Iran Air Force (IRIAF) | News and Discussions

Mig-35 is a dead project.

You are entitled to your opinion, but I don't agree.

The Su-35/30 and Su-57 are simply too expensive to buy and to operate to have as your only fighter aircraft... you need a smaller cheaper numbers aircraft, which was the intent and purpose of the MiG-35, and it is also the intent and purpose of the Checkmate and the F-35, although the F-35 was a terrible example that went in the opposite direction because of corruption and politics.

RuAF bought it in hope to push foreign clients to buy it if they see russian air force considering it. They will never order it.

Of course they are going to order it, they have ordered some, there are plenty of operations any air force needs to perform that don't require Su-35 or Su-57 level performance or cost, for which a MiG-35 is just fine... flying around with long range AAMs or lots of short range missiles... a MiG-35 can do that cheaper and easier than an Su-35 can... the MiG can carry pretty much all the same weapons and equipment, in a smaller lighter cheaper platform.

And don't say they are testing it because the aircraft is just a mig-29SMT in a new build body. They already know it. Aesa radar isn't fitted in them. There is nothing new to test.

All the avionics are upgraded and different, they will test the AESA radar when it is ready for service... if they are going that way... for all we know they might think newer technologies might make more sense and the MiG-35 is a stopgap while they get their 5th gen light fighter ready for testing...

We really don't know if a 5th gen light fighter that is cheap to operate is even possible... obviously Sukhoi make claims but they are going to claim such things are they not?

IMHO the light fighter should not be as light as possible... the Gripen shows if you make it too light it is not so capable and you need two or three of them to get the job done... which means you would be better with a single heavy fighter doing the job instead.

The waters are also muddied by the S-70 type drones that could also be used to add numbers to an air force.

Jf-17 isn't better but is a ready design and chinese now offer a far wider range of weapon for them than russians offer for any of their aircraft.

For Iran, surely a better design with twin engines offers much better growth potential if needed, and I am not sure where you got the idea that China has a wider range of weapons for them.... they generally have domestic stuff, which is a small group, the copied Russian and Soviet stuff, which is not complete, and the copied western stuff... the copied stuff is generally not as good as the stuff it is copied from, so perhaps they do have a wider range of weapons, but how many of those weapons are useful?

Having an enormous range of weapons just complicates your logistics and planning for missions... having 20 different types of unguided rocket pod is not much use unless you want a flight of 20 planes each carrying one type each and even then what sort of advantage would that be in the real world?

Specially for ground attack missiles and glinding bomb as well as precision guided bombs.

The Russians have an enormous range of air to ground bombs and missiles...

They also offer a wider range of EO pods.

For Iran that is no advantage... they are not so rich as to be able to buy them all, so they will likely try them all and select one or perhaps two for one or two specific roles...

Pl-15 is also much more attractive than the shitty r-77/rvv-ae. Rvv-sd being bought by no one which suggested they are not giving it for export. Russia new weapons have been showed only as models and don't seem to be produced.

Russian weapons are being used in combat in Syria and Ukraine and seem to be doing the job they were designed for... can you say the same about Chinese weapons?

Even the kh-38 doesn't seem to be produced let alone gliding bombs which are a must have for modern forces.

Seem... you are basing your opinion on an assumption.

Chinese production rate is also higher than russia's and their prices are also less fix...

Completely untested... how often do all those ships go to sea?

China sends troops to its Indian border but does not seem keen to use its stealthy planes...

And how many tactical weapons are they producing... and what are they doing with them all?

Well we agree they need a light aircraft. Mig-35 is just a smaller su-35. I don't consider it as a light aircraft frankly. Single engine and light weight is what makes me consider it a light aircraft. And a light aircraft isn't suppose to do as much as a large aircraft, keep in mind it has less load and smaller legs

You are focussing on the wrong thing... the light plane could be the same weight as the heavy plane... it is not about weight as such, it is about price and cost of ownership.

The light in this case would be better spelled lite... reduced performance over a smaller volume of airspace, but still modern and capable... whether it does that with one engine or two does not matter, because you take the engines out to overhaul them so you have a team per engine, those teams are in the AF so they are not paid per engine, so the costs don't go up, they get a salary so whether they are sitting around doing nothing or working on an aircraft engine doesn't matter.

The important point is that the MiG-35 is a cheaper Su-35 and that is what they need.

That's the deal: do less but what you can do do it cheaper than bigger aircraft.

So you are saying 100 million dollar F-16s or 120 million dollar F-35s would be a good light fighter for Russia because they have single engines?

The size or engine number is not important... the purchase costs and operational costs are what matter because the lite aircraft is a numbers aircraft.

A single engined drone that costs 80 million per airframe, crashes a lot, and needs expensive stealth coatings sprayed on it twice a day whether it flys anywhere or not is a bad solution no matter what its weight is or the number of engines it uses.

