This will be difficult to top this year
Holy **** :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
While western air forces tend to get more and more boring every day (see Eurofighter, Rafale, Gripen and company) there are at least some out there that can surprise with some decent equipment.
Now have a look at what just popped up on airliners.net. That’s simply mindblowing and I doubt that anybody can top this this year :diablo:
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Iran—Air/Sukhoi-Su-22M4/1654627/&sid=d8f31ef761d8c9a660f81fca7d64bca2
I always wondered whether any Iraqi Su-22’s made it over to Iran and finally here we now have (I guess) the answer to that question :dev2:
But this image opens a whole list of new questions. Is this Fitter operational ? Maybe there are so few of them that defected to Iran that the IRIAF considered it not worthwhile to enter them into active service. Would they be in active service why did not any of them take part in the parade over Tehran ? Maybe Iran recently purchased some additional second hand ones in a former Soviet Republic, Turkmenistan or Ukraine being likely candidates, and will put them into service soon when they will have reached full squadron strenght ? As far as I remember they did that with the Su-25’s of the Republican Guard and the Su-24’s and Mig-29’s of the air force. Somebody correct me if I am wrong here.
Well, although I love the thought that this could be a regular active duty Su-22 with the IRIAF my personal point of view of what we could be seeing here is that this may be indeed one of a couple of ex Iraqi Su-22’s which is part of some kind of test establishment like at Boscombe Down in the UK, Pax River in the states, Zhukovsky or Akhtubinsk in Russia or Manching in Germany where the IRIAF just evaluated this mud mover and that they just showed it off for the first time to the public at an open day. Have a close look at the backround. This looks like some kind of static exhibition to me with a Huey and an Orion plus plenty of people wearig civilian clothes in the backround.
Well, even if what we see here is a non airworthy ex Iraqi Fitter serving as an instructional airframe painted in fancy colors for the show, it is still a divine revelation to me personally. I wonder how the rest of this airframe looks like ? Does it have roundels ? Are there any others ? I’ll definitely check the net in the upcoming days 😀
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