ANALYSIS: Ukraine’s New Mirage 2000 Warplane – The Fighter Pilot Viewpoint

The French Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft that Ukraine has just received is not a cutting-edge, latest-iteration aircraft, but pretty much any combat pilot would rate it a valuable addition and useful upgrade to the Ukrainian Air Force tool kit.

Technologically, the version of the Mirage 2000 that will operate over Ukraine is at least on par with the US-built F‑16 fighters Ukraine has received from Denmark and Netherlands, who donated them. The Mirage, like the Viper (no self-respecting F‑16 driver calls it the “Fighting Falcon”), was developed during the late Cold War and upgraded through the 1990s and early 2000s.

According to French media, the Mirage version Paris sent to Kyiv is equipped with upgraded electronic warfare systems and with an RDY-2 pulse-Doppler radar with an air search mode able to track as many as 24 aircraft, and fire on up to four of them, out to a range of about 130 kilometers.

Some news reports have said Ukraine would get the “F” version of the Mirage 2000-5 which, if true, would mean the aircraft would have an advanced radar at least on par with most Russian aircraft. According to Kyiv Post research through online open-source information, all French-owned versions have been upgraded to the Mirage 2000-5F.

It is probable, in part because France has exported it to other countries, that Ukraine’s Mirage 2000s are equipped with a modern electronic self-defense system called ICMS system, which helps defend the jet with radar warning receivers, jammers, and chaff and flare dispensers. The Mark 2 version of this defense system operates partially with pilot inputs, and the Mark 3 version, the latest, operates automatically.

Other Topics of Interest

Ukraine’s ‘Madyar’s Birds’ Take Down Russia’s ‘Invulnerable’ Drones

Ukraine’s 414th Strike UAV Battalion, known as “Madyar’s Birds,” detected and destroyed a Russian fiber-optic drone

The primary air-to-air missile the Mirage 2000 employs is the MICA.

Dassault’s Mirage 2000 is designed to fire the MICA air-to-air missile which is effective at within visual range (WVR) and beyond visual range (BVR) employment. The weapon has thrust vectoring and either an active Doppler radar seeker or infrared (IR) seeker for end-game steering to its target.

At longer ranges the missile will take updates from the Mirage’s RDY-2 radar via data link before it takes over when its smaller sensor can home in on the target, as the US AIM-120 AMRAAM employed by the F‑16 does.

The MICA has been in use for two decades and has been continuously upgraded, which includes the missile’s ability to function as another sensor feeding the Mirage 2000 pilot additional information.

Later versions also can be fired “over-the-shoulder” at a target at the fighter’s 6 o’clock when cued by another aircraft with data link access to the missile.

It’s not clear which versions of the MICA, if any, arrived with the Mirages sent to Ukraine.

The Mirages the Ukrainian pilots will fly, according to most reports, will have a “glass cockpit” replacing nearly all analog equipment with modern multi-function displays (MFDs) and more powerful computers to process sensor data. All the aircraft operation information like airspeed, altitude, engine status, and radar configuration is shown digitally, more like most of the modern automotive industry now uses in their infotainment systems.

Compared to a pilot sitting in a Soviet-era Sukhoi or MiG, a pilot in a Mirage 2000 will understand the battle around him better (i.e., have more “situation awareness,” or “SA”), tire more slowly, and make fewer mistakes.

The biggest limiting factor (“limfac”) problem facing a Ukrainian Mirage pilot is this: Like the F‑16s donated to the Ukrainian Air Force by other allies, the French Mirage 2000 still is a fourth-generation fighter, as is Russia’s Su-35.

The most important characteristic all fifth-generation fighter aircraft is innate, designed-into-the-airframe stealth capability – not just for a clean aircraft but while carrying a combat load. This requires supercomputers, not available in the 1970-1990s, at the airframe design stage and invariably uses an internal weapons bay.

