Iran threatens US with ‘recycled’ Kowsar jet from the 1950s

A fighter jet unveiled by Iran’s president to battle US aggression has been ridiculed by defence experts as a decades-old recycled plane.

Iran’s President Rouhani, inset, at the controls of the ‘Kowsar’ fighter jet.

Military experts have cast doubt on claims that a fighter jet unveiled by Tehran as the first to be produced solely in Iran represents a technological advance, drawing comparisons to American warplanes sold to the Shah half a century ago.

Sitting in the cockpit of the “Kowsar” jet in his black clerical robes, President Rouhani was shown on state television staring intently at the controls.

He claimed that the plane was part of Iran’s deterrence against a belligerent US.

“We should make ourselves ready to fight against the military powers who want to take over our territory and our resources,” he said in a live broadcast.

“Why does the United States not attack us? Because of our power, because it knows the consequences.”

Analysts, however, immediately poured doubt on the claim and questioned the jet’s usefulness in deterring American military might.

Very different from the stealth fighter Iran has been claiming to be on the verge of producing for years, the jet on display appeared indistinguishable from a 1950s-era American fighter of which dozens were sold to the Shah’s regime.

President Rouhani waves to pilots in the new jet. Picture: AFP

John Sneller, head of aviation at Jane’s, the defence consultancy, said it appeared to be a two-seater F-5F, a trainer jet produced by the American company Northrop. The Shah’s regime bought its first F-5s in 1965, with the F-5F Tiger arriving in 1974.

“The basic structure and cockpit layout looks like an F-5F,” he told The Times. “Iran procured 68 of these F-5 aircraft before the 1979 revolution.”

The age of the Iranian air force’s planes has long been a sore point for the regime. Having bought hundreds of jets during the Shah’s time, it was cut off from spare parts and experienced maintenance engineers after 1979. It has been able to keep planes in the air by increasingly ingenious means but has been unable to replace them.

In 2013 President Ahmadinejad revealed a prototype of a stealth fighter jet, the Qaher 313, but it was widely ridiculed by analysts who dismissed it as a non-functioning model that, even if it were real, could not have been flown.

The Kowsar in action. Picture: AFP

Regime media have continued to claim that the Qaher 313 is in development, and when it was announced that a new jet would be unveiled this week, this was assumed to be the model.

Babak Taghvaee, an Iranian journalist in exile, said he had been told that the jet was partly “reverse engineered” - a 70 per cent locally built copy of the original. He said it had been updated with a new avionics system designed with the help of the Chinese.

That assessment was shared by David Cenciotti, editor of The Aviationist blog.

“The aircraft appears to be a baseline F-5F with upgraded avionics - in other words a pretty obsolete Tiger was given some digital instruments,” he said.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly, agreed. “There is nothing new here,” he said.

The Times