It should be a fair bit heavier than 390kg
It uses a 750 lb M117 bomb (340kg) as warhead strapped to a Hawk rocket motor.
There is a guided version with a TV seeker called “AGM-379/20 Zoobin” which also uses the M117 bomb as its warhead and has a total weight of 560kg, but it’s not clear if it uses the same rocket motor as Yasser. Also there is no information regarding its carriage on F-14 (there is only proof of its carriage on F-4E).
It looks very similar to the R.530… is there any relation to it?
I don’t think so.
Iran really was never into French stuff.
The only French thing you have in Iranian military that I’m aware of are the Iraqi Mirage F1s that escaped to Iran during the US invasion of Iraq and the PL-7s that Iran subsequently bought from China to arm those Mirage F1s as well as the J-7s that they bought from China.
BTW, there is also this obscure export-oriented (!) AD-40A:
AD-40A Air Defense Missile Weapon System | Mindex
https://mindexcenter.ir/sites/default/files/2022-07/ad40a-1.pdf
The 74 kg warhead is likely MIM-23B’s warhead. Which also should be what is used on Fakour-90, instead of the 60.3kg warhead of the AIM-54.
But at 465 kg it’s 172.3 kg lighter than the 637.3 kg Fakour-90 (AIM-F90).
Also the specs state “All sustainer” rocket motor.
My best guess is that the export-oriented AD-40A is basically a Fakour-90 without the boost stage.
Ah ok thanks
I was thinking the deltaV of the Fakour being over 2,000 m/s was surely a result of the thrust being peak and not average. This may not be the case, because the propellant mass between the two is almost exactly equivalent to the % difference in total deltaV.
The Fakour has 1.726x as much propellant in net weight as the AIM-54A. The AIM-54A has a total deltaV of approximately 1,225 m/s in-game. 1,225 x 1.726 = 2,114.3 m/s.
The deltaV of the proposed Fakour-90 from above is 2,268.1 m/s. This is only 7.3% off the expected change provided impulse is the same between the two propellants.
Anyhow, even so we must consider that the grain pattern indicates a ramp up and ramp down in thrust. We need to find the averages before coming to conclusions on overall deltaV and it will certainly be less than 1.73x the AIM-54A’s.
The grain pattern is something between a simple star and dogbone. This I believe lends itself towards a traditional boost-sustain curve. It will likely ramp up in thrust, then ramp down to the sustainer thrust.
The sustainer on the other hand has no grain pattern. It is a circle surrounding the boost phase. This is referred to as “tubular” and is what we call “progressive”. That means the thrust increases as the motor burns. The result is a slow initial acceleration that picks up over time towards the end of the burn.
Here are some examples;
Here is what I believe the Fakour-90’s burn should look like;
@DirectSupport @_Fantom2451
Obviously the ramp up in thrust for the sustainer is exaggerated as the difference in circumference of the sustainer propellant (thus, difference in surface area) is not actually that large.
Boring math stuff
370 - 59 = 311 mm diameter at the start, we will go with a wall of 10-11mm thickness for a end diameter of 359mm.
To find the surface area of the inside of the tube is simple, 2πrh. We can ignore height as we are only comparing the difference in surface area as a % between pre and post-burn for the sustainer.
We will assume a height of 10mm for each section because we are trying only to find the % difference in surface area pre and post burn.
Radius is 185mm (370 / 2), inner radius is 155.5mm ((370-59) / 2).
Inner surface area for pre-burn is “9770.353152664256”.
Post-burn
185mm, inner radius is now 359mm (assuming 11m thick sidewall of motor).
Math shows “11278.317626387357”.
11278.317626387357 / 9770.353152664256 = 1.15434083601
The sustainer should increase by about ~15.4% in overall thrust from start till end of burn based on the difference in available surface area.
@DirectSupport @_Fantom2451
Now to determine if the given thrust values for sustainer are the peak or the base and then we have the ability to ascertain the average and make it a “flat” burn for the sake of war thunders simplistic thrust model for missiles.
Loading performance of the I-HAWK (MIM-23B) is known.
I don’t know if that is accurate. They differ from the other more reputable sources regarding motor burn time and thrust values.
Additionally, it seems to indicate the peak velocity at sea level conditions is 340 m/s from ground launch which would indicate that a high subsonic launch would yield higher maximum overload.
This source also seems to share what we know to be accurate data. Though it seems to be in French?
Iranian sources agree, 15G.
This is all of course in addition to the aforementioned data which provides us a pretty reliable idea of the performance. We have accurate thrust, burn time, propellant mass… even know the thrust curve / shape thanks to the grain pattern being revealed.
From the wording that the NASA document is using seems like they are talking about average thrust rather than peak:
That might be the average peak thrust but my point is still that the boost phase quickly ramps up and then ramps down to the sustainer portion. This means that the thrust is not maximally 19,000 pounds for the full 5 seconds. The fact that they state 4 seconds implies that it is at peak thrust by 0.5s and there is also a 0.5s portion where it ramps back down to the level of the sustainer thrust.
The following ~21 seconds is all sustainer, and as we saw from the grain pattern… should be progressive in nature. Whether 3,000 pounds is the thrust at the start or towards the finish of the sustainer is the question.
Visually, I’m pretty confident the Zoobin is simply an M117 stuffed into the middle of an AGM-65.
Still, for both the Yasser and Zoobin, the M117’s warhead of just over 200 kg TNT equivalent gives it a leg up over other large caliber rockets or HE guided missiles.
Doesn’t Iran typically field AIM-7E-4 with their F-14s?
AIM-7E-4 were essentially modified E-2s to make them compatible with Tomcat’s radar (and from multiple accounts that I saw, Sparrow never truly worked well with Tomcat’s radar … It always had trouble hitting targets on Tomcat: The story of the US Navy F-14 Tomcat pilot that scored an AIM-7 Sparrow ‘soft kill’ on an Iranian F-4 attacking a US Navy P-3 and saved the Orion crew - The Aviation Geek Club)
From what I know, Iran never bought the E-4.
They had the E-2 for use on F-4E, and they also had ordered the F for use on Tomcat. (Which according to a source posted above, a small number of F models have been delivered before the revolution happened)
So during Iran-Iraq war, Iran modified their E-2 models to make them compatible with Tomcat. (But it’s not clear if they were modified in the same exact manner as the E-4)
and they also had ordered the F for use on Tomcat
Did they or did they not use the AIM-7F for the F-14A? If so we can get it in-game even if it was in small numbers like you claim.
You have the R-27R, that is more than sufficient. It exceeds the performance of the AIM-7F.
True but it’s just in case Gaijin decides to remove the R-27R since most people are saying the radar of the IRIAF F-14A couldn’t fire it due to incompatibility.
I very much doubt they care at this point. We have Yak-141 and F-16AJ…
Got pic or ss of modifiers of air events for RB?
