240: Chapter 340 Buy, you must buy

Major General Rahim knew that the air force of Iran did not possess many combat aircraft, and a large portion of them were old planes.

Although they had undergone modifications and upgrades, they still lagged significantly behind the world's advanced nations.

Therefore, after reporting the results of the ammunition procurement negotiations to the Anti-Judea Coalition, Major General Rahim immediately returned to Isfahan, Iran, and contacted Commander-in-Chief Qasim directly.

"Commander-in-Chief Qasim, I have obtained information on a batch of new combat aircraft from an arms dealer. Their operational performance is quite excellent. Do we have any procurement needs?" Major General Rahim said directly after connecting to Commander-in-Chief Qasim's phone.

Upon hearing that the arms dealer was selling advanced combat aircraft, Commander-in-Chief Qasim was jolted with excitement.

Currently, Iran nominally possessed over 400 combat aircraft, but more than 300 of those fighters were products from the 70s and 80s, and even older ones were from the 1960s.

These combat aircraft should have been phased out long ago, but because Iran had no channels to purchase new ones, and developing and producing their own posed significant problems, their operational performance was also far from ideal.

Hearing that there were advanced combat aircraft available for purchase, Commander-in-Chief Qasim asked urgently, "Are you sure? Does the arms dealer have advanced combat aircraft for sale?"

Major General Rahim confirmed, "Yes. The arms dealer is willing to sell. I currently have the combat aircraft information provided by the arms dealer with me."

Commander-in-Chief Qasim immediately said, "You must come here immediately; I want to see the combat aircraft information!"

Less than an hour later, Major General Rahim arrived at the office of Commander-in-Chief Qasim.

Commander-in-Chief Qasim stopped his work and immediately received Major General Rahim.

After a few pleasantries, Major General Rahim immediately took out the various combat aircraft information given to him by Li Yi, including the Eagle series fighters and the War Tiger series bombers.

A thick stack of information on nearly ten models of combat aircraft was placed in front of Commander-in-Chief Qasim.

Commander-in-Chief Qasim looked at the Eagle Type I and Type II jet multi-role fighters and felt somewhat disappointed; how could these be called advanced combat aircraft?

It wasn't until he saw the Eagle Type III jet multi-role fighter that he began to look at them seriously.

The Eagle Type III fighter was already on par with the fighters equipped by Iran, with only some differences in certain operational capabilities, but it could still replace the old fighters currently equipped by Iran.

As for the Eagle Type IV fighter, it already surpassed the currently active combat aircraft; not only was its combat radius longer, but its payload capacity was also increased, making it fully capable of replacing most of Iran's combat aircraft.

Even compared to the most advanced MiG-29 fighters equipped by Iran, it was not inferior at all.

The Eagle Type V and Eagle Type VI fighters had even greater improvements in operational performance, and for Iran, they could definitely be considered advanced combat aircraft globally.

These were aircraft models that Iran simply could not purchase elsewhere.

After reading through them, Commander-in-Chief Qasim made an immediate decision: buy, must buy!

Subsequently, Commander-in-Chief Qasim flipped through the War Tiger series jet bombers.

Iran only equipped 30 bombers, which were also products from the 1970s, and their operational performance was already outdated.

Even the War Tiger Type I jet bomber had a longer range and larger payload capacity than the bombers currently equipped by Iran, only falling slightly short in flight speed.

As for the War Tiger Type III, IV, and V bombers, they were far superior to the levels of bombers in some countries, and the War Tiger Type V bomber was not far behind the world's most advanced bombers.

After looking through everything, Commander-in-Chief Qasim asked, "The arms dealer clearly stated that they can sell these advanced combat aircraft, right?"

Major General Rahim nodded and said, "The arms dealer's intention is that they can be sold; otherwise, they wouldn't have provided us with this combat aircraft information."

Commander-in-Chief Qasim considered this and said, "You need to ask the arms dealer clearly about the selling price of each type of combat aircraft. If the price is reasonable, we will significantly increase our procurement orders, but if the price is too high, the quantity we purchase will be limited."

Although Iran wanted to purchase advanced combat aircraft, if the price was too high—for instance, if one aircraft cost 2 billion USD—they could only afford to purchase ten or twenty at most.

But if the price was reasonable, it would be no problem for Iran to purchase hundreds or even several hundred.

Major General Rahim said, "I will contact the arms dealer immediately to see what their quote is."

Major General Rahim had thought that he was just bringing the combat aircraft information to Commander-in-Chief Qasim this time, and that Commander-in-Chief Qasim wouldn't decide to purchase so quickly.

He hadn't expected him to make up his mind to purchase right after seeing the information, which left him somewhat unprepared.

Commander-in-Chief Qasim waved for Major General Rahim to go contact the arms dealer, while he himself began to calculate how much oil and natural gas Iran could spare for the procurement of the Eagle series fighters and War Tiger series bombers.

Iran had successively purchased over 75 billion USD worth of weapons and equipment, paying the Anti-Judea Coalition with a large amount of oil and natural gas, and Syria had also leased some oil and natural gas.

Although Iran had plenty of oil and natural gas, it couldn't withstand taking out so much energy in a short period of time.

After some calculations by Commander-in-Chief Qasim, this procurement could only provide 200 million barrels of oil and 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas, but this amount of oil and natural gas could not meet the funding requirements for purchasing the combat aircraft at all; it seemed he would need to pay with other mineral resources.

Commander-in-Chief Qasim decided to take out a portion of iron ore and copper ore to sell.

Iran's iron ore reserves reached 4.7 billion tons, and copper ore reserves reached 3.3 billion tons, both of which were quite substantial.

However, due to the lack of mining equipment and lagging technology, many mineral resources could not be mined, and the annual production volume was not very high.

Commander-in-Chief Qasim calculated and decided to take out 50 million tons of iron ore and 30 million tons of copper ore to purchase the combat aircraft.

If that was still not enough, then he would think of ways to add other mineral resources.

After all, the combat aircraft of Iran's air force were far too old and could hardly protect Iran's airspace; even with the Tianlei Series Anti-Aircraft Missile, that was passive defense and could not conduct active defense.

After Major General Rahim left the office of Commander-in-Chief Qasim, he immediately contacted Li Yi.

Commander-in-Chief Qasim was in a hurry for the quotes for the fighters and bombers, so Major General Rahim did not dare to delay and hurried to let the arms dealer provide the quotes.