Persian Tomcats in service

There's a very interesting article in the current issue of Combat Aircraft,
Vol 7, No. 6. It's by Tom Cooper and Liam F. Devlin and titled "Iran: A
Formidable Opponent?"

The article is about Iran's current air force capabilities, specifically
focusing on the Tomcats in Iranian service (it is in keeping with the
issue's focus on the retirement of the Tomcat from USN service; several
other magazines are doing similar Tomcat farewell issues).

According to the authors, the Tomcat remains in frontline Iranian service
and in sizeable numbers. The authors claim that in late 2003 a USAF E-3
Sentry tracked 16--yes, SIXTEEN--Iranian Tomcats flying in formation. This
was the largest number spotted at one time since 1997, when nine were
tracked over the southern Persian Gulf by the US Navy.

The article is somewhat defensive in tone. The authors claim that although
Western sources report that the Tomcat is barely operable, this is untrue.
The Iranians have put a lot of effort into maintaining and even rebuilding
their Tomcats and Phantoms, and they may have as many as 65 Phantoms in
service. It said that the US has decided that the Tomcat is barely operable
because it no longer operates on the borders, but only deep inside Iran.
But they claim that this is actually because the Iranians are trying to
preserve their assets and keep their most powerful fighter farther from
potential harm.

They also make a number of other claims, including that the CIA may have
acquired or inspected a Russian MiG-31 in 1997, and that the Russians
offered 22 secondhand MiG-31 aircraft to the Iranians, who turned them down.
(The CIA reportedly sought to buy these aircraft rather than let the
Iranians get them.) The article also claims that the Russians offered
Su-27s, Su-30s, and MiG-29s to the Iranians, but the Iranians are wary of
buying Russian aircraft because the terms are bad. For instance, the
Russians do not allow license building of their jet engines. Simply put,
the Russians won't give the Iranians enough independence and the Iranians
don't want to get stuck in a position of weakness when it comes to acquiring
spare parts for their aircraft.

There's a lot of amazing stuff in the article and it would be fascinating if
true. But one objection that I've heard others make about Cooper and his
other co-writer Farzad Bishop is that it is impossible to independently
confirm their information. They might conduct a lot of interviews with
Iranian pilots and ex-pat Iranians, but we don't know how carefully they
check their information. (This article by Cooper and Devlin concedes that
fewer Iranians have left the country since the mid-1990s, so it is harder to
speak to Iranians outside the country.)

Personally, the one thing I'm dubious about is the claim that Western
intelligence agencies do not have a good understanding of just how active
the Iranian F-14s are. If they turn on their radars, then the US intel
assets in the Persian Gulf will detect them. In addition, satellite photos
should also indicate how many F-14s are operable. Sure, the Iranians must
keep a lot of them in hangars, but occasionally they will move them around
airfields and they can be counted. In fact, somebody with a credit card
could order up commercial images of Iranian airfields and check for
themselves. So I don't buy the claim that US intel officials think that
_virtually no_ F-14s or their AWG-9 radars are still operating. My
suspicion is that the authors are responding to misinformed trash talking in
the aviation press, not to what US intel actually believes about Iranian
capabilities.

All that said, the one thing that establishes credibility for Cooper and
Devlin (as well as Cooper and Bishop in their books on the Iranian F-4s and
F-14s) is the impressive array of photos that they have collected. These
include aerial refueling shots of F-4s and Su-24s, as well as formation
shots of F-5s and other aircraft, and a very cool grainy image of an F-14 at
extremely low altitude over the Gulf. That aircraft is in the current
blue/gray paint scheme. They also have a photo of an F-14 with an ATM-54A
training round alongside, photographed in April 2004. That raises an
interesting point--if the Iranians no longer can operate the AIM-54 Phoenix,
then why would they be carrying around training rounds? Clearly they retain
some kind of AIM-54 Phoenix capability.



D