this goes on for years from both sides. With occasional Israeli bombing. Same situation you have betveen Turks and Greeks over the Med. As i understand that is now almost a turist atraction on the islands (F-16 of boths sides and greek Mirages dogfighting over the islands) and when accident happens both sides blame the other side.
there was no teeth gnashing arab fit because they dont want to discuss the targets that idf hit and also dont want to dwell on their obvious loss of face as the iaf wandered about at will over the supposedly deadly syrian aaa defences ...the syrians should just jam over to an idf weapons depot and hit it with an airstrike ,i wonder why they havent? Perhaps because such an attack would bring an immediate and well-executed Israeli response?
