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Iran’s unveiled what they claim is their answer to the Western world’s fighter aircraft — their own, home-brewed stealth fighter to rival the very best of the US’s aerial armada. Only problem? It’s probably a hoax.
A ‘prototype’ F-313 was unveiled as part of the Ten-Day Dawn ceremonies in Iran. It looks like some weird mash-up of the Batmobile and a F-22 Raptor stealth fighter — the thing’s got 4 wings, for crying out loud! As The Aviationist point out, it’s also too small to be a proper fighter — the nose, where a targeting radar apparently lives, is way too small for a proper targeting radar, they reckon.
Furthermore, there’s a video of it ‘flying’, but it doesn’t really fly like a jet-powered stealth aircraft should — it’s suspiciously like a RC airplane with a bodykit. Overall, then, I don’t think the West has to worry about covert incursions by Iranian aircraft quite yet — we’ll wait until they have an actual flying fighter to sound the alarm bells.
Also, I think that if Iran actually had a real stealth plane, they’d debut it somewhere a bit more glamorous than what looks like a run-down industrial estate. [Wired]
Iran Photoshopped Its New Stealth Fighter Jet to Look Like It Was Flying When It Totally Wasn't
Leaked Photos Show a New Chinese Fifth Generation Stealth Jet Fighter
The F-35B Stealth Fighter Descends Like a Wrathful God of War
Clearly they employed Clint Eastwood as a consultant designer.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/MiG-31_Firefox.jpg
Nice propoganda piece
Its amazing what they can do with 3D printers these days, but that carpet looks like it could do with a bit of a shake and vac
Actually I was talking about the article.
So was I. What bit didn’t you understand the 3D printer the reference to the fact the floor under the plane looks like a carpet or the shake and vac reference, its the shake and vac reference isn’t it, thats what it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6TcQ_Odcuc
Thats how we rolled in the 80′s.
Sorry. I must have missed the sarcasm.
Following hot on the heels of this, I’m waiting for the Iranian Deathstar to be announced.
That’s it Iran! You’re next!
Cool looking plane, hope we find out more details soon.
Is Gizmodo working for the CIA or are all the stories mocking North Korea and Iran just part of some hate campaign purportrated by some quite frankly racist / bigoted writers.
1. Chris you joke of a writer. The wings are perfectly fine, the front 2 are called Canards and its not some strange Iranian design. “the thing’s got 4 wings, for crying out loud” you really do sound like an idiot. If you knew anything about aircraft, supersonic speeds and angles of attack then you would understand. Take a look at a lot of the planes NASA throw together, some have the wings on backwards.
2. Without knowing exactly how the Iranians plan to operate the aircraft, and as its a demonstrator, its difficult to comment on the nose / radar. Though it does look fine given how far back the pilot would be in the cockpit.
3. The part of the aircraft I would consider to actually pose questions, given it is meant to be stealthy, is the cockpit. It seems too exposed and exposes the pilot as well in a way where the cockpit, pilot, helmet, would all return a strong signal.
Its shameful, attacking 2 countries, whose history you know little of. You follow the standard western propaganda and insult 2 countries which have been declared enemies of America for little else than they did not want to be controlled by America or the UK.
If you were really bothered about Iran and its need for air defences then you could write about how powerful western countries keep threatening it over what ex Israeli defence ministers have said are lies. The same lies which have been repeated since the 1970′s/
Iran needs a good air defence force, if not for anything else, to stop the murder of innocent civilians when civil passenger aircraft are shot out of the sky. Like what American did to Iran.
In fact if you want to mock the development of any modern fighter have a go at the F-35. Much like the aircraft above, they built demonstrators, not made from final materials. They did not put in any of the equipment nor weapons. The plane passed and was put into design and manufacturing stages.
At that point they discovered the weight of the aircraft, fully laden, would not allow it to fly. Thats both the VTOL and normal versions. Now 10 years later, after many redesigns and weight stripping they have a plane that can actually fly how it was suppose to, as long an you don’t want the VTOL version. Though sacrifices have been made along the way to a point where it probably doesnt not fulfil the original spec.
I would suspect it will be many years before Iran have one operational. But that would be the same as any western power, it takes 10′s of years to design, build and make a plane operational.
Even then, like the F22, once operational it can turn out the plane still has a lot of issues.
People, deep breath – this is Gizmodo I don’t think you should be looking here for detailed analysis of Iranian security developments.
I think the main reason for scepticism is the uncertainty that appears to surround releases from Iran on these sorts of events. Looking at the Wired article, apparently some sources acknowledge that the photo is in fact a part scale mockup and that the footage is only a scale model but the question is whether that is genuinely the case, or stories that have come out once people have noted the issues in the photos/video provided.
See also the controversy about the monkey in space and the two different photos.
” Overall, then, I don’t think the West has to worry about covert incursions by Iranian aircraft quite yet”
This is the perfect example of the propogation of Propaganda. It is not pushed in war news. It is pushed in ALL news.
I obviously don’t think Chris is complicit in this but unfortunately people don’t realise they are pushing somebody else’s agenda.
Unfortunately this is how propoganda works. It propogates through all facets of society. Keep bombarding people, on a daily basis, with the general idea that middle eastern people are terrorists and that certain specfic coutries are evil (currently Iran, Syria (Was Iraq, Afghanistan etc.)) and at some point people will accept that it is the truth and even start progating the idea themselves i.e. slanted articles like this.
It could just be me, but this looks so painfully like a balsa-wood and fiberglass fake that it practically jumps off the page at me.
its not going to get far, the power cord is only a couple of feet long.
Duh! They make them out of elastic these days.
you have all got it wrong look closely its a hovercraft
but seriously it looks more like a model than something that will fly
but then again i know sweet fuck all about aeroplanes
Plywood gives a very low radar return.
Support for a new theatre of War in Iran is waning. So, Israel attacks Syria. Russian condemns attack and Iran, bolstered by this, behaves in a rather bullish manner too.
Israel and the US are trying to bring Iran back in the crosshairs.
I would say Iran is playing it pretty clever so far though. It has resisted the multiple acts of war against it and it’s allies by the West and kept a pretty cool head.
I think as long as it keeps going the legal route and keeps presenting the UN with their evidence of Western war crimes against them, they might come out ok.
The air speed indicator goes to 300 knots…
If it is real, it sounds like it may have been a waste of money.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/01/radar-detects-stealth-aircraft
Doesn’t radar avoidance only work on set frequencies. I may be completely wrong here, but I am sure that this was how we managed to track a B2 bomber when is came over for an airshow and were chalenged to try and track the movement.
Doesn’t Radar work by firing a sound wave and measuring the reflections received? A stealth craft works by angling the reflections so that less are returned to the detector. I see aircraft have their stealth measured in the size of the object that the detector detects.
The B2 bomber is has a radar signature of less that o.1m2
Firefox down!
It does seem like it’s fake but I have to admit it looks awesome. If only they made this as a toy when I was a kid, I would have been really happy. Hell, if they had this as a toy now then I’d be happy
I think they’ve been playing too much Ace Combat
I’m pretty sure I had one of those as a kid, can’t remember what toy set it was part of, zero hour or something,