{"id":289117,"date":"2024-06-09T07:19:43","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T07:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=289117"},"modified":"2024-06-10T09:03:59","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T09:03:59","slug":"france-to-send-mirage-jets-to-ukraine-but-are-they-worth-the-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=289117","title":{"rendered":"France to send Mirage jets to Ukraine \u2013 but are they worth the bother?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Barnes \u2013 The Telegraph June 7, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

With advanced missiles and radar, capable of shooting down four aerial targets at once, the Mirage 2000 seems ideally suited to\u00a0defend the skies over Ukraine.<\/a><\/p>\n

But taking on another Western jet could cause headaches for Kyiv, experts have warned, after Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, announced he would\u00a0start selling the fighters to Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0\u201cby the end of the year\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ukraine is already struggling to prepare for the arrival of American-made F-16s. Like the F-16, the Mirage will only have a meaningful impact on\u00a0the war effort\u00a0<\/a>if Ukraine\u2019s Western partners can help build and maintain the extensive support and logistics infrastructure needed to keep it in the air.<\/p>\n

There is uncertainty over whether the neatly kept airfields and glut of spare parts\u00a0required by the American F-16<\/a>\u00a0jets will arrive in time for them to join the fray as expected this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen from the F-16s, that even with 80 aircraft donated, it\u2019s taking a lot of time and lots of resources in multiple countries,\u201d said Prof Justin Bronk, senior research fellow for airpower and technology at the Royal United Services Institute.<\/p>\n

In recent months, the French themselves had suggested that donating Mirage jets to Ukraine would only complicate matters for the transfer of F-16s \u2013 and stepped aside, until Mr Macron made his announcement on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainians have faced serious challenges in establishing suitable air bases to operate their expected fleet of F-16s without them becoming\u00a0immediately obvious to the Russians.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ukrainian sources have discussed building underground bunkers to protect the planes from long-range missile and drone strikes by Russian forces.<\/p>\n

Modern, Nato-standard aircraft need clean runways, free from \u201cforeign object debris\u201d (FOD), especially the F-16, which is particularly sensitive because of its under-belly air intake.<\/p>\n

The Mirage 2000<\/a>\u00a0is more resistant to FOD than the F-16, and capable of using rougher surfaces, but it will still be difficult to find suitable locations to house fleets of both aircraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably not worth all the personnel and huge resources that it will take to develop a Ukrainian Mirage 2000 capability, get it up and running and defend it in Ukraine,\u201d Prof Bronk said.<\/p>\n

Like the F-16, the Mirage is a single-engine, multi-role fighter jet, which first entered into service in the 1970s, and shares many similarities with its American-made counterpart.<\/p>\n

The aircraft are closely matched in performance.<\/p>\n

The 2000-5, or \u201cdash five\u201d model that Mr Macron earmarked for the Ukrainians is one of the most modern variants of the jet and features an upgraded radar and a high-tech, touch-screen glass cockpit borrowed from the later Rafale jet.<\/p>\n

It is also capable of firing sophisticated missiles like the Storm Shadow.<\/p>\n

But its Mica air-to-air missile, while highly capable, falls short of the Amraam fired by the F-16.<\/p>\n

\u201cMica is by no means a bad missile\u2026 it\u2019s a fairly agile missile that can be pretty unpleasant to defend against if you\u2019re inside what is called the no escape zone. But it is fundamentally, significantly shorter-ranged than Amraam,\u201d Prof Bronk said.<\/p>\n

Mica missiles boast specifications claiming they can hit targets up to 50 miles away, compared to the Amraam\u2019s range of 75 miles.<\/p>\n

To achieve such ranges, shots would have to be taken at high altitude, where the air is thinner, and with the launching aircraft travelling at supersonic speeds.<\/p>\n

But the presence of\u00a0so many Russian anti-aircraft missiles<\/a>\u00a0along the front lines means Ukrainian pilots must fly sorties at very low altitude, limiting their effectiveness against the Russian fighter-bombers that have been pummelling Kyiv\u2019s ground forces.<\/p>\n

Prof Bronk said: \u201cThere are layers of medium to very long-range SAMs [surface to air missiles] anywhere near the front line. Any Ukrainian fighter is going to be flying at very low altitudes to try and use terrain-masking to minimise the range at which those SAM systems can engage them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a really significant limiting factor for how much utility they can get in the crucial air defence task of which any fighter is primarily needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

More costly than ground-based systems<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The jets could, of course, be used to fend-off missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, but at an incredible cost compared to using ground-based systems for the task.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt [Mirage] could be used to intercept cruise missiles and Shahed-type drones inside Ukraine, but so can F-16, and quite frankly it\u2019s an incredibly expensive way of trying to do that,\u201d said Prof Bronk.<\/p>\n

Paris is building a coalition of countries that operate the Mirage 2000, with the ultimate goal of having an unspecified number of the planes in the war-torn country by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

The programme mirrors the scheme by Nato allies to provide Ukraine\u2019s air force with dozens of F-16s.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s access to Mirage 2000-5 models is extremely limited \u2013 its air force only has around 26 of the dash five version in service, and they are set to be replaced entirely by 2029 \u2013 but it was an export success.<\/p>\n

To start delivering en masse, Paris would need to negotiate with the likes of Greece, India, and the UAE, whose air forces use the jet.<\/p>\n

In February, Indonesia backed out of a \u20ac700 million (\u00a3594 million) deal to buy 12 of the aircraft, potentially meaning they could be freed up for Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being sophisticated and relatively advanced, Ukraine will need modern airfields and trained ground crews to keep the jets airworthy. As the ground crews training takes years, NATO crews will be called on. Meaning that NATO is getting drawn further into a conflict where its support personnel will be prime targets for Russian missile strikes <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":289120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289145,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289117\/revisions\/289145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/289120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}