Analytics

Tactical capabilities of the Mirage 2000-5F: from air defense to ground strikes

ANALYSIS

The first three Dassault Aviation Mirage 2000-5Fs will arrive in Ukraine by the end of January.

It would seem fast enough, but pilot training started back in March at Alpha Jet, so almost a year has passed. There are no miracles, pilots have never been trained for jet aviation in 3-6 months. So all the talk about how the French didn’t require a language, they just taught it, remains talk.

A package solution

What do we get? Aircraft for which France produces its line of air-to-air missiles, cruise missiles, and planning bombs, such as the MICA-EM, Hammer, and other close-range delivery vehicles.

Paris has restarted production of the Hammer precision-guided bombs, hundreds of which are already on their way to Ukraine, while Scalps are being restored from storage after fuel degradation or electronics failure (they have been out of production for a long time).

The reserves of one of the largest NATO countries and one of the richest and most developed EU members are generally what we need to get rid of our dependence on the United States or Germany.

The more suppliers we have, the less we depend on politics, budgets, elections, and coalitions within NATO.

The package includes reconnaissance containers, electronic warfare, sighting stations, pilot training, spare parts, spare engines. All of this is either being manufactured or stored by the French. At the same time, the readiness rate of the aircraft is never 100% – there are always some undergoing repair or modernization.

A special modernization package for Ukraine, given the realities of the Ukrainian-Russian war (waves of KR and Shahed, missions to areas with strong air defense). Probably containers with electronic warfare, modification of the “glass cockpit”, integration with air-to-surface weapons.

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Capabilities

The ability to plant a Scalp a few hundred kilometers away in a bunker near L’gov, where two lieutenant colonels were killed, or a Humvee to take down a captured building with the garrison is more important to us than air combat.

The Mirage 2000-5F’s RDY-2 radar has a range of up to 140 kilometers. Therefore, this is not a machine for hunting down QAB throwers, but rather for air defense, intercepting barrage munitions strikes on critical infrastructure, patrolling the coastline, or supporting our own SAMs, preventing them from being blinded by helicopter interference.

And of course, a large part of the work is ground strikes in the interests of tactical commanders. Forward command posts, various warehouses, columns that move to the neutral zone, strongholds, communication centers. French bombs are laser-guided and can hit moving targets.

Therefore, the modernization is not for air combat, but for air support is justified.

According to information leaked to the media, Western aircraft are massively used as air defense boards during attacks on energy facilities. While the MiG-29 has been redesigned for ground attacks.

This is a very logical decision – the key task is to get the military-industrial complex up and running and to avoid power supply limits for factories (we are generally getting through the winter very well), while the pilots of Western aircraft gain combat experience and fly together in squadrons.

To have time to be exposed to interference, to weed out false targets, to make decisions on the range of fire, to fly as part of a group – this will make young pilots progress quickly.

At the same time, post-Soviet machines can approach the LBZ at very low altitudes and release guided bombs from the cage at coordinates set on the ground. There is nothing supernatural about this (there is a risk, but this is war, there is a risk even at the Motor Sich checkpoint in Zaporizhzhia), but it is technically possible.

So the Soviet machines are working their way down to zero, while the Western planes are being used to train the pilots as much as possible. And gradually, they will be able to fly missions on the ground, balancing between training, duties to repel the waves of the KR and Shahed, and direct air support missions.

Cooperation

The Dassault Aviation Mirage 2000-5F is a good machine that can do many things: launch several anti-ship missiles or decoys, penetrate air defenses, act as an air defense aircraft, and patrol.

But the main thing in this interaction is cooperation with a key EU and NATO country. Its arsenals, training bases, piloting school, technological solutions, weapons, and advisors.

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Author: Kyrylo Danylchenko, military expert