wrote in message
...
who cares,

As I said read Janes, they have it all,

As a matter of fact, if at all, the Jane's has the least useful information
about the Iranian Air Force: their recently published book of "World Air
Forces" is very poor to this topic.

To keep the long story short: no, it wasn't the "Irangate" nor Oliver North,
but many other factors which kept the Iranian F-14-fleet afloat, in working
order, and extremely useful and dangerous. Approx 60 airframes remain
serviceable: while a number is circled through storage, so to better
distribute the number of hours flown per airframe, and also always have an
attrition reserve in peace, the IACI (Iranian Aircraft Industries) and other
Iranian companies, as well as the so-called "Self-Sufficiency Jihad Team" of
the IRIAF - meanwhile developed the capability to produce no less but 95% of
spare parts for their Tomcats. Consequently, the fleet not only massively
participated in the IPGW against Iraq (scoring at least 130 kills against
Iraqi MiG-21/23/25s, Mirage F.1EQs, Su-20/22s, and Tu-22s), but is still
very much active and operational.

As a matter of fact, just last year the Iranians started production of a
reverse-engineered AIM-54, which even the USN considers equal to its latest
AIM-54Cs.

Nothing of this can be found in Jane's, of course: their reporting about
Iran in the recent years was simply sad.

Tom Cooper
Co-Author:
Iran-Iraq War in the Air, 1980-1988:
http://www.acig.org/pg1/content.php
and,
Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat:
http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/t...hp/title=S6585