IRIAF | News and Discussions

[WudangMaster]

 

[drmeson]

With the current political tensions between Russia/China and the west, it's more likely than ever that Iran will be able to procure vital parts & components in order to upgrade its fleet of aging MIGs.

Migoyan has been struggling for some time because of a lack of exports and they were recently merged with Sukhoi so they should be eager for anything that comes their way, including upgrading Iran's MIGs. Either that or Iran can upgrade them with Chinese technology.

As for new fighters, it's either Flankers from Russia or J-10s from China from what I've read.

The status of the MIG fleet is that IEI and HESA can provide a much better package to bring MIGS to MIG-29 SMT standards. But MIG comes from Moscow and I dont think Raisi's government would want to touch a Russian plane that they know they have to pay Moscow to upgrade for whatever price their front companies in Belarus/Serbia ask for.

our MIGS have an obsolete 80s-era radar that lacks a BVR tracking range on small RCS fighters (lets say an EF-2000 or a Rafale). They also have no way of knowing a missile is coming toward them, they cant Jam adversary radar or incoming missiles radars, and cant survive jamming themselves, and cant take data from UCAVs, fighters, GWACS, etc.

HESA can give the airframe a proper MLU and IEI can install Kowsar's entire cockpit+radar+avionics package on them to give them the capability to engage 4++ fighters like Rafale and EF-2000 at BVR ranges at least. If nothing else they can at least survive which without an e-warfare suite they currently cant.

The dire need for IRIAF is to create a 200+ KM ranging ARH BVR missile that Kowsar-I/II, MIG 9.12, F-14 AM, and future WINGMEN UCAV's can all carry. I know Maghsoud is being developed at Babaei Missile Industries but that's just Fakour-90-2, I would assume it's as heavy as Fakour-90. They need something like <300 KG weighing, 5 Mach, 20-30 Gs pulling ARH guided weapon with ECM like Fakour-90 itself has.

 

[drmeson]

depend on definition of light fighter, if defense ministry invest in it and increase the size around 10% (probably its not even needed if they make it single seat just some modification to the wing) it will become in size of pretty much serious Light-Medium fighter like Gripen
Length: 14.6876 m vs 15.2 m
Wingspan : 8.13 m vs 8.6 m
Height: 4.077 m vs 4.5 m
the plan is one of the few plane which actually can have supercruise with full load

so the size is not that important they are nearly the same , and Gripen is future of one of European country air force which didn't neglected its army and other NATO members do anything to convince them become a member.
I believe size is not the problem what you put inside the fighter is important .


upgrade 20-23 mig-29 for what purpose , the upgrade package available is already outdated ,what we need acquiring modern subsystem that we can't produce ,not full airplane or whipping already dead horses


its neither any one of them , it will be a domestically produced airplane with some imported component and be assured it will be light to medium in size not heavy fighter

Physically, Kowsar-II just needs these few things.

-OWJ needs to provide a solution, either increase the 2 x OWJ J-90 thrust to somewhere like 15000 lbs or come up with Jahesh-700 turbofan's larger afterburning version like FJ-44-4A.

- With an increased thrust, the plane can get small dragless CFTs easily for extra internal fuel, I wrote some calculations based upon the current known consumption ltr/min at the afterburner. Easily they can enhance the range that way.

- If Saegheh I/II truly had better Roll and Yaw (western analysts) then that's the configuration for Kowsar-II. F-5E/F airframe is not any less maneuverable but we do know its had a shortcoming in tight turns which is where improved Yawing is required.

- The RCS (from as many aspects as possible) should be reduced to ~0.5 m2 which I believe can even be possible just by RAM coatings. An F-5E already has a fiercely small frontal RCS of ~1 m2. If they just redesign the radom and get RAM coatings it would be even less.

- Rest is ok with this plane for a light combat fighter. Its current avionics package is good enough but with AESA, HOBS slaved HMD, HOTAS will be even more dangerous.

Even if they come up with such a plane in 2026, it will be relevant for many years.

 

[Hack-Hook]

-OWJ needs to provide a solution, either increase the 2 x OWJ J-90 thrust to somewhere like 15000 lbs or come up with Jahesh-700 turbofan's larger afterburning version like FJ-44-4A.

