On August 21, the Reuters news agency reported that an official demonstration of a new Iranian Kowsar fighter of its own production took place in Tehran. The official ceremony was attended by the President of the country, Hassan Rouhani, who sat in the cockpit of the new fighter plane and noted that the country needs new weapons in order to defend itself against the United States and regional opponents.
At present, the Iranian air force is not in the best condition, the air force of the Islamic republic has not been updated with modern aviation and helicopter technology for a long time. The Air Force is armed with equipment mainly of American and Soviet / Chinese production. Moreover, American fighters were purchased even before the start of the 1979 Islamic revolution. After that, maintaining them in combat readiness became significantly more difficult due to the difficulties with maintenance and the acquisition of the necessary spare parts and weapons. Today Iran is striving to create its own combat aircraft. The Air Force is already in service with the HESA Azarakhsh and HESA Saeqeh fighters. However, both machines were created on the basis of the American Northrop F-5 light multirole fighters by reverse engineering (reverse engineering). It should be remembered that the development of the original Northrop F-5 fighter in the United States began in the late 1950s. Therefore, experts assess the combat capabilities of the "new" Iranian fighters Azarakhsh and Saeqeh as low.
The modern Iranian Air Force was created in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution on the basis of the pre-existing Imperial Air Force. But the development of the air force was seriously complicated by the sanctions that were imposed against Tehran by Washington. For the Iranian Air Force, this was a serious blow, since they were almost entirely equipped with US-made aircraft and helicopters, most of these machines are still in use today, while experts believe that only about 60 percent of the remaining American equipment remains combat-ready. It should be noted that the Iranian aircraft fleet suffered serious losses during the Iranian-Iraqi war of 1980-1988. After the end of the war, Iran bought combat aircraft from the USSR and China, and also used Soviet-made equipment that was transferred from Iraq to Iran during the 1991 Gulf War.
Kowsar fighter presentation
Against this background, the presentation of the new Kowsar fighter, which the Iranian Tasnim agency refers to as the fourth generation jet combat aircraft, seems to be interesting, claiming that this aircraft was completely developed in Iran. According to the Iranian side, the new fighter will be produced in the Islamic republic in both single and double versions. The Kowsar fighter will be able to carry various weapons. Equipped with a multipurpose radar system and a computerized ballistic calculation system, the new combat aircraft was named after the paradise river Kausar mentioned in the Koran.
Even before the presentation of the new aircraft, the country's Defense Minister Amir Khatami emphasized that the fighter was created as part of an "active containment strategy", recalling that Iran had never attacked other states. The minister noted that in recent years, Iranian technical and military specialists have achieved significant success in the production of a wide range of military equipment of their own design. The military leader noted that Iran's defense program is motivated by memories of missile attacks during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 and repeated threats to Tehran from the United States and Israel. Iran emphasizes that the Kowsar was the first fighter to be fully developed and produced in Iran. However, experts treat such statements with a fair amount of skepticism. Separately, it should be noted that the Iranian agency Tasnim did not provide any detailed characteristics of the new combat aircraft.
So far, experts can only note the successes of Iran with the modernization of existing old machines. For example, in July 2018, Tehran managed to commission 10 modernized Su-22 fighter-bombers, which had been in storage for a long time. The Iranian military-industrial complex also launched the Fakour-90 medium-range air-to-air missile designed for the American-made F-14 Tomcat fighter. Earlier, the Iranian defense industry also presented upgraded versions of the F-7 fighter (Chinese copy of the Soviet MiG-21) and the American Northrop F-5 and F-14 fighters.
Kowsar fighter presentation
Russian military experts believe that the Iranian Kowsar fighter is either a deep upgrade of the F-5 fighter, or an upgraded copy of it. In an interview with News.ru, Russian military expert Yuri Lyamin noted that the new Iranian aircraft looks almost one-on-one as a two-seat combat training version of the Northrop F-5 light multipurpose fighter. According to him, most likely, new avionics were indeed installed on the aircraft, and the cockpit was also improved, but this combat vehicle cannot be compared with modern fighters. Lyamin noted that by organizing loud, but in fact useless presentations of weapons and military equipment, Rouhani works for an internal Iranian audience. The expert believes that it is important for the President of Iran to demonstrate to the country's population that the military-industrial complex can develop under his independent leadership, as well as personally "note" in defense projects that are not related to the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
After the conclusion of a political agreement between Tehran and a group of countries known as 5 + 1 (Russia, USA, China, Great Britain, France - permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) regarding Iran's nuclear program, a UN Security Council resolution was adopted to extend the arms embargo for Iran for a five-year term. According to this resolution, until the fall of 2020, Tehran cannot buy modern aircraft engines and parts for them. “And even India, which has much larger scientific, technical and financial resources, is not yet able to master its own serial production of modern aircraft engines for fighters. This requires a long period of work and multi-billion dollar investments,”notes Yuri Lyamin. At the same time, the expert does not exclude that after 2020 Iran may purchase aircraft engines from Russia and, having provided significant investments in its own aircraft industry, will try to create a full-fledged light combat aircraft of its own production.
Kowsar fighter presentation
Mikhail Barabanov, a military expert at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, has a similar opinion with Lyamin, who noted that the so-called Iranian "aviation industry" has been revolving around various alterations of old American-made fighters for 25 years and is unable to give birth to anything else. “The Iranian aircraft designers present a project similar to the presented Kowsar fighter only in order to report on their own activities and lobby for the allocation of funds,” said Mikhail Barabanov.- In the event that the UN restrictions on Iran are not extended, the best way out for the Islamic republic would be to organize the production of modern Russian or Chinese aircraft on its territory. If these plans cannot be hindered by the inflated ambitions of Iran."
Israeli military experts also look at the Iranian novelty with a fair amount of skepticism, noting that the Kowsar fighter cannot boast of any innovative or breakthrough solutions. "I immediately saw a very old American fighter in the novelty," said Ophir Gendelman, an official from the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, commenting on the presentation of the novelty.
Military expert Joseph Dempsey, representing the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), shares a similar opinion with the Israelis. He compared the Iranian novelty to the American F-5F Tiger II two-seat fighter. At the same time, Joseph Dempsey noted that the new Iranian aircraft is not a blind copy of the American combat aircraft. Although the Kowsar looks very similar to the F-5F, it is not identical to the vehicles that Iran received from the United States. Judging by the presented photo and video materials, the Iranian aircraft received a modern digital cockpit with LCD displays, as well as new ejection seats, which, most likely, were created on the basis of the Russian K-36 ejection seats, the expert noted.
Fighter Northrop F-5 Iranian Air Force
Despite the criticism and doubts of experts, it is worth noting that even such capabilities of the Iranian military-industrial complex can be considered significant, given the conditions in which it has existed over the past decades. Of the neighbors of the Islamic republic, only two countries, Pakistan and Turkey, can afford military aircraft of their own design. At the same time, the Pakistani combat aircraft PAC JF-17 Thunder was created in close cooperation with the Chinese aviation corporation Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group. And the light turboprop training aircraft for advanced training of pilots TAI Hurkus has not even entered service with the Turkish Air Force.
