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Aero India 2013

Ahmadinejad unveils Iran's newest fighter jet

Iran on Saturday unveiled its newest combat jet, a domestically manufactured fighter-bomber that military officials claim can evade radar.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a ceremony broadcast on state TV that building the Qaher F-313, or Dominant F-313, shows Iran's will to "conquer scientific peaks."

The Qaher is one of several aircraft designs the Iranian military has rolled out since 2007. Tehran has repeatedly claimed to have developed advanced military technologies in recent years, but its claims cannot be independently verified because the country does not release technical details of its arsenals.

The Islamic republic launched a self-sufficient military program in the 1980s to compensate for a Western weapons embargo that banned export of military technology and equipment to Iran. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles, torpedoes, drones and fighter planes.

"Qaher is a fully indigenous aircraft designed and built by our aerospace experts. This is a radar-evading plane that can fly at low altitude, carry weapons, engage enemy aircrafts and land at short airstrips," Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said.

Vahidi said advanced materials were used to manufacture the body of the aircraft, making it Iran's best stealth plane.

However, some reports suggest that Iran's program relies on equipment supplied by major international defense contractors and that it incorporates parts made abroad or uses outside engineered technologies in its domestic designs.

Still photos of the Qaher released by the official IRNA news agency and pictures on state TV showed a single-seat jet. They described it as a fighter-bomber that can combat other aircraft and ground targets.

Iran's English-language state Press TV said Qaher was similar to the American-made F/A-18, an advanced fighter capable of dogfighting as well as penetrating enemy air defenses to strike ground targets.

But Hasan Parvaneh, an official in charge of the project, said the physical design of the Iranian plane was unique and bore no resemblance to any foreign fighter jet.

"Development depends on our will. If we don't have a will, no one can take us there," Ahmadinejad told the inauguration ceremony in Tehran. "Once we imported cars and assembled them here. Now, we are at a point where we can design, build and get planes in the air."

Ahmadinejad said Qaher was built for deterrence.

"It's not for expansionism. It's for deterrence," he said, claiming the aircraft was among the most advanced fighter jets in the world.

In 2007, Iran unveiled what it said was its first domestically manufactured fighter jet, called Azarakhsh or Lightning. In the same year, it claimed that Azarakhsh had reached industrial production stage.

Saeqeh, or Thunder, was a follow-up aircraft derived from Azarakhsh. Iran unveiled its first squadron of Saeqeh fighter bombers in an air show in September 2010.

Close by, a freshly minted J-11B undergo flight-testing

New military and civilian aircraft from all over the world are showcased at the 10th International MAKS-2011 Air Show, which opened at Zhukovsky Airfield near Moscow, on August 16. Photo: Russian MiG-35 multirole fighter during a demonstration flight at the MAKS-2011 air show.

The Russian air force wants to procure 120 Sukhoi Su-34 strike aircraft, the service's commander has revealed.

Speaking at the MAKS air show in Moscow, Gen Aleksander Zelin said five squadrons will eventually be armed with the two-seat type, with each to have 24 aircraft.

The Russian defence ministry's procurement plan for this year includes 12 Su-34s, and production activities at Sukhoi's NAPO plant in Novosibirsk are gradually picking up.

Orders have been confirmed for 32 Su-34s so far, with seven of these having been accepted into squadron service and a handful more being used by the defence ministry's weapons-assessment units and industry.

The air force is now working with United Aircraft and Sukhoi to firm-up contacts for follow-on batches, and intends to have 70 of the aircraft operational in 2015.

The Russian military will use new MiG-35D multirole fighters as an equal to the U.S. F-35 fighters, the Air Force chief said on Tuesday.

"We have not given up on the MiG-35D light aircraft project, but we will transfer to the T-50 [heavy fighter] in the future," Gen. Alexander Zelin, the Russian Air Force commander, said during his visit to the six-day air show MAKS-2011 that opened near Moscow on Tuesday.

