Key Points and Summary: For decades, Iran has attempted to develop its own indigenous fighter aircraft to achieve self-sufficiency and overcome Western sanctions, but these efforts have seen minimal success.
-Projects like the Shafaq (“Before The Dawn”), a subsonic attack aircraft developed with Russian assistance, have been plagued by endless delays and design changes since the early 2000s.
-Despite being showcased in various forms, including as the modified “Borhan” prototype in 2014, the Shafaq has never entered production.
-This long and troubled development history, a result of technical and resource challenges, highlights Iran’s struggle to create a modern, viable combat aircraft from scratch.
Iran’s Air Force Is Ancient and Riddled with Problems
For decades now, most of the attention focused on Iran’s defense industrial developments has been – first and foremost – on how far along the Islamic Republic was in the process of developing a nuclear device that could be used as a weapon.
A secondary worry has always been the status of Iran’s ballistic missile programs – and if Tehran could put the two together to create a nuclear-tipped ICBM.
However, Iran’s effort to design and develop its own fighter aircraft is in the background.
These efforts have made minimal progress over the years, partly due to the lack of an R&D technological base that would support it, as well as the viability of the series production of any such fighter.
Iran’s Air Force Belongs in a Museum
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the nation’s Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) was left with a collection of Vietnam-era 1960s and 1970s designs that were acquired under the rule of the Shah of Iran.
Some of the most advanced of these, namely the Grumman F-14s for which Tehran was the only export customer, have recently been destroyed on the ground by the recent Israel Air Force (IAF) raids on IRIAF air bases.
After the Shah’s overthrow and the installation of the Khomeini regime, these legacy American aircraft were supplemented by purchases made in the 1990s of Russian-built Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter aircraft and Sukhoi Su-24 fighter-bombers.
The “shadow air force” of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces also operated a small fleet of Sukhoi Su-25 until they were given to Iraq.
They subsequently acquired a small fleet of Su-22 aircraft that were modernized in order to keep them semi-relevant to the current combat environment.
Search for Autonomy
But there were no follow-on purchases of these Russian designs.
Except the recent acquisition of Su-35 aircraft from Russia by Tehran, Iran has had no major procurements for more than three decades.
In the long term, Iran has primarily chosen not to source fighter aircraft from foreign suppliers.
This is partly a reaction to the experience of having to survive the years since 1979 under a US embargo that forbids the sale of spare parts or other technical assistance to Iran.
Fabricating reverse-engineered copies, stealing from US military stockpiles in the Philippines and elsewhere, or finding some mechanism to acquire parts illegally became a major preoccupation for the Iranians.
It was also a drain on resources and an experience they did not wish to repeat.
Iran initially utilized front companies based in the UK to purchase spares illegally from the US.
This channel was shut down when the US offices of those London-based firms, Multicore Ltd and AKS Industries, were raided by agents of the US Customs service in 2003.
Estimates are that over 50 US firms shipped spares to Multicore in the US.
These parts were then transferred to the UK and later ended up in Iranian hands before US authorities severed this link.
In the meantime, Iran’s defense policy makers set out to develop their new aircraft and weapons that could be designed and built in Iran.
The three Iranian fighter projects that have been shown to the world and occasionally even shown on Iranian television are the Shafaq (Farsi for “Before The Dawn”), the Azarakhsh (Lightning), and the Owj (Zenith) or Sae’qeh-80 (Thunderbolt).
Before the Dawn
The Shafaq is the most well-known of these three designs.
Developed at Malek Ashtar University of Technology in Tehran, this project was advanced under the guise of being an “educational exchange program” with Russia.
Over 20 designers who were formerly employed at Mikoyan, Sukhoi, etc., were transplanted to Tehran to develop the aircraft’s planform and complete a full-up, detailed design.
The Shafaq was initially intended to be built in three variants. One would be a two-seat jet trainer, and the other two versions would be a one-seat and a two-seat light fighter/attack aircraft.
Despite the apparent connection to previous Russian design studies (and a showing of this same aircraft design proposal back at the 1993 Dubai Air Show by a previously unknown Soviet-era designer named Fatidin Mukhamedov) a Malek Ashtar official named H. Rousteai who spoke to me at one of the early Iran Air Shows insisted angrily that “this is not a Russian-inspired” idea and that the Shafaq “concept started in Iran and is finished in Iran.”
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the Shafaq program appeared to be more of a never-ending science project. It had run years behind the original program schedule that had been declared for it in late 2002, and the only evidence of the program had been a taxi of a prototype that appeared to be capable of taking to the air.
The first flight of this aircraft was to have been August 2004, but so far, all that is known to exist of the Shafaq other than paper drawings are some models and a full-scale mock-up that has been shown on Iranian television.
A 2008 target was then given as a projected date for the rollout of an actual flying prototype. This deadline was also not met; for some years, very little information was released about the project.
Then in 2014, the aircraft reappeared at the Iran Air Show, only this time with a single vertical tail instead of the twin, outwardly-canted vertical tails of the original Shafaq design.
A name change was also now in order, with this modified aircraft now referred to as the “Borhan.”
An Iranian news publication writing about the project two months after the air show states:
“The Borhan fighter, which is also known as B92, has been completely manufactured by the Iranian military experts and has successfully passed wind tunnel tests. Currently, 70 percent of the detail design of the fighter, which is an updated and optimized version of the Shafaq fighter, has been completed and its mock-up has been also manufactured.”
“Some changes have been made in the design of the aircraft to boost its capabilities, compared to the Shafaq fighter, including its vertical tail as well as the airfoil of its wings.”
Design Details
The original Shafaq itself is a subsonic aircraft with an empty weight of around 5,000kg, an overall length of about 14 metres, and a 12-metre wingspan.
It was designed primarily as an attack aircraft and is equipped with seven hardpoints – three beneath each wing and one beneath the aircraft’s fuselage centreline.
Iran has put years into this program and has had the design put through endless changes. But Iran’s industry appears nowhere near producing the aircraft it is designed to be.
The designer I spoke to at both the 2014 and 2016 air shows explained that the program was still “a live effort” but that key decisions, such as which engine would be used with the aircraft, were still an open decision.
Should the aircraft ever become a live program, it would likely have little impact on the military balance between Israel and Iran at this point.
Assuming the production sites for this aircraft have survived the attacks by the Israel Air Force (IAF) on Iran’s defense production facilities, it seems very doubtful that the aircraft could ever mount a challenge to Iran’s adversaries.
About the Author
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs and Director of the Asia Research Centre with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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