Why low rcs "Kowsar" is a great achievement for Iran's air force:
F-5 from wiki:
According to defense analyst and prominent Pentagon
fighter mafia (of F-16 fame) member Pierre Sprey, the F-5 was perhaps the most effective U.S. air-to-air fighter in the 1960s and early 1970s based on his published fighter effectiveness criteria.
[23][24 ] Sprey defines the key factors of fighter effectiveness in order of importance as
1. Ability to surprise the enemy without being surprised, 2. On a per budget basis, ability to outnumber the enemy via lower unit cost and higher sortie rates and reliability, 3. Ability to outmaneuver the enemy, and 4. Once in position to fire by either surprise or maneuver, ability to attain reliable kills (weapon system effectiveness).[25] As a prominent example of a well implemented
light fighter,
[26][27] the F-5 is a close match to these criteria in the time frame before Beyond Visual Range missiles became reliable. A small visual and radar cross section size and consequent detection difficulty often conferred the F-5 the advantage of surprise.
[28] The F-5 has the smallest planform area of any fighter in common usage.[29] This is a critical practical combat advantage since historically about 80% of air to air kills do occur by surprise.[30] The aircraft is highly cost effective and reliable, allowing superior numbers in the air on a per budget basis. The aircraft also has a high sortie rate, low accident rate, high maneuverability, and is armed with an effective combination of 20mm cannon and heat seeking missiles.
The F-5 earned a reputation for a jet that was hard to discern in the air and when one finally saw it, it was often after a missile or guns kill had already been called.
-- Singapore's former Chief of Air Force and F-5 pilot, Major General
Ng Chee Khern.
[31]
In 1970, Northrop won the International Fighter Aircraft (IFA) competition to replace the F-5A, with better air-to-air performance against aircraft like the Soviet
MiG-21. The resultant aircraft, initially known as F-5A-21, subsequently became the F-5E. It had more powerful (5,000 lbf)
General Electric J85-21 engines, and had a lengthened and enlarged fuselage, accommodating more fuel. Its wings were fitted with enlarged
leading edge extensions, giving an increased wing area and improved maneuverability. The aircraft's
avionics were more sophisticated, crucially including a
radar (initially the
Emerson Electric AN/APQ-153) (the F-5A and B had no radar). It retained the gun armament of two
M39 cannon, one on either side of the nose of the F-5A. Various specific avionics fits could be accommodated at customer request, including an
inertial navigation system,
TACAN and
ECMequipment.
[39]
The first F-5E flew on 11 August 1972.
[40] A two-seat combat-capable trainer, the F-5F, was offered, first flying on 25 September 1974, at Edwards Air Force Base, with a new nose, that was 3 feet longer, which, unlike the F-5B that did not mount a gun, allowed it to retain a single M39 cannon, albeit with a reduced ammunition capacity.
[41] The two-seater was equipped with the Emerson AN/APQ-157 radar, which is a derivative of the AN/APQ-153 radar, with dual control and display systems to accommodate the two-men crew, and the radar has the same range of AN/APQ-153, around 10
nmi. On 6 April 1973, the 425th TFS at Williams Air Force Base, Ariz. received the first F-5E Tiger II.
[42]
A
reconnaissance version, the RF-5E Tigereye, with a sensor package in the nose displacing the radar and one cannon, was also offered.
The F-5E eventually received the official name Tiger II; 792 F-5Es, 146 F-5Fs and 12 RF-5Es were eventually built by Northrop.
[38] More were built under license overseas: 91 F-5Es and -Fs in Switzerland,
[43]68 by
Korean Air in South Korea,
[44] and 308 in
Taiwan.
[45]
The F-5E proved to be a successful combat aircraft for U.S. allies, but had no combat service with the U.S. Air Force (though the F-5A with modifications referred to as F-5C was flown by the U.S. in Vietnam
[46]). The F-5E evolved into the single-engine F-5G, which was rebranded the
F-20 Tigershark. It lost out on export sales to the F-16 in the 1980s.
The F-5E served with the U.S. Air Force from 1975 until 1990, in the
64th Aggressor Squadron and
65th Aggressor Squadron at
Nellis Air Force Base in
Nevada, and with the 527th Aggressor Squadron at RAF Alconbury in the UK and the 26th Aggressor Squadron at
Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. The U.S. Marines purchased used F-5s from the Air Force in 1989 to replace their
F-21s, which served with
VMFT-401 at
Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. The U.S. Navy used the F-5E extensively at the
Naval Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) when it was located at
NAS Miramar, California. When TOPGUN relocated to become part of the
Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at
NAS Fallon, Nevada, the command divested itself of the F-5, choosing to rely on VC-13 (redesignated
VFC-13 and which already used F-5s) to employ their F-5s as adversary aircraft. Former adversary squadrons such as
VF-43 at
NAS Oceana,
VF-45 at
NAS Key West,
VF-126 at NAS Miramar, and
VFA-127 at
NAS Lemoore have also operated the F-5 along with other aircraft types in support of Dissimilar Air Combat Training (DACT).
The U.S. Navy F-5 fleet continues to be modernized with 36 low-hour F-5E/Fs purchased from Switzerland in 2006. These were updated as F-5N/Fs with modernized avionics and other improved systems. Currently, the only U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps units flying the F-5 are
VFC-13 at
NAS Fallon, Nevada,
VFC-111 at
NAS Key West, Florida, and
VMFT-401 at
MCAS Yuma, Arizona.
[6] Currently, VFC-111 operates 18 Northrop F-5N/F Tiger IIs. 17 of these are single-seater F-5Ns and the last is a twin-seater F-5F "FrankenTiger", the product of grafting the older front-half fuselage of an F-5F into the back-half fuselage of a newer low-hours F-5E acquired from the Swiss Air Force. A total of three "FrankenTigers" were made.
[70]
According to the
FAA, there are 18 privately owned F-5s in the U.S., including Canadair CF-5Ds.
[71][72]
Iran
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the new
Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) was partially successful at keeping Western fighters in service during the
Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s and the simple F-5 had a good service readiness until late in the war. Initially Iran took spare parts from foreign sources; later it was able to have its new aircraft industry keep the aircraft flying.
[85]
Iranian F-5 during the
Iran–Iraq War
IRIAF F-5s were heavily involved, flying air-to-air and air-to-ground sorties. Iranian F-5s took part in air combats with Iraqi
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21,
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23,
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25,
Su-20/22,
Mirage F-1 and
Super Etendards. The exact combat record is not known with many differing claims from Iraqi, Iranian, Western, and Russian sources. Many of the IRIAF's confirmed air-to-air kills were attributed to the
Revolutionary Guards for political reasons.[
citation needed] There are reports that an IRIAF F-5E, piloted by Major
Yadollah Javadpour, shot down a MiG-25 on 6 August 1983.
[86][87] Russian sources state that the first confirmed kill of a MiG-25 occurred in 1985.
[88]
During the first years of service, Iranian F-5 fighter aircraft had the advantage in missile technology, using advanced versions of the IR seeking Sidewinder, later lost with deliveries of new missiles and fighters to Iraq.
[89]