The U.S. Air Force began using the F-22 fifth generation fighter in the 2000s. America is now developing a lighter and less expensive version, the F-35.

The MiG-35 is an advanced derivative of the MiG-29, which uses air-to-air and air-to-surface guided missiles and the Zhuk A radar (Zhuk AE in exports).

DRDO officials say the Kaveri aero-engine, which incidentally is over 22 years in the making by now with a sanctioned cost of Rs 2,893 crore, can power unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) because they "do not require the kind of higher thrust" needed for the indigenous Tejas LCA (light combat aircraft).

" Nine prototypes of Kaveri engine and four prototypes of Kaveri Core (Kabini) engines have been developed with over 2,000 hours of testing...the engine is proven with almost 80 kilonewtons (kN) of thrust now, which is enough for our UCAVs (Tejas requires 90 kN)," said an official.

This comes even as DRDO has now begun preliminary work on developing stealth UCAVs, under the secretive 'autonomous unmanned research aircraft' programme. This UCAV will weigh less than 15 tonnes, fly at altitudes of 30,000 feet and fire missiles and bombs with precision, as earlier reported by TOI.

The "mother" could well become the "granny" of all defence deals in the years ahead. India is likely to go in for another 63 fighters after delivery of the first 126 MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) if the "timelines" for its other fighter development projects are not met, say top defence officials.

When the MMRCA selection process was initiated by the defence ministry in mid-2007, the overall project cost was pegged at Rs 42,000 crore, or $10.4 billion for 126 fighters. But it will zoom well beyond $20 billion, if India eventually decides to opt for 189 jets since inflation is also being factored in. Even with 126 jets, this is the biggest such fighter contract going around the world as of now.

This comes even as MoD is all set to open the commercial bids of the two jets left in the MMRCA fray -French Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon -"within a week or two". Eurofighter Typhoon is backed by the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy,

MoD has already rejected "any scope for comeback" by the other four jets, including the American F/A-18s and F-16s, ejected out of the MMRCA race in April on technical grounds after gruelling field trials.

"We are looking for only 126 fighters. The first 18 jets will come from abroad, while the rest 108 will be manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd after transfer of technology (ToT) from end-2016 or early-2017 onwards," said a senior MoD official on Monday.

"But yes, if the timelines for the Tejas LCA (light combat aircraft) and the stealth Indo-Russian FGFA (fifth-generation fighter aircraft) projects are not met, we will go for more MMRCA to retain IAF's combat edge," he added.

Apart from progressively inducting 272 Sukhoi-30MKIs contracted from Russia for around $12 billion, IAF is slated to induct the first lot of 120 indigenous Tejas from end-2013 onwards. India also hopes to begin inducting 250 to 300 FGFA from 2020 onwards under the joint project with Russia, which rough calculations show will eventually cost India around $35 billion in the decades ahead.

But that is in the future. The request for proposal (RFP) for the ongoing MMRCA competition, issued in August 2007, did have the standard clause of India reserving the option to go in for 50% more fighters, over and above the initial 126, in the coming years.

This, however, is the first time that top defence officials have directly linked the progress in the LCA and FGFA projects to the possibility of exceeding the MMRCA acquisition beyond the first 126 jets.

"Commercial bids of Eurofighter and Rafale will soon be opened, with the reports of the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) and Technical Offsets Evaluation Committee (TOEC) virtually complete now," said another official.

But it will not be "a cut-and-dried" affair to determine the lowest bidder (L-1). "Calculation of L-1 will take around a month due to the huge amounts of mathematical and data verification of the lifecycle costs of operating the jets over a 40-year period, with 6,000 hours of flying, as well as cost of ToT," he added.

Final commercial negotiations with the L-1 vendor will then begin before the contract is ready for signing by December or January. IAF, on its part, wants deliveries of the 126 fighters to begin from December, 2014, onwards to stem its fast-eroding combat edge. Plans have already been firmed up to base the first MMRCA squadron at Ambala, with subsequent squadrons coming up both in the western and eastern theatres.