Iran to buy SU-30MK

contedicavour

New Member
well I read that China actually did a lot of work for the Iranians on their fleet. It's possible that they are using Chinese missiles by now.
Both AIM-54 and AIM-7 are in theory no more serviceable, and I vaguely remember reading about the F14s being used as bombers. Integrating Chinese or Russian AAMs with the old American radar must be quite a difficult task.
After searching on the net I haven't found any recent (> 2000) picture of Iranian F14s with visible AAMs...

cheers
 

contedicavour

New Member
There was a report (was it in The Economist?) that one batch of parts bought for Iran had been caught being smuggled out of the USA, confiscated, then put into a sale of contraband by US Customs - and sold to another buyer acting on behalf of Iran! :eek:nfloorl:
I don't think it was on the Economist (unless you have a US edition) because I've been reading it every week for 10 years now and such news would have attracted my attention.

cheers
 

SABRE

Super Moderator
Verified Defense Pro
I was wondering about the weapons (especially Missiles) for Iran's F-14. Even if few of the original F-14s are still flying, their original stock of Guided missiles are long past the expiry date and outdated too. Any idea about how Iran's F-14 are armed?
Lots of rumors out there. Chinese help, Russian help & most of all is that Iranians developing their own weapons (by reverse engineering the original ones).
 

kizilsungur

New Member
Lots of rumors out there. Chinese help, Russian help & most of all is that Iranians developing their own weapons (by reverse engineering the original ones).
Yep. You are right.

Mod Warning: kızılsungur; you have got two useless oneliners. This is against the rules of the forum. Please refrain next time.
 
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contedicavour

New Member
Reinforcing the local defence industry in order to make it more autonomous is a good idea, but I wonder if Iran isn't wasting time and money. After all building a new fighter jet isn't like building locally cars and trucks...
I'm surprised Iran hasn't ordered more MIG29s so far. It's their best air to air fighter and Russia surely wouldn't hesitate to send more R77 AAMs. I wonder if the UN sanctions approved recently by the UNSC include a weapons embargo on jet aircrafts.

cheers
 
There was a report (was it in The Economist?) that one batch of parts bought for Iran had been caught being smuggled out of the USA, confiscated, then put into a sale of contraband by US Customs - and sold to another buyer acting on behalf of Iran! :eek:nfloorl:
I haven't heard about that one. I would be interested in reading more about it. If it really did happen i wouldn't be surprise since the GOA report stated that the pentagon procedure of selling used parts needs to be reformed.
 
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old faithful

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Both AIM-54 and AIM-7 are in theory no more serviceable, and I vaguely remember reading about the F14s being used as bombers. Integrating Chinese or Russian AAMs with the old American radar must be quite a difficult task.
After searching on the net I haven't found any recent (> 2000) picture of Iranian F14s with visible AAMs...

cheers
Ive seen a few pics of converted HAWK S.A.M,s fixed to launch rails of Iranian F!$,s. I dont know how successful the conversion was (sam to aam) but it seems feasible.
 

swerve

Super Moderator
I don't think it was on the Economist (unless you have a US edition) because I've been reading it every week for 10 years now and such news would have attracted my attention.

cheers
You're right. My mistake. It was last weeks JDW, citing an AP report.
 

metro

New Member
Reinforcing the local defence industry in order to make it more autonomous is a good idea, but I wonder if Iran isn't wasting time and money. After all building a new fighter jet isn't like building locally cars and trucks...
I'm surprised Iran hasn't ordered more MIG29s so far. It's their best air to air fighter and Russia surely wouldn't hesitate to send more R77 AAMs. I wonder if the UN sanctions approved recently by the UNSC include a weapons embargo on jet aircrafts.

cheers
I've read several "reports" pretty recently regarding Russia--agreeing to sell/actually selling/transferring or delivering --MIG 29s to Syria, along with other several other weapons. IMO, Syria doesn't have the money to pay for the items "they're buying," so my assumption is Damascus is the middle man. I believe there is a clause in the sanctions that addresses the issue of selling to Iran through a third party, but it seems ambiguous enough to "play games" (IMO). Obviously, "media games" are definitely played and make it very hard to know what is true. I just wouldn't put anything past Moscow/Putin though (again JMHO)!
 