Fj-44-4a have a thrust just like owj but use less fuel

- The RCS (from as many aspects as possible) should be reduced to ~0.5 m2 which I believe can even be possible just by RAM coatings. An F-5E already has a fiercely small frontal RCS of ~1 m2. If they just redesign the radom and get RAM coatings it would be even less.

Ram coating alone is not elegant solution as it needs to be fixed regularly

- Rest is ok with this plane for a light combat fighter. Its current avionics package is good enough but with AESA, HOBS slaved HMD, HOTAS will be even more dangerous.

a modern light fighter jet needs a serious datalink and a good AESA radar to fix the limitation that come with a light fighter

Even if they come up with such a plane in 2026, it will be relevant for many years.

the plane certainly would be relevant as its our plane and we can do any upgrade we want to it down the road

 

[drmeson]

Fj-44-4a have a thrust just like owj but use less fuel

Ram coating alone is not elegant solution as it needs to be fixed regularly

a modern light fighter jet needs a serious datalink and a good AESA radar to fix the limitation that come with a light fighter

the plane certainly would be relevant as its our plane and we can do any upgrade we want to it down the road

- Going by the logic that usual Turbofans all over the world have 1.7 times afterburning thurst of their dry thrust, the 7200 lbs of dry thurst from two Jahesh/FJ-44-4a will produce something like 12500-1300 lbf on afterburner. Not a bad choice for single crystal turbofan that suck the least possible fuel so more range, will also give the plane supercruise capability along with 45-55K ft/min linear dash for the shoot and run tactics. The problem of slow turning of F-5E/F was solved in F-5G/F-20 with the enhancement of T/W ratio from 0.7 of Tiger to 1.06 of F-20 (full internal fuel).

Kowsar's empty weight is 4035 kg while it can carry max 2050 KG of JP jet fuel. So the otal weight with full internal fuel will be 6400 KG or 141096 lbf while the Thrust is 10000 lbf. Thats a T/W ratio of 0.71 right now. With a 12500-13000 lbf thrust it becomes 0.91-0.94 which is ideal and in line with any modern generation combat aircraft in the world.

- RAM tech is evolving very fast. I am sure maintaining a fleet of some 200 RAM-coated low RCS jets is less tedious for IRIAF than maintaining a fleet of useless 160 x F-7,MIRAGE, F-5.

- Kowsar already has a datalink with UCAVs, GWACS, and other fighters. IRIAF even deployed 3-7400 with F-14 AM on TAB-2 during the Azeri-Armeni war where they evaluated this system. Quoting Key aero and Gen. Khajehfard, its whole architecture is MIL-STD-1553 based while datalink allows it to exchange target coordinates with a central GWACS system that itself is exchanging info with UCAVs, Fighters, and tracking radars of AD batteries on the ground.

But yes AESA radar is a must in next-generation not for the domestic jets but also for upgradation of MIG fleet before we turn them into another Mirage F1EQ fleet.

- Thats the most important thing you said. We can literally design its low RCS version and from there get 400 of these if we need to produce them (better than some 60 SU-35S for which we stay reliant). Trust me if IRIAF shows like 5-6 squadrons of fully armed Kowsars with HMD, HOBS, some modern PL-12/15 like BVR. Everybody will try to sell us their modern fighters then. We got S-300 when we already had Bavar doing the TVC dance in the air. This is how this world works.

 

[drmeson]

Fakour-90 is a death sentence by Range.

 

[Abid123]

Plus outside of F-14 and a few Mig’s not a lot of high value air assets exist in Iran’s airforce anymore.

What about those SU-35 Iran order?

 

[drmeson]

What about those SU-35 Iran order?

Other than a Journalist who is "somewhat" credible but also has schizophrenia, nobody has confirmed this news. I myself believe it might have been discussed at some point.

Lavrov met Raisi recently, not a single word came out regarding Any military purchase.

(We needed them 10-15 years ago but not anymore). I would rather have IRGC get 200 x Skip Glide Hypersonic Vehicles like Kheibar Shikan with CEP of 2 m and IRIAF 200 x Kowsar Fighters than 50-60 x SU-35S.

 

[GrandBotBoi]

the plane is as expensive as rafale and nearly as expensive as f-35

No it's not lol. SU-35 is 80 million USD with weapons, training, and other stuff. Export unit cost without that is probably like 40-60 million USD. Compare that to nearly 200 million USD for Rafale

No, that's Almas missile.

