F-14A vs F-15I

[Jona33]

So, in the US Navy you can deliberately shoot down other allied pilots with life ammunition, without being impeached for attempted murder? Good to know, that our western standards of justice are so important to the US government...

 

The impression I got from that story was that the pilot believed that he was firing on a genuine target, unrelated to the exercise.

[RIPTIDE]

Yes it is, but good luck integrating it with a radar it was never meant to work with when you're working with reverse-engineered equipment.

There is one thing that I had read before about the Iranian infrastructure, opinions that are supported by USAF personnel there in the 70's was that the Shah as we know had planned to have a very large airforce and had made considerable industrial and logistically provisions for it along with a lot of self reliance moves helped by the US before his fall. IN other words, there was a lot of expertise passed on, and domestic production capacity and even though there was a ~20% purge of the airforce loyalists, much of them seem to have filtered back into the industries as time went on and the political issues started to fade away.

 

I think generally there might be a few surprises both in their favour and against them.

[RIPTIDE]

One thing which has poisoned our impression of Iranian F-14s and their airforce in general is that Tom Cooper guy... seems a lot of research and knowledge filters back to some of the stuff he authored... which had some very high bar claims to put it nicely. lol

[Pilotasso]

There is so much Iranians can surprise anyone with nearly disintegrating 30+ year old airframes...

[Night]

There is one thing the Israelis could do to make a strike on Iran possible. They could just strengthen the landing gear of the F-15I and F-16I and find a very remote ancient lakebed in Syria or Iraq where they could land and refuel in secret. If they fly low, I am sure they could find a route that would take them around radar installations.

 

You all forget how eager Iran's Arab neighbors are to see its nuclear program vanquished. They may not be able to publicly let Israel use their airbases, but it's likely they'd look the other way.

[RIPTIDE]

There is so much Iranians can surprise anyone with nearly disintegrating 30+ year old airframes...

Hyperbole much? ;)

[verana_ss]

I dont know if decades old plane without constant upgade would do much under modern EW.

[Pilotasso]

Hyperbole much? ;)

 

Its a good thing youll never have the chance to pull 7G's on that thing, you would see whos hyperboling :)

[countto10]

Any excuse for an F-14 tribute is a good one.

 

 

 

And F-15.

 

Edited September 8, 2013 by countto10

[blackadam]

How IRIAF F-14 Tomcats could be (effectively) used in combat against Israeli or U.S. planes or drones

 

Mar 16 2012 - 13 Comments

A previous article about the theoretical Israeli strike on Iran with the rendering of an F-15I dropping bombs on Tehran got a lot of attention and sparked debate. Someone criticized it for not being enough realistic, even if I had explained that the image had to be taken as such even if contained one (or more) wrong details. It was not supposed to be accurate that’s why I didn’t ask Al Clark, who designed it, to correct some elements of artist freedom.

In this article, a new Al’s artwork below gives me the opportunity to write something about one of the most famous aircraft in IRIAF inventory: the F-14 Tomcat.

According to “IRIAF 2010“, the book published by Harpia Publishing and written by Tom Cooper, Babak Taghvace and Liam F. Devlin, that I consider one of the most detailed sources about Iran’s Air Force, due to the lack of some spare parts, the fleet of more than 40 Tomcats is roughly divided into “airworthy” and “fully mission capable aircraft”.

The first fly without primary weapon systems and/or no AWG-9 radar; the second can perform QRA (Quick Reaction Alert) and air defense missions.

These aircraft are based at TFB.8 (Tactical Fighter Base 8) Baba’i near Eshahan, in central Iran.

Hence, although IRIAF officials have described the current fleet of F-14s as “completely overhauled” and “improved”, and referred to it a a “new generation of bombers” in the recent past, only a small amount of Tomcats can be used for air defense purposes in spite of the large amount of spare parts that Iran was able to clandestinely collect after the type was retired by the U.S. Navy and the efforts of various domestic companies to produce some specific parts and subsystems.

What is the role the Tomcat could play in a hypothetical war against Israel?

As already explained in the blog post about the possible long range strike on Iran’s nuclear program, IRIAF interceptors, should play “hide and seek” with the enemy forces: they could hide from the incoming packages and try to achieve some kills during the egress phase. They could be effective by simply disturbing the strike packages to let them “feel” the threat and waste some gas.

The Tomcats could somehow be effective against isolated targets, like drones, mainly before or after the first waves of air strikes: even a UAV kill could play a role in the psychological war against Israel.

For sure, radar activation would be reduced to a minimum: during the most intense part of the air campaign their AWG-9 radar would be either jammed (although it was domestically modified or locally upgraded to make it more jamming-resistant) or detected as soon as switched on, with the latter hypothesis implying the risk of interception by enemy fighters.

Obviously, just in case: before the whole thing starts the planes should be dispersed on one of the several Iranian airbases to prevent them from being destroyed on the ground at TFB.8.

 

http://theaviationist.com/2012/03/16/how-iriaf-f-14-tomcats-could-be-effectively-used-in-combat-against-israeli-or-u-s-planes-or-drones/#.UiydFz9my2o