France reveals Ukraine fighter jet plans
Ukraine could begin using French-provided Mirage 2000 fighter jets in the conflict against Russia in the first half of next year, the donor nation’s minister of the armed forces, Sebastien Lecornu, has told the daily Sud Ouest.
Lecornu said that training Ukrainian pilots and mechanics, which is being done at the Air Force base in Nancy, is the limiting factor for the transfer, according to the interview published on Monday.
French media reported in March that Paris was secretly training Ukrainian military personnel as part of a proposed donation of planes built by Dassault Aviation. President Emmanuel Macron confirmed the arrangement in June, announcing that an unspecified number of relatively new Mirage 2000-5 versions of the military aircraft will be provided.
”The key factor is pilot training time, and so we’re going to propose to [Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky] that pilots be trained as early as this summer – it normally takes five to six months – so that by the end of the year they’ll be able to fly these aircraft,” Macron said.
Media reports indicate that around a dozen jets could be sent to Ukraine. The French Air Force operates almost 100 Mirage 2000s of various types, plus another 40 are in service with the French Navy.
”The aim is to equip them with air-to-ground combat capabilities. And to strengthen their electronic warfare system,” Lecornu said.
The Mirage 2000 is compatible with the British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles that the two nations have already supplied to Ukraine. Kiev has been seeking permission to fire these long-range weapons at targets deep inside Russia. Moscow has warned that it would consider any attacks of this nature as coming directly from NATO.
Other Western nations have donated US-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Kiev has lost at least one of them since the deliveries started in early August. The Russian military has reported several strikes on an airfield where the Western aircraft were reportedly stationed.
Macron previously urged members of the US-led military bloc not to rule out deploying troops to Ukraine, though the leaders of a number of other countries opposed the idea after he first floated it in February.
Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainians serve as ‘cannon fodder’.
