Russian Knights In Iran

[willedoo]

Photos of the Russian Knights Su-27 aerobatic team being escorted through Iranian airspace by F4 Phantoms & F14 Tomcats on their way home from the Bahrain airshow in January. Also along for the ride is Airforce IL-76MD, RA-78757 with tailguns removed:

 

http://englishrussia.com/2012/01/30/the-russian-knights-flying-over-iran/#more-89562

 

 

[Spin]

Nice link Willie, interesting photos. I wonder how many of their Tomcats the Iranians can still field, quite ironic that a rabidly anti US regime uses obsolete US equipment.

 

 

[willedoo]

Nice link Willie, interesting photos. I wonder how many of their Tomcats the Iranians can still field, quite ironic that a rabidly anti US regime uses obsolete US equipment.

Probably a bit hard to put a figure on it, there's always a difference to U.S. estimates & Iranian claims of how many are operational. I think it could be somewhere around 20 operational & 40 something all up. They originally ordered around 80, but I don't know how many were delivered. They would have lost a few over the years, I'd imagine. Fairly sure they all had the old F111 engines & not the GE's & heard this was one of the reasons we had to destroy ours.

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[Spin]

I did a bit of digging after I posted and see that there is some suggestion that Chinese reverse engineering has helped to keep the F-14's airborne. Wikipedia mentions the same thing, but what I found interesting was what is claimed to be complete list of aircraft acquired by the Iranian Air Force over the years, geez they've thrown some money at aircraft manufacturers;

 

98 MiG-29

 

249 F-4 Phantom

 

79 F-14 Tomcat

 

24 Mirage F1

 

313 F-5 Tiger

 

41 Chengdu F-7

 

24 Su-24

 

and various other odds n ends including 35 odd locally designed fighters, although I suspect that these are probably more upgraded F-5's than anything truly new. From what I can make out, all the Mirages and a few others were acquired during the 2003 Gulf War when some Iraqi pilots fled to Iran with their aircraft.

 

 

[willedoo]

Certainly a bit of a mix there, it would be a nightmare tryng to maintain it all. I had an idea there's 60 odd Phantoms still operational, nice to see them still flying in some parts of the world. It makes you wonder how some smaller countries like Malaysia, Indonesia etc deal with the logistics of having US, Russian & sometimes Chinese aircraft in their inventory.

 

Cheers, Willie.