Ppl talk abt iranian upgrades on some of its fulcrums ... One possible in home small scale upgrade for Fulcrum A is the replacement of OLS-29 IRST with the OLS-27 (of Su-27 family ) . Fact is , replacing the OLS-29 from Fulcrum A was the only avionics upgrade offered in Fulcrum S version initially until improved Phazotron N019M was available for inclusion in the upgrade package ....
OLS-27 has a range of around 80 km compared to a 15-18 km of OLS-29 . Secondly , the OLS-29 has less efficiency in finding the heat signature in a distant head-on target since most heated part of the aircraft is its rear , early theory was to Track the aircraft when following it from behind .... System has two modes i.e.either slaved to the radar or used independently for "stealthy" attacks with infrared missiles such as the WVR AA-11 Archer and long range BVR AA-10 Alamo B & D (R-27T and ET ) . Long range IRST like OLS-27/30 allows the fighter to launch the "Stealth attack" using IR-homing missiles without even turning on its radar ... Any future air combat involving iran would include enemy stealth aircraft ( Israel will get F-35 and possibly Saoodis and UAE too ) and IR missiles would play their part against them ... If iran reverse engineers OLS-27 by procuring one system from anywhere then it would be excellent for its domestic developed aircraft too .
i call it irony that iran didnt get the AN/ALR-23 system of F-14 . Iran wanted the then under development AAX-1 TCS which had the range of 100 km ... dint get any of them ...
anyway procuring such system like OLS-27 for reverse engineering is not something difficult for iran ... i mean recently unveiled Iran-140N had a U7500B IR device underneath it lol ... its iran after all ...
Referring to the above post of mine , I would like to add another possible upgrade for Mig-29A ... like replacing the OLS-29 with 27 suddenly boosts the Stealth attack + FnF capability as described in the above post .... I would like to mention the radar option also i.e. advanced variant ( described later ) Phazotron N-001 "Mech" originally designed for the Su-27S . Its an X-band Pulse-Doppler radar with excellent conventional TWS and LDSD capability .... It was originally meant to be produced for a multirole air superiority aircraft i.e. Su-27 , with 250 + km range against incoming bombers of 14-16 mｲ RCS , Soviets probably wanted a hybrid of AWG-9 of Tomcat and APG-63 of F-15A/C .... it had two types of scanning
1- Electronic scanning for Elevatory search
2- Mechanical scanning for Azimuthal search
But weight was very heavy and radar dint saw any production . it was then fitted with a Cassergrain array ( like Mig-29's conventional N019 Topaz ) . It was tested on Mig-29 itself . Both Mech and Topaz ( Conventional Mig-29 radar ) share same TS100 processors ( TS101M for Mech N001M , Topaz N019M ) . Earlier processor of Mech ( Name unknown ) was prone to false alarms and blind spots, and had a heating problem .
There are many versions ...
--> The N001V/N001VE /VEP have improved digital processing with a Baguette BCVM-486-6 processor .Compatibility with the R-77 BVR , and a range of air to surface and anti-shipping munitions. N001VEP is used in Su-30MKK of Chinese . While The N001V is used on Su-27SM /J-11A of China . Difference between V and VE is that original Baguet series processor of N001VE radar is replaced by its successor Baguet-55 series. Both have moving target indication (MTI) and mapping capabilities . Both these radars r similar to APG-70 of F-15E ...
--> Another earlier upgrade was the Panda Upgrade for Su-30MK3 Including faster processor TS-100X while the cassergrain antenna of the original Mech has been replaced by a passive phase array antenna .
..... Mech btw means sword in Russian (меч)
