Mirage 2000C

Back to the delta

In the early 1970s Dassault’s big project was not a delta at all. It was the twin-engined Super Mirage G8A, meant to be France’s future combat aircraft. It turned out ambitious, over-engineered and two and a half times the price of a Mirage F1Mirage F1 AircraftA swept-wing French fighter sold to eleven countries and flown in many wars., at the very moment that the cheap American F-16F-16 Fighting Falcon AircraftA single-engine multirole fighter: fly-by-wire, 9 g, and the US Air Force's main strike and SEAD aircraft. was winning orders across Europe. On 18 December 1975 France’s National Defence Council cancelled it, and at the same meeting Dassault offered a smaller, single-engined design that had begun as a side project: the Mirage 2000. [1]

It looked like a return to the classic Mirage III, a tailless delta, but it was an entirely new aircraft. [2] A delta wing gives a large wing area, low wing loading and a high top speed, but it is awkward at low speed. Fly-by-wire controls fixed that, letting the 2000 manoeuvre well where earlier deltas struggled. [1] The first prototype flew on 10 March 1978, just 27 months after the go-ahead. On that first flight Jean Coureau went supersonicSupersonic GlossaryFlight: The regime of flight from about Mach 1.20 to 5.00, with definite supersonic flow on all parts of the aircraft. Above Mach 5.00 is hypersonic. without afterburnerAfterburner GlossaryFlight: An additional combustion area aft of the turbine section of a turbojet, with fuel nozzles and flameholders, that burns fuel in the engine's large excess of air. It adds only 10 to 20 percent to the engine's weight but 40…, and by the end of May the aircraft had passed MachMach number GlossaryFlight: The ratio of the true airspeed to the speed of sound. All compressibility effects depend on it. 2. At the Farnborough Airshow that September it showed the other end of the range, flying nose-high at 25 degrees angle of attackAOA GlossaryJoint terms: Angle of attack. The angle at which relative wind meets an airfoil. It is the angle that is formed by the chord of the airfoil and the direction of the relative wind or between the chord line and the flight path. at just 190 km/h. [1]

The fighter

The Mirage 2000C, C for chasseur (fighter), first flew in production form on 20 November 1982, and the first squadronSquadron GlossaryJoint terms: 1. An organization consisting of two or more divisions of ships, or two or more divisions (Navy) or flights of aircraft. 2. The basic administrative aviation unit of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. 3… formed in 1984, the French Air Force’s 50th anniversary. [1] Its job was interception, with ground attack second. [1] The first 37 aircraft carried the RDM radar and the M53-5 engine, a single-shaft afterburningAfterburner GlossaryFlight: An additional combustion area aft of the turbine section of a turbojet, with fuel nozzles and flameholders, that burns fuel in the engine's large excess of air. It adds only 10 to 20 percent to the engine's weight but 40… turbofan; from the 38th the more powerful M53-P2 was fitted. The RDI pulse-Doppler radar that entered service in 1987 could see about 150 km and was paired with the Super 530DSuper 530 OrdnanceThe French radar-guided missile of the Mirage F1 and Mirage 2000, built to snap up at high targets. radar-guided missile, with much better look-down, shoot-down performance. Magic IIR.550 Magic OrdnanceFrance's dogfight missile, built to fit Sidewinder launchers and carried by every Mirage from the III to the 2000. infrared missiles and two 30 mm DEFA cannonDEFA 550 series OrdnanceFrance's 30 mm revolver cannon, the standard gun of every French gun-armed fighter from 1954 until the Rafale. complete the air-to-air fit. [1] Later variants include the two-seat 2000N nuclear strike, 2000D conventional attack and 2000-5 multirole aircraft. [1] [2]

In action

The 2000C went to war in 1991, flying combat air patrolsCAP GlossaryJoint terms: Combat air patrol. An aircraft patrol provided over an objective area, the force protected, the critical area of a combat zone, or in an air defense area, for the purpose of intercepting and destroying hostile aircraft… over Saudi Arabia and escorting strike and reconnaissanceReconnaissance GlossaryJoint terms: A mission undertaken to obtain, by visual observation or other detection methods, information about the activities and resources of an enemy or adversary, or to secure data concerning the meteorological, hydrographic, or… aircraft over Kuwait and southern Iraq. [1] French Mirage 2000s went on to fly over Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. [1] In 2017, during the Barkhane operation in Africa, a pair answered a militant attack on US and African troops with low “intimidation” passes, because the fighting was too close to the friendly troops to use weapons safely. [1] On 9 March 2024 two Mirage 2000-5Fs shot down Houthi drones over the Red Sea, France’s first air-to-air victories since the Second World War. [1]

The Mirage 2000 sold widely abroad. India, which bought it in answer to Pakistan’s F-16sF-16 Fighting Falcon AircraftA single-engine multirole fighter: fly-by-wire, 9 g, and the US Air Force's main strike and SEAD aircraft. and named it Vajra, “thunderbolt” in Sanskrit, flew it in the Kargil War, and on 26 February 2019 twelve Indian Mirages struck a target at Balakot in Pakistan, the first time Indian fighters had entered Pakistani airspace since 1971. [1] The UAE flew its Mirages in the Gulf War and over Yemen, Peru in the Cenepa War, and Ukraine has flown them against Russia. [1]

France retired its last 2000Cs in June 2022, after their final years training pilots for the newer variants; the Rafale is replacing the Mirage 2000 family in French service. [1]