We are talking about lite numbers aircraft... a plane that might carry lots of dumb bombs and unguided rockets but use a Gefest & T system to be able to place those weapons on target accurately in free flight, being able to manouver and still release bombs accurately on target... they could be used as bomb trucks... it is the sort of role the US intended for the F-16 as a simple day fighter with a good radar and modern Avionics and then they turned it into a mini F-15 and instead of a 20 million dollar fighter it became a 100 million dollar fighter bomber.

And seeing indians getting ride of their mig-29k which is using all the systems a mig-35 use isn't a good sign for the mig family.

Yes, the Indians are renowned for making sensible decisions when it comes to buying aircraft... they spent more on 36 Rafales than they did on 300 odd Su-30MKIs.

When they get some experience with the carrier based alternatives in the world it will be interesting... F-18 and Rafale... they are going to get a lesson in how much things in the west cost to buy and to operate and they will look back at the MiG-29K with nostalgia.

Russia order it sope for testing but they still lack the AESA.

So?

That is like complaining that UKSK launch tubes for Russian ships are stupid because they wont have hypersonic missiles ready to load into them till next year.

By the time the AESA radars are ready you want to have decent numbers of aircraft in service that can carry them... a repeat of the Su-27... they made huge numbers of airframes but the avionics and radars were not so easy to make so they had airframes sitting doing nothing waiting for radar and equipment to be produced for them.

The MiG-35 have systems and equipment and can be put into service and when AESA radars are ready they can install them then.

Without the aesa it is just the same aircraft with fancier screens as their mig-29SMT that they wabt to replace with sukhois.

MiG-29SMT are older technology with a different airframe.

They didn't change the external shape because the external shape was excellent, but the difference between a MiG-29SMT and the MiG-29M/29K/35 is like the difference between the Mirage 2000 and the Rafale.

Iran is facing a bigger problem than Russia. It is a big country like Russia but it has much mlre enemies on its borders that are very well armed... On every sides. They need a big airforce and they can't use just the su-35 nor do they have money for it. Jf-17 or j-10 is an obligation for them.

I don't agree, I think Iran could probably buy a licence for the MiG-29M and make most of the parts for themselves with Russia sending them engines... if they buy enough they could probably set up an engine overhaul facility that Syria and perhaps Iraq could send their aircraft for upgrades and overhauls...

Russia isn't producing or using that much new air to ground weapons.

An assumption by you. Why do you believe that to be true?

They don't even produce gliding bombs, neither do they produce guidnace kits for dumb bombs.

Guidance kits for dumb bombs are a scam, and who said they don't have glide bombs... but more importantly why do you think glide bombs are so special?

You do understand that to get decent range with a glide bomb it needs to be released at speed and at altitude, which makes it horribly vulnerable to the launch aircraft being shot down by BUK or S-300s operating in the area.

For HATO glide bombs are going to be horrendous because flying high and fast to use them makes you horribly vulnerable to BUK-M3 and S-350 and S-400 and a range of other systems... and even if you release a dozen bombs TOR can easily destroy those in flight as can Pantsir... so it is all for nothing unless you target unprotected civilian targets like the Orcs do, which makes them pretty useless.

China has any of this that they copied from the west. Yeh they are copies and may be of lower quality but if they work I see no problem.

And if they don't work then they are meaningless fluff of no interest.

5 guided 100kg bombs can take out much more than a single unguided 500kg bomb. Russia lacks such weapons.

You have to find 5 targets to use 5 guided bombs and you might not see any on your first pass because the targets you are after will be hiding.

Russia has plenty of different guided bombs from about 20kgs in weight upwards... many of which appear to be intended for use by drones.

A lot of the time western weapons are not so effective because they took their accuracy for granted and reduced to payload weight too far.

What we should be agreeing is that they need a cheaper numbers aircraft that can do most of the things the heavier aircraft can do but over a shorter range with less ordinance, but in much larger numbers.

That is what the MiG-35 is... and they have a fifth gen light fighter model that is single engined and a carrier based light fighter with two engines too... and an unmanned drone that operates as a wingman type drone... the lack of information about them suggests the customer (Russian AF) wants to keep them secret, while the unwanted offer from Sukhoi Su-75 has been revealed to get export customers.

That is what happened to the Mi-28 Havoc when the Army decided they wanted the single seat Ka-50, so the Hokum remained secret and the Havoc was shown to stir up some export interest.

Eventually it was realised that attack helicopters work best at night... harder to shoot down... and a single seat attack helicopter is at a disadvantage flying at night because flying at night is a full time job at low altitude so finding and attacking targets requires an extra crew.

In the end they decided on taking both as they were different enough to both be considered useful...

That might happen with these fighters too of course.

F-4 phantoms have a wingspan of about 12 metres, MiG-29/35s have very comparable wingspans.

Flankers won't fit in such underground bunker hangers.