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Tehran is keen to produce its own jet fightersbut designing and manufacturing advanced combat jets poses formidable technological challenges difficult for an isolated industrial base to resolve on its own. Nonetheless, the Iranian air force has prominently showcased its development of several domestic fighter jets since the turn of the century, most notably the HESA Saeqeh (Thunderbolt), which Iranian media have claimed to be superior to the F-18 Hornet.

But performance specifications and technical details for these aircraft have remained either vague or nonexistent. This may be less due to secrecy than because additional details would likely be unimpressive, because the Saeqeh is a reverse-engineered American F-5 Freedom Fighter with a new tail and upgraded avionics.

The F-5 Freedom Fighter traces it lineage to a 1950s-era Northrop project that yielded the two-seat T-38 Talon trainer still serving in the U.S. Air Force today. A single-seat variant, however, evolved into the F-5, a lightweight supersonic fighter for export to less wealthy military allies of the United States. Initially priced at just $756,000 per plane (around $6 million, adjusted for inflation), the elegant little fighter could carry more than six thousand pounds of bombs on five hardpoints, as well as two Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missiles on the wingtips. The later F-5E Tiger II variant added radar, lengthened the fuselage to carry additional fuel, enlarged the stubby wings for improved maneuverability and upgraded the J85 turbojets, boosting maximum speed to Mach 1.6. Freedom Fighters went on to see extensive combat over the skies of Vietnam, Ethiopia, Iran, Kuwait and Yemenand are actively being used in ground-attack missions today by the air forces of Tunisia and Kenya.

Iran received nearly three hundred Freedom Fighters of various models from the United States between 1965 and 1976, including 166 of the more advanced F-5Es and F Tiger IIs in the 1970s, and fifteen RF-5A Tigereye reconnaissance aircraft reportedly used for U.S. spy flights into Soviet airspace. These saw extensive use as ground attack aircraft in the Iran-Iraq War, but still engaged in a number of air battles, scoring an even 4-4 kills against faster Iraqi MiG-21 fighters and even damaging a MiG-25 Foxbat with cannon fire.

However, the fallout from the Iranian Revolution brought an end to the flow of spare parts, replacement aircraft and missiles from the United States needed to maintain the F-5 fleet. The Iranian air force improvised new components and cannibalized older planes for spare parts, and today it is estimated there are still thirty to fifty operational F-5s in the Iranian air forces inventory.

In 1997, Iran announced that the Iranian Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (HESA) was developing a domestically-produced jet fighter called the Azarakhsh (Lightning) which supposedly was entering mass productionwhich is to say, between four and six appear to have been built in the subsequent decade, out of a planned thirty. The Azarakhsh, at least in its original form, was evidently a reverse-engineered F-5E, with uprated thrusters, reinforced wings, modified radar and improved weapon capabilities. The Azarakhsh doesnt appear to have reached operational units, and the program was terminated in 2010.

By 2004, the new Saeqeh fighter was featured on state TV. It has also been variously named the Saeqeh-80 and the Azarakhsh-2. This also appeared to be an F-5but with two instead of one vertical tail stabilizers, canted outwards like those on F-18 Hornet. To drive the comparison home, the Saeqehs were painted navy blue and yellow, so that they resembled the Blue Angels aerobatics team. The Saeqehs also have additional wing strakes, and some sport new square jet intakes. The aircraft were inspected by then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and fired rockets at targets in a 2007 war game.

The Saeqehs twin-tail stabilizers are believed to give the better turning and takeoff performance than the F-5E, making it a superior low-and-slow plane. Upgrading the F-5 to carry advanced weapons would be an obvious improvement, but so far photos of Saeqehs only show them armed with short-range Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and unguided air-to-ground bombs and rocket pods. Most assume the Freedom Fighters two twenty-millimeter cannons have been retained.

Modernized avionics and radar would be another obvious upgrade, but again, details of such modernization are scant. The Saeqeh supposedly has a domestically-produced countermeasure and navigation system, and new cockpit instruments possibly obtained from Russia or China. However, the Saeqeh cockpit shown in this video still looks pretty similar to the basic F-5E cockpit.

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Why Iran's Fighter-Jet Ripoff Is Just Fake News - The National Interest Online (blog)