Almas is equivalent to Spike LR (Almas-2 comparable to Spike ER), not NLOS

 

[GrandBotBoi]

Not correct. The rockets I suspect is due to a dwindling PGM stockpile. We see the same issue with their drones and lack of PGMs. But we still see clips of Aligators obliterating tanks from a far using PGMs.

It is not the threat of manpads keeping alligators conservative. As the entire Russian Air Force is acting conservative. It’s the threat of medium and long range SAMs keeping them away. These systems have been imported in from the west as well as whatever survived the initial blitzkreig of the war.

BUK-2M, TOR-M2, and S-400 have obliterated Ukraine helicopters.

Manpads are an opportunity weapon target has to be in range. Soldier has to have manpad. And achieve a lock on target. Not so simple during the fog of war and heat of battle.

Lastly turboprop UAVs are slow and vulnerable. Iran needs to transition to at least have 1-2 models of bomber UAVs powered by a turbojet or even jet engine.

Iran already has jet powered UCAVs, like Karrar or Shahed-191

Where do the Saeqeh numbers come from? If I recall correctly at least 1-2 squadrons were built between the two generations.

Also you just showed 25 years of tinkering with the F-5 with less than 17 total aircraft built (if your guesses are correct)

Meanwhile Turkey is already moving on to UAV jet fighter alongside their 5th Gen program.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1538600873563246593

Now we know the Turks like to exaggerate and probably engage in propaganda more than any other nation in the Middle East. But one can see why IRIAF is not heavily invested in Kowsar. We can blame lack of funding (probably true) we can blame lack of mass production facilities (also true) and we can blame mentality shift of not viewing IRIAF as critical to overall defense. Nonetheless, at the end of the day when Iran puts its mind to something (Bavar-373) (RQ-170 reverse engineering) it is able to turn a project into reality on a timeline similar to Western armies.

If Kowsar ment to be some avionics suite for a future fighter, the avionics aren’t that advanced. Certainly not a 4++ in its current format. To me the project has always been “if it’s 2040 and all our planes are grounded and Russia and China refuse to sell us anything can we at least produce something to keep the skies with aircraft”. That and a F-5 modernization program similar to Karrar for Iran’s extensive amount of T-72 tanks supply.

Now here is another idea, why not make Kowsar II a drone? The removal of the pilot section will allow for bigger radar and more fuel. The reduction of support systems will lighten the aircraft and possibly allow heavier avionics suite and weapons layout.

To me that would make a little bit more sense at this point. Personally I been calling for a delta wing or flying wing UAV bomber similar to Sofreh Mahi mixed with RQ-170. But a pilotless Kowsar would be a nice step.

Iran has Ghadir and Sejjil under development. Venezuela has actually joined the Ghadir program. They're basically large jet powered stealth UCAVs

 

[GrandBotBoi]

MIG of Ukraine is 9.13 and even better with upgrades, they are armed with ARH R-77. They have survived against SU-20SM/35S/MIG-31BM but our MIGS are 9.12 with no e-warfare suite, no datalink, they are armed with R-27R1 SARH failure missile. They would not survive easily against EF-2000 or Rafale. They wont see a 1m2 adversary before 60 km and by that time they will be jammed, tracked, fired upon, gone. You are seeing the shape of an IRIAF MIG which looks same as MIG-29M so you are thinking "oh they are great". In reality they are like MIG-21-93 at best. If IRIAF does not give them proper MLU and an extensive local upgrade with IEI package, this fleet will turn into a burden.

As for Kowsar, I truly believe if IRIAF decides to get its underground strategy in motion, it will take them about 3-4 years to develop assets, train staff, pilots, etc. By that time Kowsar's next generation will be there to get into production which will be even better than the current one in terms of avionics package. That asset will be worth saving. Even the current one can massively help F-14AM and Airdefence a lot more compared to what a relic MIG 9.12 or the flying brick F-4E can do.

As for Iran-China cooperation, you need to read about IEI-CATIC deep cooperation from western unbiased sources. I read them, I saw the evidence too. Using logic, I have no doubt IRIAF will get its first 4+ or 4++ generation Kowsar-II in few years, even the current one was no less a miracle from IAMI floors (clowns that gave us Qaher) and there is a proper role of CATIC, China in it. My own assumption, PL-12/15 would not come to Iran. They will be made in Iran like how long-range OTHRs and Track radars, SM-2/40N6 equivalents are being made inside Iran. You walk then you run, HESA has learned to walk with Kowsar.

