A question for Iranians something I always wondered

[Musalman]

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None of the F16 were delivered to Iran. All made for Iran were sold to Israel. The fotos are mock models of F16 made by some Iranian artist.

[lem34]

Maybe a little off topic but in the first gulf war didn't most of Iraq's air force go to Iran?? Did Iranians gain any planes at that time?

[Era_923]

Maybe a little off topic but in the first gulf war didn't most of Iraq's air force go to Iran?? Did Iranians gain any planes at that time?

Yes.24 Mirage F1
24 Su-24 and Su-22
7 Su-25
4 Mig 29
15 II-76
and some others.

[Al Bhatti]

iranians can copy f-16??

well thats something new

btw the iranian jet you are talking about,ive heard, its just the modified bird, not a copy

If they "can"

http://rt.com/news/iran-reproduce-us-drone-621/

and also

Iran Can Make Drones More Advanced than RQ-170

then why not?

[lem34]

Anyway whatever they can or can not do we must emulate and admire Iran for going alone and standing up as proud Muslim nation I think they have done well without being bribed or bullied as our Pakistani and other Muslim leaders.

I mean countries like Pakistan who have F16's are not even 100% sure if they have kill switches so they cant be used against without American approval

[Harry_Thomason]

This question is not difficult to answer - its about available resources and priorities.

To reverse engineer F-16 (or similar gen. fighter) requires hundreds of billions and decades of work. Even if Iran does it, US and its alies would have thousands of several generations newer planes, what 20 or even 100 Iranian F16 could do against them? Not much.

Thus we get to the core - priorities. Iran picked a smart strategy - the ONLY way they can beat (or outlast) attack by US or a whole NATO is by asymmetric warfare. Extensive air-defense, advanced missiles, mobile and dispersed weaponry and radars. A LOT of relatively effective but cheap to produce weapons. Thats the focus.

Its 1000x cheaper to make missiles which can destroy latest gen. fighters, than to create fighter itself. So Iran has its priorities straight, and even though they do have multiple fighters projects, they dont focus on them too much. From time to time we hear how some advancements are made. Progress is there, but we cant expect Iran to make F-16 or better anytime soon, nor Iran relies on them securing their country.

[twilight]

if iranians reverse engineered f-5 why didnt they mass produced it??

those are test's subjects ... and for sure Saegheh isn't worthy to mass produce .... it only gave Iranian engineers experiment about how is producing a fighter .

another thing , Iran spend most of his budget for his missiles program and UAVs and recently anti air defense systems so we haven't enough budget ...
the fighters are expensive and it require long time to mass produce it ....

[PERSIAN GOD KING]

As I said I prefer the sejill 2 to get the job done.
Iran is making a new jet.

[Desert Fox]

F-15 carries 11 ton weapons with 5 m inaccuracy while Scud C/D have about 1000/500 kg payload with about 500 m inaccuracy. So, Iraq had 17000 anti air missiles, 4000 a/a cannons as well as 300 fighters/interceptors and didn't shot down but a couple of jets.

That has more to do with quality, training, as well as the technological edge the West had over Saddam's Iraqi Army.

[King Solomon]

In my opinion, the path which Iran chose (perfecting and mass producing missiles) is the best path for all Arab countries to chose.

What are aircrafts like F 16s? They are just a mechanism for delivery of missiles for decimating ground and air targets. Only difference is that they are re-usable. Iran has recognised that it cannot match US/Israel/NATO in the Air Force department as they are way too advanced. Instead Iran chose to build a credible deterrent by perfecting missile technology and mass producing missiles (and SAMs for air defence). Very sensible and intelligent pathway if you ask me.

If Israel attacks Iran, it risks thousands of missiles raining down on Tel-aviv, enough to destroy the entire city. This is how a credible deterrent is made.

Countries like KSA have achieved a much superior air force however, they are still very vulnerable to sanctions in case of Arab-israeli conflict. I believe, instead, if KSA chose a path similar to Iran its deterrent force could be non-sanctionable. As of now, the KSA and Arab air forces are very vulnerable to sanctions if US/NATO stops critical spare part supplies. This is just the reality which we cannot deny (i have no intention of smearing KSA).

[King Solomon]

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Anyway whatever they can or can not do we must emulate and admire Iran for going alone and standing up as proud Muslim nation I think they have done well without being bribed or bullied as our Pakistani and other Muslim leaders.

I mean countries like Pakistan who have F16's are not even 100% sure if they have kill switches so they cant be used against without American approval

The notion of kill switches are real and not fake. Recent Israeli attack on dummy Syrian nuke reactors proved that. Israel had the mechanism to 'switch off' Syrian air defences.

Recently, Turkey modified their embedded software for F 16s to allow identification of Israeli aircrafts as 'enemies' who can be locked. In the unmodified F 16 version, Israeli aircrafts would be shown as 'friendly' and un lockable targets.

Makes me think whether the F16s of Pakistan, Eurofighters/F15s of KSA are reliable when it comes to dealing with countries like Israel or US.