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Iranian Kowsar Fighter Jet May be an American Northrop F-5 Knock-Off

The Iranian Air Force, supervised by the ruler of the country, Hassan Rouhani, presented two days ago what they hailed to be the first-ever, 100 percent Iranian-built, state-of-the-art fighter jet.
Iranian Kowsar Fighter Jet 1 photo
Photo: Tasnim
Obviously, since the announcement was made, interested parties in the West went to work to try and find out what the airplane, officially named Kowsar, is all about. And the first impressions are that the fighter jet may be nothing more than a copy of a nearly 60-year old American aircraft.

Joseph Dempsey, a military analyst from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), dug through the archives and came up with the idea that the Kowsar is nothing more than a copy of the Northrop F-5.

Northrop F-5 is a supersonic light fighter that was supplied to the U.S. Navy. It also served in the armies of China, Korea and, you guessed, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To support his claims, Dempsey posted on Twitter a photo of the Kowsar and that of the Northrop F-5F Tiger II. And the resemblance is striking.

In a reply to CNBC, Dempsey’s colleague at the IISS, Douglas Barrie, said the Iranians might have built some parts of the plane on their own. But this still doesn’t make the plane 100 percent Iranian-built, as they claim.

According to Iranian news agency Tasnim, the Kowsar is described in extremely vague terms. The plane is supposed to have “integrated architecture and a fire control system using the fourth generation of the digital data networks.

There are not many details publicly available about the size and force of the Iranian Air Force. Over the years, the air force was comprised of a mixture of Russian, Chinese and American jets.

The backbone of the airforce are the Sukhoi Su-24s and Su-22s, the MIG-29s, and even Chinese versions of the MIG-21.

There are a number of American-built planes currently in service, supplied by the United States and purchased by Iran during the reign of the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: F-4 Phantom, Grumman F-14, P-3 Orion or Northrop F-5.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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