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Old May 13th 06, 01:58 PM posted to rec.aviation.military.naval
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Default Other forces testing US aircraft

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In article . com, "FatKat"
wrote:

haven't read the book since the summer of '04) a high-level conference
in the US to inspect parts of one of the defecting Iranian fighters to
determine whether Iran had had access to spare parts despite attrition
and the purported arms embargo. It's an interesting account, dampened


That, to me, sounds highly plausible. US intel would have two primary
interests in examining an Iranian fighter--determining if they had made any
modifications, and determining if the Iranians were getting black market
parts out of the US.

The claims that an F-14 went to Russia have never had any more details than
that. Cooper and Bishop seem to have more details that it happened the
other way.


by the lack of details, follow-up or attirbution by footnoting. As a
Schiffer book, "Iran Iraq" is unsurprisingly sloppy, so I won't get
into the nitty-gritty as to who bears the fault for the books numerous
structural and stylistic flaws. Suffice it to say that the account of


Check their Osprey book to see if the style and structure are better.

As I'm sure you know, Schiffer is notorious for typos and other mistakes. I
remember seeing an absurd example of this, where Schiffer reprinted some US
Navy book (possibly a tour book from an aircraft carrier). In one of the
front pages there was some curious disclaimer like "The publisher is not
responsible for any mistakes in this book." Two pages later, they printed a
photograph upside down! It was bizarre and it led me to wonder about their
production process. My suspicion is that their layout people are really
bad.

A colleague of mine published a couple of very well-regarded books with
them. He told me that the upside is that they are easy to work with, but
the downside is that they provide no copy editing or quality control
checking at all. This requires the editor to very carefully check the page
proofs. Speaking as someone who publishes a lot myself, typically authors
get very little time to review page proofs, so unless the author is
extremely attentive at that phase, the result will be a crappy Schiffer
book.

the defection's aftermath is one of many found in the book which lacks
much in the way of demonstrable corroboration.


That's my complaint about Cooper and Bishop. However, I am generally
impressed by their research and sources. I tend to believe them, but I'm
still a little wary. I would be much less wary even if they gave us _some_
insight into their sources, even if that meant listing anonymous sources,
such as "Iranian Air Force Captain #1" and "Iranian Air Force Captain #2."
That would allow us to get an idea for how carefully they had checked their
sources.



been trained in the US, and likely bore the stigma of this at the rise
of the Islamic regime, the Iraqi invasion raised the issue of
patriotism. Whether for or against the Ayatollah's, I doubt that there
was ever much issue in their mind over their loyalty to Iran itself. I


They make this clear in their Osprey F-14 book. They hated the new regime,
but when the Iraqis attacked they were willing to fight for their country.


just find it difficult to make the leap from disloyalty to the Islamic
state to disloyalty to Iran as a whole, which defection would require.


Well, huge wads of cash can also help in changing one's loyalty.


explained that the Iranians and the Russians do not get along well when it
comes to military sales. The reason is that the Russians will sell the
Iranians aircraft, but they will not allow them to manufacture spare parts.


Doesn't surprise me - why foster any degree in self-sufficiency in your
clients? According to "Iran Iraq" this was typical of the Soviets'
supply practice with Iraq as well - with aircraft having to be sent
back to Russia for maintenance.


Their story on Iran is also consistent with anecdotal things I've read about
Russian attempts to sell aircraft to other countries. The problem has been
that the terms of any deal are simply too restrictive. The Russians hold
too many of the cards.

This has apparently been a problem with the Russians providing aircraft to
China. The Chinese have bought fewer Su-27s than one would expect, although
they have also sought to develop their own fighter aircraft production
industry (with very limited success).

Now certainly the US does the same--we don't allow other countries to
license build many parts for F-16s either. But I believe that there are
other aspects of the deals that make them more acceptable.





D