#aim 9

At China Lake (then Naval Ordnance Test Station), F-104A Starfighters were used with Sidewinder missiles to help evaluate and develop early versions of the missile for Navy use.

A rather recent picture of an Iranian F-14A Tomcat. This picture is rather interesting for a few reasons.

The first being the presence of the original missiles originally supplied back in the 70s with the Aim-9J, Aim-7E-4 and more surprisingly the original Aim-54A Phoenix seen here. This is incredible as given no more US-made missiles were supplied to Iran after 1979 it’s remarkable that they still have some left after 40 years, including the Phoenix missiles as most were used during the long war with Iraq (Only 214 were in country after the ‘79 revolution). Now these could be defunct missiles or they have been fitted as a false show of force (as in making the IRIAF look more powerful by showing they still have plenty of weapons) or they genuinely still have stocks of these American missiles.

The second and more odd point is the blanked out aircraft number on the nose and vertical tail fin. I follow sources for Iranian Tomcats on various websites like Instagram and I’ve noticed this is becoming more common. In case people don’t know all Iranian Tomcats were given an ID number 3-60 and then two numbers which range from 01 to 79, representing the 79 Cats delivered from 1976 to 1979. The censorship of these aircraft numbers are very telling that there might be a serious effort to hide the true number of surviving Tomcats still operational. I’ve seen estimates range from 50 to 40 although I’ve seen some go as low as 24 or even 12 left in service. Given the recent tension with the West this year it’s not surprising Iran is trying to hide its strength in terms of military aircraft or maybe they don’t want to appear as weak if it’s shown only a few of their precious F-14s are left.

Senior Airman Sarah Esparza, 51st Maintenance Squadron, 51st Fighter Wing, inspects AIM-9M Sidewinder training missiles.

The AIM-9 Sidewinder (family) holds the distinction of being the Western world's most produced air-to-air missile. Since 1955, over 110,000 AIM-9s have been produced and supplied to 31 nations worldwide. Seventy years on, Sidewinders are still in production.