Military Aircraft Return to Service After Overhaul

Date: 01 March 2021 - 21:59

News ID: ۸۸۱۳۲

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran’s Armed Forces on Monday took delivery of several overhauled military aircraft and aircraft engines brought back into service by Iranian experts.
They included nine military aircraft, including heavy-lift transport planes, 10 helicopters, and dozens of overhauled engines.
They were handed over to the armed forces for future use by the Army and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). The delivery took place during a ceremony joined by Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami as well as commanders of the Army Air Force and Army Aviation Brigadier Generals Aziz Nasirzadeh and Yousef Ghorbani, the Defense Ministry reported on Monday.
Hatami hailed the dynamic nature of the country’s defense industry, saying it indicates that Iran has managed to defeat the enemy’s "maximum pressure” policy.
The enemy tries to target Iran with the dual strategies of sanctioning the country and preventing it from buying military equipment, Hatami said. However, the Islamic Republic has successfully countered the campaign using self-reliance, optimization of its defensive and security equipment, and manufacturing of various new indigenous hardware, he said.
The minister identified the overhauled aircraft as F-4, F-14, Fokker F-27 Friendship, and Mirage planes, and said the transport planes were of the 704, 707, and the C-130 makes.
The overhauled choppers are capable of carrying out various combat, security, and rescue operations, the defense chief said, adding the optimized engines comprised turbojet, turbofan, and turboshaft types.
Hatami noted how the Islamic Republic’s defense industries have been experiencing sanctions since the 1979 victory of the country’s Islamic Revolution.
The Defense Ministry has been battling the coercive measures by manufacturing different military equipment in line with each period’s requirements on the one hand, and overhauling and redesigning its available hardware on the other, he said, describing the latter approach as "an economic and safe pathway towards leveling up the armed forces’ defensive capability.”

"By God’s grace, we put these adversities behind us and are today in possession of technology in our defense industry,” said the defense minister.
Addressing an earlier event on Sunday, the Air Force commander said some of the country’s defense universities have attained the capability to manufacture "various generations of jet engines.”
"I daresay our students are among the best in their own majors throughout the country and even on the international level,” Nasirzadeh said.
The Army Aviation commander, who had joined the defense minister, meanwhile, described the country’s helicopter squadron as "the strongest in the region.”
He said the squadron depended completely on the domestic defense industry for production of various parts.
Ghorbani also noted how the country has succeeded to come by the night-vision goggle technology, and is currently producing the equipment domestically.
Only a handful of countries have the technology at their disposal, he said, noting that the equipment is successfully used during military drills across the country’s southern coastline in January.