Fakour-90

Description

Likely due to the depletion of AIM-54 in Iran's arsenal while the demand for BVR AAMs still persists, to keep the stockpile of missiles for the remaining fleet of F-14A, the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics has likely been developing a compatible missile based on US designs by the 2000s. With a large stockpile of MIM-23 Hawk at their arsenal during the Pahlavi's throne which has been phrased out by Russian or Chinese equivalents, the engineers retained the overall design of AIM-54 while replacing the rocket motor and warhead from Hawk, eventually leading to the Fakour-90 (فکور ۹۰*, Wisdom-90) first announced in 2011.

Introduced to the game during the 2024 Persian Tomcat event in Update "Seek & Destroy", Fakour-90 introduced itself as the Iranian domestic alternative to the infamous AIM-54A in their arsenal; while the missile is much heavier than the AIM-54A, the rocket motor from Hawk will send it to much farther distance at ideal scenarios while retaining sufficient explosive content to blast enemy targets out of the skies.

*Editor's note: Persian reads from right to left

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• ▄F-14A IRIAF

General info

Missile characteristics
Mass	637.3 kg
Guidance	ARH+IOG+DL
Signal	CW, Band I
Shoot down	Front aspect
Lock range	16 km
Launch range	150 km
Maximum speed	4 M
Maximum overload	20 G
Missile guidance time	150 secs
Explosive mass	46.45 kg TNTeq

Effective damage

With 46.45 kg TNTe of explosive, although being less than conventional AIM-54A, an explosion within the blast radius of warhead can cause explosive and sharapnel damage upon enemy aircrafts, disabling their control columns or blasting off parts of their airframe right away.

Comparison with analogues

AIM-54A and C - both part of the AIM-54 family with lower overload while having higher explosive content.

AIM-120 series, R-77, MICA-EM, R-Darter, PL-12, AAM-4 - all these missiles have much lower explosive content and range, while having much better overload.

Usage in battles

When players have been used to the playstyle of AIM-54A since stock, they will take the Fakour-90 as a knock-off version of the Phoenix; this is somewhat true due to the design features of Fakour is very similar to AIM-54 while having spare parts sourcing from MIM-23 Hawk (which were both product of Hughes); all tactics from Phoenix applies to Fakour as well - in more detailed explanation: players have to keep some altitude and speed advantages before hunting down for enemy targets with the powerful radar on F-14A, due to the radar modes, players can only search for head-on targets in most cases due to lacking all-aspect PD mode. When enemy targets entered the "no escape zone" displayed in radar UI and having launching cue, they can launch the Fakour upon the targets while keeping track on them with the help of TWS mode. Once it entered the 16 km radius of seeker activation or solid line shown in radar UI, players can safely evade from enemy radars as the missile will do the work; but once again, "no escape zone" doesn't equal to certain kills, so players are advised to seek for the most careless targets who pay less attention to the obvious smoke trails of Fakour to engage for maximum efficiency.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Has an active radar homing (ARH) seeker, which gives it fire-and-forget capability
• Extended range than AIM-54 Phoenix

Cons:

• Can easily be evaded by multipathing at lower altitude
• Lesser explosive content than AIM-54 Phoenix
• Rather observable engine smoke due to its long burn time

History

Examine the history of the creation and combat usage of the weapon in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too long, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the weapon and adding a block "/History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Weapon-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref></ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article with <references />.

Media

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See also

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• reference to the article about the variant of the weapon;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

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