What are the Mirage 2000-5, which France will cede to Ukraine? | EUROtoday

These planes will thus enable higher floor help for the troops and problem entry to the sky for Russian fighters and bombers. The Ukrainian pilots shall be skilled in France for “five to six” months, he mentioned. The French president desires kyiv to have these tricolor planes “by the end of the year”.

Sky Police

Produced by the Dassault group, the Mirage 2000-5 is a modernized model of the 2000-C put into service in 1999, which has applied sciences impressed by these of the Rafale. Among these enhancements, a radar able to detecting as much as 24 targets concurrently, with an improved detection vary, and the potential for finishing up simultaneous firing of MICA missiles on a number of targets.

14.65 m lengthy and with a wingspan of 9.13 m, this Mirage reaches 5.20 m excessive. According to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, it could actually attain velocity Mach 2.2, or 2.2 occasions the velocity of sound. It is due to this fact optimized for interception operations at excessive altitude and supersonic speeds.

The French Air Force has round forty Mirage 2000-5s in its fleet. Four of them had already been deployed to supply air policing in Estonia final November, as a part of the NATO mission referred to as Enhanced Air Policing and strengthened in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea by Russia.

READ ALSO What the bilateral safety settlement between Ukraine and France comprisesDetails relating to the switch of those fighter planes might be introduced this Friday, June 7, when Volodymyr Zelensky shall be acquired on the Élysée. On an official go to, the Ukrainian president should ship a speech to the National Assembly earlier than assembly Emmanuel Macron to signal two agreements.