Whispering Death said:
Iranian F-14s don't get into the skies. They haven't had American-trained mechanics since 1979 and they haven't had parts since the mid-1980s. Sabotoge has also reportedly been inflicted on the Iranian F-14s. They don't get into the skies because when things break they don't have the new parts to replace it with. Without parts or skilled maintanaince there's no way to get those things in the air. Your own book source said that they could only get 10-30 flying during the Iran-Iraq war with Iran-Contra helping them... 20 years later and on the 'Axis of Evil' list? No F*ing way.
The Iranian F-14s don't fly.
Dont Worry :bravo:
Iranian F-14 can fly With third party parts :salute:
''Aja Aja Hwaiting & Gambatte Iran !!!!!''
Ingenuity keeps Iranian AF aloft
by Reuben F. Johnson
The true state of Iran’s armed forces has long been a question mark. Much of the Islamic republic’s military hardware was purchased from the U.S. during the Shah’s rule in the 1970s, but since 1980 there have been no formal relations with the U.S. and therefore no access to spare parts and technical assistance. Accordingly, Iran’s sources for maintaining and upgrading these platforms remain shrouded in mystery.
Last year, Aviation International News began investigating the future of Iran’s air power and has spoken to a number of the country’s defense industrial engineers and designers at several forums, including Iran’s first-ever international airshow. What emerges is that Iran continues to explore numerous surreptitious channels for keeping its U.S.-built war machinery operating, partly as compensation for its limited success in developing its own indigenous air platforms.
Thirty years ago the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF) was the showpiece of the Peacock Throne’s military machine. Generous oil revenues and the Shah’s status as a close ally of the U.S. had afforded Iran the opportunity to purchase significant numbers of weapons platforms that incorporated the latest U.S. military technology. These included more than 160 Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighters and more than 200 McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantoms.
But the jewel in the crown was the acquisition by Iran in 1976 of 79 two-seat Grumman F-14 Tomcats. At the time, this was the most advanced fighter in the U.S. arsenal, and the real hammer in its tool kit was the Hughes AN/AWG-9 radar in combination with the Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile. With a range in excess of 100 nm, the Phoenix was unmatched in its day.
Iran had no aircraft carriers, but the oil-rich country became the only foreign nation cleared to purchase the F-14. Iran needed the Tomcat as a land-based aircraft to counter incursions across the Iranian border by the Soviet air force. The Mikoyan MiG-25 Foxbat had been violating Iranian airspace on a regular basis and the slower-climbing Iranian F-4s were no match as interceptors.
Iran’s Air Force under the New Order
In 1979 the Islamic Revolution ushered in a radical new order that decimated the country’s military. Any personnel perceived as being pro-Shah or anti-Islamic were purged. The IIAF, now renamed the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF), was the service hardest hit by the revolution. Air force personnel-pilots, in particular–tended to be the most educated, most Westernized, most free-wheeling, and therefore the most ideologically unreliable elements. A number of Iranian pilots were removed, imprisoned or executed in the process of creating the Ayatollah’s version of a Brave New World.
The small army of U.S. technicians and training specialists who were supporting the U.S.-made equipment in Iran left the country, and the Carter Administration clamped an embargo on the sale of any spare parts and technical assistance to Iran’s military. It remains in place to this day.
In the 1980s, the eight-year “First Gulf War” between Iran and Iraq depleted the IRIAF’s supply of spare parts and materiel. It propelled Iran’s fledgling defense industry to become expert in “reverse engineering,” or fabricating copies from scratch of specialized components that were needed to keep the U.S. equipment operating. The Iranians also developed what is perhaps the world’s largest and most capable network of specialists in illicit international procurement.
Modifications Lead to New Programs
Iranian specialists learned reverse engineering from the Chinese, and just as China produced the F-7 and a number of fighter models that were copies of the Russian MiG-21, the design for a new Iranian light attack aircraft the Shafaq (Farsi for “before the dawn”) appears to be a replay of a light fighter design developed more than 10 years ago at the Mikoyan design bureau in Moscow.
Iranian engineers have managed to convert single-seat F-5s into two-seat B-model trainers, using cockpit instrumentation from cannibalized aircraft and ejection seats from the UK’s Martin-Baker–all of which has been done without any access to the factory tooling or other technical assistance from the original manufacturer, Northrop.
This experience has led to the development of another rumored new design project–a combat-capable jet trainer called the Azarakhsh (Farsi for “lightning”), which is said to be a 10- to 15- percent larger version of the F-5. Details are slim but informed sources in the Middle East and central Europe have reported that it supposedly employs an Iranian-designed radar, but with some of the avionics modules actually of Russian design. The Tazarve is another jet trainer, this one of entirely indigenous design, but powered by one of the many spare General Electric J85 engines that Iranian agents have sourced during their worldwide search for F-5 components.
But a new Iranian combat aircraft design stays out of reach. Iranian officials have openly admitted that they will try to develop their own trainers and light attack aircraft, but not high-performance fighters.
Patchwork Procurement
Yet Iran also seems unwilling to join other nations that cannot or will not purchase a U.S. fighter and which instead opt for an advanced variant of the Sukhoi Su-30 or MiG-29. Most Iranian aerospace officials still have a definite preference for U.S.-built aircraft. At last year’s Iran airshow one official told AIN that if he could pick any fighter in the world to have in his inventory “it would be the Boeing F-15.” A limited number of Russian aircraft were purchased by Iran in the 1990s–including MiG-29s and Su-24 fighter-bombers–but there have been no sizable follow-on orders and there appear to be no powerful interests lobbying for a major Russian acquisition.
However, some Iranian engineers talk about retrofitting the Russian-designed Saturn/Lyulka AL-31F that powers the Su-30 into the Iranian F-14s, to replace the Pratt & Whitney TF30 engine. Also being discussed is replacement of the Tomcat’s pre-digital-age AN/AWG-9 radar with a contemporary Russian model, such as the Phazotron N010 Zhuk or the NIIP N011M Bars.
But these are all simply patchwork measures that will not address the long-term obsolescence of Iran’s air force. In the very near future, Iran will be forced either to become the next major importer of Russian fighters, or to make some political rapprochement with the U.S. and become another F-16 customer