Ukrainian MiG-29s don't have R-77, only R-27. Iran could easily procur more MiG-29s from a bunch of former Soviet countries or russia who's retiring their stock for cheap. Then modernize those

 

[GrandBotBoi]

Btw many think the 72 passenger airliner will be based on Simorgh, it won't be. It appears it'll be jet powered

https://twitter.com/x/status/1538993188739993600

Perhaps an AWACS could be based on it using Erieye style radar

 

[drmeson]

Btw many think the 72 passenger airliner will be based on Simorgh, it won't be. It appears it'll be jet powered

https://twitter.com/x/status/1538993188739993600

Perhaps an AWACS could be based on it using Erieye style radar

Unless F-14 AM retires, I see no point in IRIAF having multiple light-AWACS units (israeli EITAM like). IEI upgraded (digitalized, planar antenna etc) AWG-9+ gives a search range of almost ~370-400 km (like APG-71 of F-14D). Its also not slow prop aircraft but a very fast fighter jet that can launch LR-BVR attacks itself, and change locations easily.

I even am not in favor of ASW/ELINT/SIGINT roles for this prop aircraft now as that should go to larger UCAVs like Kaman-22 (Jet powered) or Fotros. Something on lines of MQ-4C. Kaman-22 + Fotros in IRIAF is a problem solver for many things just like Kowsar.

Ukrainian MiG-29s don't have R-77, only R-27. Iran could easily procur more MiG-29s from a bunch of former Soviet countries or russia who's retiring their stock for cheap. Then modernize those

MIG-29 Mu1 9.13 of UkrAF >>>>> MIG-29 9.12 of IRIAF

Much better Radar
IFF
RWR
ECM
Tandem Pylon Configuration
Less fatigued Airframes

Last but not least, they have a larger fleet compared to IRIAF's 23 x odd fighters (Russian sources maintain they delivered 40 ????) who now require MLU or be grounded in the next 3 years. Post MLU they will require an extensive IEI-HESA upgrade of their avionics, cockpits, and weapon systems (even if its Kowsar's avionics package) to keep them relevant in the combat otherwise they are not going to do much in front of EF-2000/Rafale with their lack of e-warfare suites and stupid RPKL-29 FCR system from Gorbachev times.

What you said about further MIG-29 purchases is tricky. Together Turkmen, Uzbek and Kazakh airforces have some 80-90 MIG-29. Then Belarus and Russian stored airframes are there as well. I always liked the idea of IRIAF getting around further 75 x MIG-29/MIG-35 airframes. Even if they are just empty airframes with engines, IEI and HESA have the capacity to give them local upgrades to 4+ avionics packages (Russian won't like it though, political disaster). They will fit in within the IRIAF MIG infrastructure right away. While the fleet will become like 100 x fighter strong which with 42 x F-14AM and 120 x Kowsar-I/II can be quite an interceptor package. This is what IRIAF wanted in 1990s-2000s btw. They ordered further 48 x MIG-29S (9.13) and I think 30 x Mig-31 to create a large robust interceptor force. Meanwhile the Azarakhsh/Saeqeh program was to build a local F-20/YF-17 like a fighter to complement that force.

 

[TheImmortal]

Iran already has jet powered UCAVs, like Karrar or Shahed-191

Payloads are too low on either of those platforms. Karrar lacks stealth element for deep enemy penetration.

Shahed-191 if the platform is taken and expanded (something like original Sofreh Mahi concept) with a internal payload of 2000lbs would be a very deadly platform to compliment the Missile doctrine.

High altitude Supersonic unmanned heavy bomber. It will require a more powerful engine than Iran currently makes (unless you want to slap 4 J-85’s on a single platform). But it is possible if Iran develops the “heavy engine” they have announced.

 

[Hack-Hook]

No it's not lol. SU-35 is 80 million USD with weapons, training, and other stuff. Export unit cost without that is probably like 40-60 million USD. Compare that to nearly 200 million USD for Rafale

rafale is 85milion and monkey version of SU-35 is 80million

Ukrainian MiG-29s don't have R-77, only R-27. Iran could easily procur more MiG-29s from a bunch of former Soviet countries or russia who's retiring their stock for cheap. Then modernize those

another proponent of Iran wasting its money on outdated rusty airplanes