Where this is most critical is when flown against areas defended by the most modern surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) like a US Patriot or Russia’s S-300 (NATO: SA-20) and S-400 (NATO: SA-21) SAMs, leaving all fourth-generation fighters (Mirage 2000, F‑16 and Su-35) highly vulnerable to the modern air defenses employed by both sides in Ukraine.

In a straight air-to-air fight, a Russian pilot flying a Su-57 (NATO: “Felon”), an aircraft the Kremlin claims to be fifth-generation, has a clear advantage. The hypothetical Russian Su-57 operator could detect a Mirage 2000 well before the Mirage 2000 systems detected the Russian plane.

At least on paper, the Felon pilot should have a pretty good chance of knocking down the Mirage before the Ukrainian fighter pilot could even take a shot.

However, there are only between 4 and 15 operational Su-57s in the Russian inventory, and it is widely suspected of “resembling” a fifth-generation fighter while not matching the capabilities of the US F-22 and F-35, according to multiple sources.

Although movies usually depict air war as mostly dogfights between pilots almost always wearing sunglasses, in actual war air combat is a giant, complex team effort. It’s true that individual pilot skill probably is still the most important single factor in success or failure in air combat. But, other factors add up quickly.

Effective air forces know that everyone involved has a job to do and must do it well.

This team includes AWACS or ground radar personnel providing off-board information, and the duties performed by intelligence gatherers, maintainers, commanders, and mission planners. A mistake by any of them can lead to a destroyed aircraft just as surely as pilot error.

This holds true for both sides in any combat scenario or battlespace.

This is where the Mirage 2000-5 pilots will go into combat with a definite advantage. The Ukrainian Air Force already has a lot of practice using Soviet-era aircraft to bluff and distract their more advanced Russian opponents.

In the cat-and-mouse fighting of modern air combat, Ukrainian Mirages won’t suddenly be dominant, but they will be more effective.

In operations against ground targets, the advantages of the French multi-role fighter are even more clear.

The Ukrainian Air Force has nearly three years of practice incorporating Western weapons technologies into operations against the Russian military, and for more than two years Ukrainian combat jets have been re-rigged to perform ground attack missions using Western bombs and missiles.

This also means Ukrainian intelligence gatherers, strike planners, weapons handlers and loaders, and maintainers have years of practice figuring out how to launch air-to-ground missions with planes armed with Western bombs, cruise missiles, and AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM).

In August 2023 ancient Ukrainian Su-24 fighter-bombers began flying strike missions armed with modern French SCALP cruise missiles, and by summer 2024 Ukrainian aircraft maintainers had figured out how to rig a Soviet-era fighter-bomber with a French precision-guided stand-off bomb called a Hammer.

From a Ukrainian pilot’s point of view, flying an air strike sortie using either of those weapons will be dramatically easier in a Mirage 2000. The ground attack systems aboard the jet, such as the RDY-2 radar’s synthetic aperture ground mapping mode and targeting pod integration, were designed specifically to help the pilot put a SCALP missile or a Hammer precision-guided munition (PGM) on target and get away safely.

For that pilot, flying a ground attack sortie with a Mirage should be an order of magnitude easier and more effective than the old way, which was using Soviet-era airplanes jury-rigged to launch modern French munitions.

At least as important as better ergonomics and situation awareness for the actual pilot, there are months and months of experience by the Ukrainian Air Force team learning from past strikes, with those same weapons.

Most pilots would expect that a surface attack mission executed by Ukrainian Mirage 2000 multi-role fighters in the coming days and months, would be quicker, more accurate, more agile, and more threatening than any aerial assaults faced by Russian air defenses thus far.

News reports say the batch of Mirages now delivered is small, between three and six aircraft. Against an opponent the size of the Russian Air Force, alone, three to six planes of any type, cannot change the direction of an air war.

But they can influence it. From the point of view of a pilot – Ukrainian or Russian – the Mirage 2000 in the Ukrainian Air Force’s hands has made the job of Russian air defenses more complicated, everywhere those planes can reach.