[Luis Dias]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

To fight the "Great Satan"...

Iran recently took the wraps off its Qaher-313 "new super modern fighter plane," seen here nose-on. The quality of the aircraft shown in these pictures is leading some observers to wonder if Iran is playing a joke on the rest of the world. This plane is almost certainly a mock-up, because if it's not—well, look, I can only assume that the country employs at least one aerospace engineer, right? This has to be a joke, right?

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/02/world-trembles-in-confusion-andor-fear-at-irans-fiberglass-airplane/#image-1


Look at the GLASS.

[Crybertrance]

Iran, Not sure if real, or trolling. 

That plane looks like its made of Cardboard. 

[General Battuta]

Mahmoudenijad recently express interest in being Iran's first man in space

[Dragon]

Well, I suppose they could try to borrow the Vostok rocket and Gagarin's old spacecraft... Somehow, I don't think that ancient Russian ballistic missiles besides R7 are man-rated.
As for the plane, it seems to have a gaming joystick handle on a stick and off the shelf instruments (ones which are only good for light civilian aviation, too). It's so obviously fake I'm surprised they even thought of showing this around.

[deathfun]

Reading the description of each picture is so damned hilarious
"The cockpit boasts instrumentation plucked directly from civilian aviation and appears to lack a heads-up display. It also appears to be made of fiberglass. I showed this picture to Science Editor Dr. John Timmer, who knows a thing or two about how science works, and after a moment of silence he responded by saying, "No f------ way."

Has to be one of the better ones

[Colonol Dekker]

Googling the planes number yields similar lolly reviews.

unrelated link.

[StarSlayer]

Looks like it would lose a dogfight with the Wright Flyer.

[Rodo]

seems legit.

edit: I wonder if it floats on water..

[Pred the Penguin]

Highly doubtful. It'd probably start leaking everywhere the moment you put it in water.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

[BrotherBryon]

Even if they had done a more convincing job to make a fake plane look legit (A low budget amateur film maker could have done better), why make all the markings in English and not Arabic?

[Mongoose]

I feel like every Western intelligence community probably pissed themselves laughing over this.

[lostllama]

Heh, I recently posted about this in IRC a few days ago. To me it kind of resembles an F-35 blended with the wings of the fictional MiG-31 Firefox.

The film of it apparently flying shows it performing some aerobatics; most maiden flight test footage would presumably show the take-off and landing. But anyway, as others have speculated, that's more likely to be a R/C model. Flies nicely enough though.

EDIT: Here's an article including the footage: http://theaviationist.com/2013/02/02/iran-new-stealth-fighter/#.URViuvKIirg

[Mikes]

I love the cockpit view where you can see the interior side of the chassis material

Supersecret plane appears to be made of the same material and manufactured with the same precision as disney land ride vehicles

[yuezhi]

This should give Israel a run for their lulz

[lostllama]

More info and a summary of the analysts doubts here.

According to Iranian government sources, the F-313 Qaher was designed and is indigenously produced in Iran by the Aviation Industries Organization (AIO), a division of the Ministry of Defense, and IRIAF. The project manager is Hassan Parvaneh.[2][3]

The aircraft design is a canard configuration. It is stated to be a stealth fighter built with advanced materials with a very low radar signature[4] and with low-altitude operations capability.[5] It was also claimed that the Qaher can take off and land on short runways and has "easy maintenance".[6] Qaher has a payload capacity of carrying two 2000 pound bombs, or greater number of smaller smart guided missiles, or at least 6 air-to-air missiles in the category of PL-12.[7]

It features a downward Wingtip device which Flightglobal.com noted vaguely resembles the Boeing Bird of Prey prototype, but with a more faceted design similar to the 1970s-era Lockheed Have Blue that was developed into the now retired F-117 Nighthawk. Flight Global also said, "given the apparent small size of the aircraft and its single engine design, the Qaher 313 could be powered by reverse engineered variants of the General Electric J85 turbojet that Iran is known to have in its possession."[3] Iran has General Electric J85s as well as a dozen other jet engines as a result of old Northrop F-5s and other American aircraft in its inventory from pre-1979 as well as newer engines from Russia and China. Iran also builds various turbo fan engines like the Toloue-4 and Toloue-5 for its UAVs.[8]

The aircraft is designed with extra stability and so does not need a fly-by-wire (FBW) system.[9]

A prototype version of the Qaher-313 was been portrayed to have test-flown at some point before the presentation.[10] According to the head of the design team, two sub-sized models have been created and tested. One of the models uses a propeller engine while the other uses a small micro jet engine.[11] The models were shown in a video clip (along with descriptions by the head of the design team) the same day.[12] According to Haaretz, the "blurry video published by the Iranians purporting to show the Qaher 313 in flight seems to show not a manned fighter jet but a small radio-operated drone "[13] which agrees with what the designers said about the videos at the Qaher-313 introduction ceremony.

Given that a stealth drone (an RQ-170 Sentinel) was captured over a year ago, with enough time the stealth technologies could eventually be transferred over to future indigenous Iranian designs. Maybe not here and now in this example, but at some point it could happen.

[Nemesis6]

Ahmadinejad is an engineer, he must have been holding back the laughter when he saw that thing...

[LordPomposity]

Even if they had done a more convincing job to make a fake plane look legit (A low budget amateur film maker could have done better), why make all the markings in English and not Arabic?

Because Iranians don't speak Arabic?

[Suongadon]

Ahmadinejad is an engineer, he must have been holding back the laughter when he saw that thing...

He's a Civil Engineer. If it isn't an I-beam, concrete or a Teamster, they don't know much about it.

[An4ximandros]

 What puzzles me is that they didn't use Farsi.