Commander: Iran's Stealth Aircraft to Fly Soon

Perhaps I should help you out: a boat is a small vessel that floats above the water. A submarine is a subsurface vessel...

I don't have any videos from inside the Nahang submarine, but this video is from a couple of Iranian reporters going inside Iran's much smaller Ghadir submarine. Even the Ghadir mini sub has interesting capabilities and armaments.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDqcFtvgh00&feature=related"]YouTube - inside ghadir submarine[/ame]

 

Incidentally, while Iran has touted the Saegheh 80 as being comparable to the F18, it certainly has not tried to hide the fact that the project is derived from the F-5. Indeed, when the Saegheh 80 fighter was shown in 2006 in its maiden flight with the Iranian airforce, it flew alongside an F-5 to clearly show their similarities and differences.



But to also underscore the similarities between the Saegheh 80 and the F18, Iran painted these 3 Saegheh 80 fighters with "blue angel" colors and showed them off in that light as well.

http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2mfOYr
Pic of 3 fully loaded Saegheh 80 fighters with "blue angel" colors

 

This report is about an anti-missile/aircraft system that I would not mind, one bit, being an exact copy of Russia's S-300. That would be fine in my book, since the S-300 would compensate for one of Iran's weaknesses, namely air defense. Indeed, I am hoping that the missile mentioned is the S-300 itself, although that doesn't seem to be the case.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=85381&sectionid=351020101

 

In the context of Iran, Israel cannot do much without the US on its side.

As for your question, what I want is for Iran to be strong enough to avoid war with anyone.

 

You don't know anything about that shipyard, either its location or its size. No reason to pretend otherwise. Except the video clearly depicts the opposite of what you suggest in terms of its size.

Incidentally, while theoretically, the US can snoop and know about different facilities in Iran through its satellites, in reality unless it knows where and what to look for, the US doesn't know much. And Iran's military prefers to keep it that way.

The project to build a stealth fighter aircraft has been going on for many years, through the project to build the Shafagh. Various prototypes of the trainer version of the plane have been built and shown. There are even pictures on the internet of what appears to be a full-size fighter version prototype. But since there are not officially released pics, I will show you models of the plane shown officially in Iranian trade fairs for you get an idea what the plane is supposed to look like when it is ultimately revealed.

We will find out soon enough. In less than a year. There have been times when Iranian officials have given over-optimistic timelines for when their projects will be ready and complete -- and other times when they have surprised observers by being ready even before when they had indicated they would be.

 

Iran has already completed tests of this plane, in 1/7 models, in its Aviation University Complex wind tunnel. And a full sized prototype has also been built.

Anyway, in less than year, or thereabouts, this is what you will see introduced as Iran's new stealth fighter:

 

When I need to know is this:

I also know that:

1) You don't have any basis whatsoever to judge the credibility of the statement by Iran's airforce commander.

2) This announcement serves no military propaganda purposes, since the discussion about a plane that is going to be ready in the future. That is not going to deter any present threats.

2) Iranian military commanders, who care about their credibility and don't want to expose themselves to their internal rivals or needlessly lose their credibility with the public, don't make statements like this from thin air.

3) If this was a political propaganda piece, it would be probably be in the form of a report published by some Iranian media outlet quoting a junior officer or rely on "informed sources". And that it would be given a lot of coverage inside Iran, instead of it receiving some minor print and internet coverage with most Iranians being unaware they even have a stealth fighter project, nevermind one that is at this sage in its development.

 

What you say is true based on information given about the trainer version of the aircraft. However, it appears likely that the fighter version will have different specifications.

 

Thanks for the pic of google map picture of Bandar Abbas naval base. I am not sure what I am to make of it, even though some ship is being built there, but the naval base is certainly one of the main Iranian naval bases. There are, to be sure, many other Iranian naval bases as wel.

Btw, the Mowj frigate that Iran announced it had launched several years ago, which "scarecrow" authoritatively claims Iran has not built , was seen in google map pictures of the Bandar Abbas naval shipyard in 2005-06. Before the ship moved out the shipyard and joined the active fleet. If the ship is still docked at Bandar Abbas naval base, perhaps you can find it in your image as well?

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=457542

 

Not quite. You have to first know what/where to look for before you can find it. Bandar Abbas is a major Iranian naval base and, consequently, you will have many satellite images of the facility. But if there is a shipyard that is not publicized, you would not be able to find that shipyard on google earth either simply because you would not know where the focus the satellite imagery for your search.

Let me tell you how I see things, without really trying to invite needless polemics.

Iranian officials often make various announcements, where they tout the "indigenous" nature of equipment they are building or have built. That is important to Iranian officials both because they take pride in that fact and because 'self-sufficiency' is a major component of Iran's revolutionary doctrine. Sitting in far corners of the earth, on the other hand, are two kinds of people who immediately jump to deny the claims by these officials. One kind are Iranian exiles with no information or connnection to Iran of today who nonetheless don't want the "regime" to be able to claim any "success" of any kind. The other kind are people like "scarecrow" et al, some of whom have a forum to express their biases.

To be sure, while a lot of the statements about Iran from western sources are clearly biased and lack much foundation, I have no doubt that Iran's claims of self-sufficiency and indigenous production are exaggerated as well. Specifically, the foreign know-how and technology that is used in these projects are intentionally understated by Iran.

At the same time, I also have no doubt Iran never makes up things in terms of equipment it has built or it claims to be working on. That just cannot happen in the context of how things work in Iran. If Iran says it is working on a project, or that it has built something, you can legitimately dispute the extent to which the product is "Iranian". But to dispute that such a project or product exists is absurd. Moreover, regardless of Iran's claims, there are the kind of technologies available today (such as staellite imagery) that also show things that corroborate these claims.

All in all, Iran has made tremendous progress in being able to develop military equipment of all kind that very few countries are capable of making. Equipment that fewer still would be able to make if they were suffering from the kind of sanctions that are imposed on Iran. (If you have little or no restrictions on transfer of technology, such as is the case with Israel, building things that are technologically similar to what is already built elsewhere is only a question of having the money to finance a project. The rest, including the project managers, scientists, engineers, as well as key components, can be purchased and imported).

From my vantage point, as long as the "cold war like" atmosphere prevades between Iran and the US, much of the discussions about Iran on these and various other issues end up being nothing but childish polemics. So much so that even a frigate that has been in service for a couple of years and which the US would know about and has never denied being in service, as well as a host of other equipment that many governments surely knows about, can be the object of seemingly "serious debate" on forums such as this!