September 21, 2018
Iran has unveiled what it says is a brand-new, highly advanced, entirely-domestic fighter jet which just happens to look exactly like an American F-5 warplane from the 1970s, right down to its tires.
The plane is named Kowsar (a river in heaven) and is now in mass-production, the Air Force said. It did not say how many would be built.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad-Hossain Dadras, the deputy commander of the Air Force, said, “Today we ourselves manufacture fighter jets completely from A to Z and we don’t need the help of foreigners even for one bit.”
It is quite possible that some of the innards of the aircraft are different from the 308 F-5s that the Shah bought from the United States in 1970s. (Some estimate Iran has 45 to 60 left.) But the Kowsar can’t be a completely new plane, as claimed, if the airframe is a half-century old.
The Islamic Republic first produced what it called its own fighter jet design in the 1980s, dubbing it the Azarakhsh and reporting it was being mass-produced. Years later, Iran acknowledged it had not been mass produced and was just a demonstrator. It was an F-5 look alike.
In the 1990s, Iran unveiled the Saeqeh, which was similar but not identical, to the F-5. The F-5 has a single tail; the Saeqeh has a double tail. Iran said Saeqeh went into mass production. Americans who have tracked photos of the plane say they have only seen nine serial numbers.
In 2013, Iran unveiled what it claimed to be a stealth aircraft, the Qaher (Conqueror). But it appeared to be a model. It was so small its pilot would have had to be a midget. A photo of the cockpit showed an airspeed indicator that topped out at 300 miles per hour (480 kph). Even the F-5 flies above 1,000 mph. The cockpit looked like it was taken from a civilian light plane.
It was shiny, while stealth aircraft have a rubbery surface to absorb radar waves. Commentator Galen Wright pointed out that one photo showed a stenciled tire pressure level of 50 pounds per square inch (psi). Even the lightweight F-16 requires 300 psi
Two days before the Air Force unveiled the “new” Kowsar, an old F-5 crashed as it was trying to land at Dezful in Khuzestan province. Pilot Col. Manuchehr Fattahi was killed. The backseat crewman survived.
In a series of appointments, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi named Gen. Aziz Naserzadeh as the new chief of the Air Force. News reports said he was an F-14 pilot during the Iran-Iraq war. That suggests he was one of the very few pilots from the Shah’s military allowed to stay in the Air Force after the revolution.