However, there are credible reports that Iranian F-14s achieved a number of “kills” of Iraqi aircraft with AIM-54 missiles during the war, and that Iran has “reverse-engineered” and produced a “AIM-54 clone”.

You should link the credible reports, global security watchdogs appear to have no such evidence.
We all know propaganda is a political tool, often embarked by rumour mongering in media. What I’d be interested to see is physical evidence beyond speculation, which seems to have an agenda wrt US/NATO interests in the Middle East and central Asia.

Also you are aware the EU has a very different approach to NATO over there. And also the US has yet failed to answer charges of the International Court for illegal activities and corruption institutionalised in foreign policy related to this “war on terror”

Europe has much politics about how it reports international affairs, but at least they’re fairly honest about being blatant liars, which they call reasonable (cultural) perspective.

DJCross, the only problem I have with avionics integration being regarded as a generation development in warbird models is the fact you could basically rebuild a Phantom with it. Would this make the Phantom 5-6th gen? Just a 3rd gen with nice avionics I think.

Avionics development, even where airframe integrated I don’t think forms a genuine determination of fighter evolution when looking at the airframe model, at least until that avionics is so developed the plane purrs when you pet its rump.

Most of Iran’s recent surplus of Russian equipment came during embargoed (illegal) arms trade with Ukraine in the early 90s. It was treated by the Soviets as no different to any other export nation and received less political support (read, Russian involvement) than Egypt. I’m unconvinced of existing deals with Russian industry and suspicious of agendas in its reporting. It is inherently likely Russians would be disassociative of Iran at best, for cultural rather than political reasons, the CIS and in fact old USSR is much better viewed as skewed democracy than a polarity to the US and I really don’t think they like the Iranians any more than yanks do, but certainly do rely upon export markets these days to get their defence industry back on even keel.

Anyways the very reason the US put bases in Bulgaria during the 90s was because of the illegal arms trade shipments from Ukraine to Iran during the height of political turmoil in Ukraine. This is also what cause the anti-Americanism in Turkey during the Bush administration, since Turkey is internationally treatised along with Ukraine and RF for Black Sea customs and the US were venturing into their sphere of influence by placing bases and military dumps on the Black Sea. Also Bush’s Euro missile defence system was blatantly aimed at the Ukrainians (the claim it was aimed at Iran was an epithet, it was aimed at Ukrainian arms trade with Iran), thinking ahead for the time when the US would give them the hard word about their arms trading, given that they are a ridiculously dangerous nuclear power despite any domestic affray.

If you take the movie Lord of War, it’s a (brilliant) Hollywood fictionalisation based on a a real life Italian arms dealer and what you do is swap his trade with Liberia to Iran and you have what happened.

Iran was never particularly in bed with the Russians even as an export purchaser.

About 85% of all the fluff about Iran, is just that. Iran borders the Caspian and the Caspian is the other big oil table in the Middle East other than the Persian Gulf. Afghanistan is the location of the Caspian gas pipeline to asia, which the Russians used to own and now private American companies do.
This is about the mineral resources of the Middle East, duh. Iran is a smaller threat than North Korea, who can manage to threaten like Taiwan shortly before being wiped from the map.

It’s all just fluff and greed, excuse me, economic and industrial security.

Here is my opinion of a couple of points for comparison.

The Mirage is far more agile and with FBW the inherent stability issues of the Mirage III/5/50 are solved much better than the simple canard fix Israel and SAAF used, making it much more like a modern multirole for dogfight handling than the era the Foxbat is from. The Mirage 2000 is probably as good as the F1 for agility and I’ve seen those do some amazing tree top manoeuvres.

Outright grunt however the Mirage is no faster on the deck than the Foxbat, and as the pair climb particularly from around 7000 metres the MiG is really going to draw further and further ahead with an exponential increase in acceleration and climb rate.

The thing about the Foxbat is that it performs very poorly at low altitude (one of the major design features the Foxhound was produced to fix so that cruise missiles could be intercepted), most high performance 3rd gen fighters will either outdo or match a Foxbat at low-medium altitude on every score, it’s only once you start getting into thin air that it suddenly leaps ahead with massive diameter engines to really move tremendous volumes of air ahead of the plane through the Soyuz-Tumanskies and make the most of a low air density. It’s perfect for high alt operation (11,000 to 18,000 metres really but has tons of grunt from about 7000 and just loses out to smaller, pressure variable nozzles and more efficient turbofans below this which are designed to make the most of midrange altitude air density).

The kind of tactic to be used for the Foxbat in this scenario is obviously hit and run or boom and zoom, which is traditionally how they’re used in the Middle East, for the Mirage obviously it’s going to be tag team tactics for energy and CWC over BVR. They’ll have to be using ground station controllers or AWACS since they’ll never even see a Foxbat otherwise.

The Mirage can match the Foxbat for acceleration, climb rate and speed performance on the deck, possibly have greater acceleration around 5000 metres and will lose big time from 7000 metres upwards. Foxbat best performance is at 11,500 metres and the MiG-23-based Sapfir data processing has demonstrated lookdown/shootdown (the old Smerch had clutter problems). The main BVR restriction is range being halved in lookdown mode (and engagements have to be one at a time although 10 can be tracked), nevertheless in lookdown/shootdown a Sapfir-25 still has the same range as a Mirage 2000 set looking straight ahead, with the added benefit of a very distant burn-through range, piggy backed frequency variations, for all its bad press the MiG-25 radar is actually a pretty deadly unit, it’s just not anywhere near as sophisticated as something like an AN/APG-65. Let’s say in typical small nation terms it’s pretty tough.

