Ex-French Dassault Mirage 2000-5 fighters will arrive in Ukraine in the first quarter of next year, French defense minister Sébastien Lecornu announced Tuesday.
But first, the delta-wing supersonic fighters “will be equipped with new equipment,” Lecornu wrote, including systems for air-ground combat and electronic warfare.
Lecornu’s comments seem to confirm what observers have suspected since France pledged surplus Mirage 2000s to the Ukrainian war effort back in June: the Ukrainian air force will arm its former French jets with the same French-made munitions it’s already hanging on its old Soviet-made Mikoyan MiG-29, Sukhoi Su-24 and Sukhoi Su-27 warplanes. These include SCALP-EG cruise missiles and Hammer glide bombs.
Armed for precision attacks on ground targets as far as 155 miles away, the single-seat, single-engine Mirages will reinforce the Ukrainian air force’s aging, swing-wing Su-24s. Meanwhile, the approximately 85—or 84, now that one has crashed—ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16s Ukraine is getting will reinforce the only slightly younger MiG-29s and Su-27s.
Surviving French Mirage 2000-5s—out of the 37 “dash-fives” Dassault built for the French air force in the 1990s—are scheduled to retire between now and 2029, but Lecornu has said their replacements, new Dassault Rafales, could arrive early and speed up the process.
With a little bureaucratic urgency, there’s no reason France couldn’t equip the Ukrainian air force with a couple of dozen Mirage 2000-5s through 2025—enough to expand the air force’s existing bomber unit, the 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade, or form a new brigade.
A second bomber brigade is the likelier outcome, given how much the 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade has already expanded in the 31 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine.
Ukraine inherited around 200 of the 1970s-vintage Su-24s when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Thirty years later, just a dozen or so of the two-seat, twin-engine bombers were still active with the 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade.
Flying into action with gravity bombs, and later glide bombs and cruise missiles, the Su-24s suffered heavy losses. The Russians have shot down no fewer than 18 of the vintage bombers, most of them early in the war before the bombers shifted to strikes with long-range munitions.
That the Ukrainians have lost more Su-24s than they had at the start of the wider war speaks to their determined effort to identify old Su-24 airframes at various storage sites and restore them to flightworthy status. Older pilots and navigators have come out of retirement to fill the jets’ cockpits.
In a recent interview with Voice of America, Col. Yevhen Bulatsyk—the 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade’s commander—said the brigade has “much more” now than it did in February 2022. More bombers. More crews.
The Ukrainian air force clearly has plans to retain the Su-24s in service for the foreseeable future. It’s even developing a new locally made glide bomb to give the bombers more weapons options.
As Mirage 2000s arrive, they could fill out a new brigade that would fight alongside the battle-hardened 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade, adding mass to the Ukrainian air force’s deep strikes on Russian warships, air-defense batteries, headquarters and supply depots in occupied southern and eastern Ukraine.
The ex-French jets will need aircrews and ground crews, of course. According to Lecornu, “the training of Ukrainian pilots and mechanics continues.”
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