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Tuesday, September 29, 2009     FOLLOW UPDATES ON TWITTER

Iran loses its only AWACS aircraft in collision with jet-fighter

NICOSIA — The Iranian Air Force has lost its sole airborne early-warning and alert platform.   

Western defense sources said the Iranian Air Force lost its Simorgh AEW aircraft in a crash during a military demonstration on Sept. 22 in Teheran. The sources said Simorgh crashed into an air force F-5E fighter-jet in southern Teheran. At least seven people were killed, and both planes were said to have been destroyed.

"This was a major loss for the air force," a defense source said.

Also In This Edition

Simorgh was identified as an upgrade of the Adnan AEW aircraft. In 1991, Teheran acquired two Adnans when the Saddam Hussein regime flew scores of military aircraft to neighboring Iran to save the platforms from U.S. air strikes, Middle East Newsline reported.

In the 1980s, Iraq received Adnan from the former Soviet Union. Adnan was identified as a variant of the Russian-origin Ilyushin Il-76 transport, which has also been converted to an AEW platform for other allies of Moscow, including India.

The sources said Iran upgraded its Simorgh aircraft. They said the biggest enhancement consisted of the installation of a Russian-origin radar.

Simorgh was said to have been Iran's only AEW platform. The air force was said to have been operating three RC-130 electronic surveillance aircraft.


Comments

Maybe now would be as good a time as any to bomb the living shi'ite out of them and their reactors.

uncle fester      3:07 p.m. / Monday, October 5, 2009

The first Adnan crashed due to a major design fault in the radar dome. The second was re-designed and French experts reinforced the inner shell of the aircraft. I remember my neighbor, an aircraft engineer who graduated from training in France, told me that the positioning of the radar dome was responsible for the first crash. The pilot was a high-ranking Ilyushin pilot.

araz jawher dizayee      3:58 p.m. / Wednesday, September 30, 2009

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