Khairul Alam

New Member
I was wondering about the weapons (especially Missiles) for Iran's F-14. Even if few of the original F-14s are still flying, their original stock of Guided missiles are long past the expiry date and outdated too. Any idea about how Iran's F-14 are armed?
the F-14s were initially armed with the deadly Phoenix missiles. But these missiles are no longer serviceable. As far as the F-14s are concerned, modified HAWK missiles are being used in the air-to-air role.
 

contedicavour

New Member
the F-14s were initially armed with the deadly Phoenix missiles. But these missiles are no longer serviceable. As far as the F-14s are concerned, modified HAWK missiles are being used in the air-to-air role.
Hmm air to air Hawk SAMs... if I'm not wrong this is semi-active radar guidance so somewhat comparable to good old AIM-7E right ?
IRIAF has better use the Tomcats as fighterbombers then, and leave air patrol to MIG29s with R77.

cheers
 

kato

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Hmm air to air Hawk SAMs... if I'm not wrong this is semi-active radar guidance so somewhat comparable to good old AIM-7E right ?
Depends. If they'd provide a proper X-Band CW monopulse radar on the launch aircraft, that would make it more comparable to AIM-7M or Skyflash at least, presumably with better ECCM and low-altitude capability even.
 

tphuang

Super Moderator
Both AIM-54 and AIM-7 are in theory no more serviceable, and I vaguely remember reading about the F14s being used as bombers. Integrating Chinese or Russian AAMs with the old American radar must be quite a difficult task.
After searching on the net I haven't found any recent (> 2000) picture of Iranian F14s with visible AAMs...

cheers
i believe the word was that China did a complete revamping of F-14's avionics ( I guess radar included)
 

powerslavenegi

New Member
i believe the word was that China did a complete revamping of F-14's avionics ( I guess radar included)
Well that sounds wierd,I mean how does one make improvements or changes to a Radar system without access to the DSP source code.

Decompile it as far as possible, rewrite what you can't. Given time, brains, determination, & money, it's possible - though difficult. Or just replace it. Remember that the F-14s avionics were basically late 1960s. The number of lines of code was very small compared to modern systems, necessarily, because there wasn't the memory to hold much. The processors were slow, crude things compared to modern COTS stuff.
 
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Khairul Alam

New Member
Hmm air to air Hawk SAMs... if I'm not wrong this is semi-active radar guidance so somewhat comparable to good old AIM-7E right ?
IRIAF has better use the Tomcats as fighterbombers then, and leave air patrol to MIG29s with R77.

cheers
Reports suggest that the IRIAF is maybe using the handful of F-14s in the role of mini AWACS, cueing other air-superiority assets to their targets.

In the late 90s there were talks of IRIAF replacing the AWG-9 radars on its F-14s with Russian digital phased array radar. There were also talks of replacing the Pratt and Whitney engines with Russian Saturn engines. Iranian engineers even thought of adjusting the length and centre of gravity of the jets to properly accomodate the engines. Did they ever materialize??
 

powerslavenegi

New Member
Decompile it as far as possible, rewrite what you can't. Given time, brains, determination, & money, it's possible - though difficult. Or just replace it. Remember that the F-14s avionics were basically late 1960s. The number of lines of code was very small compared to modern systems, necessarily, because there wasn't the memory to hold much. The processors were slow, crude things compared to modern COTS stuff
Swerve I guess you could have replied in quotes rather than editing my post,anyways the logic that 60's code is easier to decomplie than todays just based on storage constraints of those days is lame.Infact the to be honest those days most of the code was embedded and was in assembly it is infact now that maintainability and scalability are tom tomed about and most of the code is being written in C/ada (iirc in case of JSF and Raptor it is C).

Anyone with programming background on forum would know the difference between reverse engg a code written in assembly vis a vis C.
 

swerve

Super Moderator
Swerve I guess you could have replied in quotes rather than editing my post,
Sorry about that. It was unintentional. Clicked on the wrong button. Not really used to the extra one yet. I won't do it again.

anyways the logic that 60's code is easier to decomplie than todays just based on storage constraints of those days is lame.Infact the to be honest those days most of the code was embedded and was in assembly it is infact now that maintainability and scalability are tom tomed about and most of the code is being written in C/ada (iirc in case of JSF and Raptor it is C).

Anyone with programming background on forum would know the difference between reverse engg a code written in assembly vis a vis C.
You think it's harder to work out what a few hundred K of executables originally written in assembler do, than what a few gigs of executables written in C or Ada do? We're not talking about understanding the source code.
 

JoeLiTo

New Member
Swerve I guess you could have replied in quotes rather than editing my post,anyways the logic that 60's code is easier to decomplie than todays just based on storage constraints of those days is lame.Infact the to be honest those days most of the code was embedded and was in assembly it is infact now that maintainability and scalability are tom tomed about and most of the code is being written in C/ada (iirc in case of JSF and Raptor it is C).

Anyone with programming background on forum would know the difference between reverse engg a code written in assembly vis a vis C.
I'm not an expert in assembler, but I can assure you that handwritten code in Assembler probably doesn't have the complexity of the code produced by a compiler.
 
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