France trains Ukrainian pilots for Mirage 2000. Will it deliver the fighters?
After supplying Ukraine with 155 mm Caesar guns and AMX armored vehicles, France is now getting more involved in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Indeed, for more than a month, thirty Ukrainian pilots have been receiving accelerated training on French Mirage 2 000 fighter aircraft, according to information from Le Figaro.
These flagships of the French aeronautical industry, designed by Dassault, were already the subject of interest since last year. Indeed, during a hearing in the Senate, the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, had acknowledged that discussions were underway with the Ukrainians about possible training with the Mirage 2,000. But when Senator Philippe Folliot asked if the twelve Mirage 2 000-Cs currently in storage could be sold or transferred to Ukraine, Sébastien Lecornu did not answer positively, indicating that the state was focusing on sending ammunition. but evidently something was being studied.
The Mirage 2000 is a fourth generation supersonic multi-role fighter first flown in 1978 and has been in service since 1984. In service in several countries besides France, including India, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates it has been a moderate commercial success. In the N version it is also part of the French nuclear deterrent. The fighter also entered into military action in the air battles between India and Pakistan where it competed with its direct adversary, the American F16. To live up to it in the late eighties the Mirage 2000 was updated with a Thomson radar capable of engaging multiple targets simultaneously.
The decision to train Ukrainian pilots in these fighter jets was taken only on February 8, before Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Paris, the Defense Ministry said. However, the ministry indicates that only the training of "military air personnel" has begun at the air bases of Mont-de-Marsan and Nancy.
In doing so, France takes a new step in its cooperation with Ukraine, joining the ranks of nations providing training to Ukrainian pilots, alongside the United States and the United Kingdom. Then we have to see if this training will correspond to sending the fighters to the theater of war.
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The article France trains Ukrainian pilots for Mirage 2000. Will it deliver the fighters? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/ucraina-mirage-2000-francia/ on Thu, 23 Mar 2023 13:00:39 +0000.