Ukraine Receives First French Mirage 2000 Fighters: How Will They Be Employed?

The Ukrainian Air Force has received the first French supplied Mirage 2000 fighters at an unknown airbase in the country, following the announcement in early June of plans to transfer the ageing combat jets as part of France’s support for the Eastern European state’s ongoing war effort. “With Ukrainian pilots on board who have been trained for several months in France, they will now participate in defending the skies of Ukraine,” France’s Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu stated, with six fighters thought to have comprised the first batch. Lecornu previously announced that the second hand fighters would receive new electronic self-defence systems before delivery to facilitate more effective air to surface operations, since the fighters’ avionics were previously configured for air to air operations. The Mirage 2000 is the third fighter class to be donated to Ukraine by NATO members, following Soviet built MiG-29 which began deliveries from former Warsaw Pact states in 2022, and the U.S. built F-16 which began to be supplied in early August 2024. None of these fighters are considered to have capabilities matching those of the Su-27 which previously formed the backbone of the Ukrainian fleet, and had a much longer range, larger weapons carrying capacity, larger radar, and greater flight performance, but which is not available in Western-aligned states to be procured for delivery to Ukraine.

A primary factor in the decision to supply F-16s and Mirage 2000s has been their availability, as while the Ukrainian Air Force is already highly familiar with the MiG-29, and the fighters are better suited to operating from makeshift airfields, Western stocks of the Soviet built jets have largely been exhausted. The small number of F-16s delivered quickly began to take losses after arriving in Ukraine, with reports conflicting on their cause. Fighters supplied to Ukraine are significantly outmatched by those in the Russian Air Force such as the Su-30SM and Su-35, and as a result they have tended to avoid air to air combat and instead focus on employing long range air to ground ordinance against Russian targets. Mirage 2000s are similarly expected to be employed as elevated launchers for cruise missile attacks, but to operate well behind the frontlines. The French fighter class does not introduce any fundamentally new capabilities not already provided by the F-16 or MiG-29, and has the least remarkable flight performance of the three, but it will allow Ukraine to field more fighter squadrons as its fleet of Soviet built fourth generation aircraft is depleted.