Iran's new Qaher-313 fighter-bomber

[Camus272]

On 2/2/2013 at 11:07 AM, Kei Lau said:

The pilot was trying to tell Ahmadinejad that the plane flies by mind control. Ahmadinejad was so amazed that he covered his mouth with the green book. BTW, there is a control stick in the mockup cockpit. The instrument panel just looks more Vietnam era than 21st century.

Does that thing have a cassette and a CD player? Just like my 99 Grand Am.

[Alternative 4]

Watching it taxi reminds me of that episode of the Simpson's where Homer joins a cult and in the end the cult leader tries to fly away in a space craft that slowly falls apart!

[murad]

2 hours ago, Camus272 said:

Does that thing have a cassette and a CD player? Just like my 99 Grand Am.

of course it does, analog stuff of that era is impervious to EW! pfff

[Scooby]

On 2013-02-02 at 3:26 PM, Aigore said:

Well they might have the stealth concept right..... wasn´t the mossie made out of plywood and darn hard to spot on radar? :D

Oh well, gotta give them points for effort at least :D

 

Since it can't fly I bet it is very stealthy in the air.

[Scooby]

I wonder where you put the coins in it?

 

Are these at all shopping malls in Iran?

[Stratospheremodels]

You do know of course that the X-24 B lifting body (FDL-8) from NASA was built directly on top of an X-24 A Martin Marietta lifting body fuselage ? There are construction photos of it out there and it is quite fascinating to see how they build a whole new structure on top of most of the existing X-24A structural outer envelope (!).

 

There is a more or less similar example with the much more recent low sonic boom experimental aircraft which was built by Northrup Grumman from a heavily modified F-5 fighter fuselage. The X-29 is yet another example of an F-5 fighter fuselage being recycled into another totally different aircraft (new reverse swept wings, new single engine, new fin, etc).

 

If i was them i think the idea of just testing the water and see how their concept behaves in flight at low speed would not be a bad idea, so building a (possible) mock-up on top of an F-5 fuselage would make sense in that regard, before deciding to commit to designing an all new aircraft this time (minus the potential F-5 hidden underneath).

 

Given that the X-24B was build with exactly that sort of thinking in mind (test for low speed approach behavior mostly, though it did accelerate to up to about Mach 1.6, thanks to a rocket engine), and NASA did so also to save money (recycling another aircraft fuselage as a base to build that one), something i think was one of the Iranians reasons for going that road also. Lockheed did build Have Blue prior to building their F-117, as a proof of concept, and that thing was not exactly stable (one prototype crashed at Groom Lake), so maybe they are just doing what most engineers do when they are trying something quite different and new: test it with smaller steps first, and then if it works and they iron out the bugs, move on to build the actual operational version. Now wether they would have the money to put such a version in service is completely different story.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Stratospheremodels