So in BVR the Foxbat is going to be standing on equal footing with the Mirage even at a higher average altitude and that spells disaster for the Mirage pilot, because it means the MiGs can basically engage or disengage combat at a whim. Any time they feel like it. It means they can choose to fight only on their terms. It’s a very powerful advantage.

In summary the Mirage and Foxbat are neck and neck for speed characteristics with the handling advantages going to the Mirage at low altitude, the Mirage starts running out of puff up past 10,000 metres and the MiG is really just coming into its own. And it has an extremely powerful radar set, which despite being technologically conservative is nevertheless quite sophisticated and has demonstrated lookdown/shootdown of small, fast moving targets from 8000 metres at dozens of kilometres horizontal range.
So higher mid-high altitude advantages all go to the MiG, along with BVR where the MiG pilots are able to set the conditions of the fight, which they certainly have the performance to do.

Truth be told however, from what I’ve read a lot of “PDS” upgrades fully exported to the Middle East in the 80-90s (during the 70s Foxbats wore arab colours but were actually operated by Russians and were never released to the locals), in fact have their radar sets downgraded to retain the old Smerch, and the only PD model features they have is the RB engines and ECM gear. The Sapfir-25 might’ve been Soviet-only equipment, someone will have to check that because it would make a tremendous difference. Basically the Smerch has no lookdown/shootdown and must operate either below or at the same altitude as its target in a clutter free environment, although it is virtually jam proof like the later series.

So if it is confirmed the Arab exported PDS still has the Smerch radar then all the rules no doubt most posters will specify would apply, that is the MiG will not be in a position to set the tone of the fight since it has to engage at the same altitude or lower and the Mirages will start at around 8000 metres and descend to the deck during extended manoeuvres for energy, the Foxbats are going to be losing performance all the way down and then the Mirages can use their speed equality to force a turn fight and CWC.

If Sapfir-25 this is never going to happen.

For me there’s no contest to the Flanker, but of course the latest Su-35 ovt tech-wise.
Honestly I’d rather one than an F-22 but on the radio I’d be like, c’mon guys can’t we work this out without the violence? Y’know because that’d be smart.
😀

As Tango elaborates, an attack fighter fitted with heavy rockets for the 50’s era would be generally designed to down bombers. The US did the same with their bomber interceptors, some designed to fire salvos of unguided rockets from a belly pack at bombers, this obviously before the advent of realistic and workable AAM’s which were still fairly unreliable in the 60s.

I’d say the AS was designed for some bomber-intercept teeth for Frontal Aviation (being a basic day fighter modification), where the expensive and probably limited production P and PF were probably equipped only to the PVO squadrons. It appears the PFU precedes the AS which makes sense, and that the AS would appear as modifications of both afterburning and non-afterburning Frescos in service. You’ll also probably find the PFU was reserved from non-Soviet export until the MiG-21PF was in service.

Alkali beam-riders were of course only able to be fitted to variants with radar, the all-weather interceptors. IIRC they replaced a gun fitment entirely, presumably to maintain climb performance for point defence.

I do think what you’ll probably find is the Russian designation for MiG-17 fitted with rocket packs (as opposed to attack rockets) would be BM but they would probably be received by export users as AS, basically only because they don’t speak Russian and would view the designation as a model type rather than equipment fitment. You’d also probably find the NATO callsign for a Fresco with attack-rockets or rocket packs would be the same, even though the two would be used for entirely different purposes (and I propose would most likely have different Russian designations saying so).

But what I am doing here is only speculating, for whatever little that’s worth.

Actually, out of the over 350 F-105 lost in Vietnam, less than 30 (or less than 10%) were due to enemy fighters.

The AA-3 missile of the Suchoi 15 was unsuitable for any dogfight or attack on fighter like targets. The target needs to be high-up to be successfully intercepted. The Suchoi 15 in a tactical combat with other fighters is a disaster waiting to happen. The Phantom had a much better weapon system (AIM-7E) and overall performance, still its success ratio against the less sophisticated MiG-21 and -17 was limited at best. The SARH-guided missiles often proved to be useless.

Apparently you have seen the wrong documentaries on the History Channel.
Tomcats didn’t appear before 1975, more than 3 years late for Linebaker II.
And the B-52s were intercepted by SAMs, and usually the MiGs did not dare to get too close as they were in danger of being shot by their own SAMs.

Schorsch you’re speaking with an obvious personal agenda and it’s boring me.

I’m going by Robin Olds own words about the situation versus enemy fighters leading into Operation Bolo. I’ll take his word over yours.

You’re aware the Vietnam era Sidewinder couldn’t track in more than a 3G turn, right?

Tomcat deliveries began in ’72. Operational status ’73. On station making CAP off the coast of Vietnam from September ’74. Provided air cover for the embassy evacuation in ’75 which is when it first entered Vietnamese airspace.
So they started appearing in ’72. Had the US been in a critical air combat situation it is perfectly reasonable to assert both operational status and combat missions might’ve easily been pushed forward. The point is it began appearing in ’72 and had station-worthy numbers (a carrier wing) during ’73 for a better representation of a “what if” timeline since that was what was being discussed when I mentioned it.

We’re talking here, and you want to have a swordfight. I’m not interested.

How fast is that?

Much faster than a Mirage 2000, similar to a MiG-29 or a Strike Eagle, not as fast as an F-111.
About 1350km/h.