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Thursday, August 13, 2015
Iran to buy 150 J-10 (Lavi?) Fighters from China..will have largest Air Force
Oh and if you are good for irony, this is the Israeli designed Lavi Fighter. Some people think Israel sold the design to China for the J-10 NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
Geostrat-Direct
Chinese fighter jet deal could make Iran top regional air power
Multiple
sources in Russia and Israel have reported the near completion of one
of the largest arms transactions in recent history.
Iran plans to buy
150 Chinese supersonic J-10 multi-role jet fighters, likely thanks to
the soon-to-be unfrozen Iranian assets in the United States.
Iran is the second country after Pakistan that will receive Chinese J-10 fighters.
The
estimated unit cost for the J-10 is about $28 million, which may make
this Iranian-Chinese deal worth a whopping $4.2 billion.
The Chinese
J-10 has been reported to be a hodgepodge of western technologies, but
experts have proven that it is almost a replica of the Israeli jet
fighter known as the Lavi, which the Israelis sold to the Chinese in the
1990s.
The technology transfers were stopped by Washington
subsequently on account of the fact that the Lavi incorporated some
American avionics.
The Iranians originally opted to buy a new
fleet of fighters from Russia, but Moscow snubbed Teheran earlier this
year by refusing to deliver the S-300 missiles purchased by Iran due to
international sanctions on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
The J-10 is a single seat, all-weather modern jet, with a 340-mile combat radius, and a top speed of Mach 2.2.
The
only country outside of China that flies the J-10 is Pakistan, which
bought some 3 dozen nearly ten years ago under President Pervez
Musharraf.
If and when the deal is completed, experts say Iran will have the strongest air force in the region.
This is not the first time that it was rumored that Iran would be buying the J-10. A similar story was making the rounds in 2007: http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20071023/85174001.html http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/iran-to-buy-24-jet-fighters-from-china-1.231785 No sales came out of these earlier rumors - so it's difficult to know what we should make out of this. The ayatollahs have a habit of exaggerating their arms buys, so it's hard to say what's real. The same could be said for Pakistan's purported J-10 but - reported widely back in 2009, with no aircraft deliveries as of yet.
Just to clarify, while the J-10 benefited from Israel's experience with the Lavi, it is not a "replica" of the Israeli design. The J-10 is a larger airplane, built around a larger Russian-built engine, without the composite technology that went into the Lavi, and without the Lavi's avionics suite.
At the time that Israel began selling arms to China in the latter 1980s the U.S. was selling lots of technology to the Chinese, to build up China as a threat to counterbalance the Soviets. There was even a plan to equip a version of China's J-7 fighter with radar and avionics derived from the F-16. That project was cancelled only after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
1 comment:
This is not the first time that it was rumored that Iran would be buying the J-10. A similar story was making the rounds in 2007:
http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20071023/85174001.html
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/iran-to-buy-24-jet-fighters-from-china-1.231785
No sales came out of these earlier rumors - so it's difficult to know what we should make out of this. The ayatollahs have a habit of exaggerating their arms buys, so it's hard to say what's real. The same could be said for Pakistan's purported J-10 but - reported widely back in 2009, with no aircraft deliveries as of yet.
Just to clarify, while the J-10 benefited from Israel's experience with the Lavi, it is not a "replica" of the Israeli design. The J-10 is a larger airplane, built around a larger Russian-built engine, without the composite technology that went into the Lavi, and without the Lavi's avionics suite.
At the time that Israel began selling arms to China in the latter 1980s the U.S. was selling lots of technology to the Chinese, to build up China as a threat to counterbalance the Soviets. There was even a plan to equip a version of China's J-7 fighter with radar and avionics derived from the F-16. That project was cancelled only after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
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