Ukraine now has Mirage fighter jets

Hello,

This week, France handed over the first Mirage fighters to Ukraine. I think it's a significant step that hasn't received quite the international attention that it deserves. You can watch the video on the website or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Hi, in this video I want to talk about the fact that Ukraine now has Mirage fighter jets. It is something that France promised to deliver last year. I think they made this promise on D-Day. And since then there's been training of pilots, there's been training of ground crews of these aircraft, and now they are in Ukraine. The message so far has been, at least here in the beginning of 2025, it's going to be six of these French aircraft that will go to Ukraine, and then maybe later there might be more.

It hasn't received so much attention, at least here in Denmark in the news, that Ukraine now has this aircraft. So I think it's just worth talking a bit about it, what it is and what it means and what it probably doesn't mean. The Mirage 2000 is an aircraft that very much has the same types of characteristics as the F-16 that Ukraine has already. They received those, the first ones were I think in August. And so they now operate two types of Western fighter aircraft, the F-16 and the Mirage. Both of those are what would be called fourth generation aircraft or fighters. So it's not the newest of the newest, the F-35 would be a fifth generation. It has the stealth characteristics. These don't have that, but it's still good, capable, absolutely fine fighter aircraft that can do a difference in Ukraine.

It's also a multirole type of aircraft. So it's an aircraft that is good against both other types of aircraft. So air to air battle. It can carry the Exocet missile, for example, so it also has an anti-ship role. And then it is also good in ground combat or a ground support role. So it can assist the Ukrainian army in their battles by targeting ground targets, doing close air support and those things.

So it's really an aircraft that can do really many different things. It's not going to change the war in itself, that Ukraine now has six of these. For that, you would need a lot more of these aircraft. But I still think it's a good supplement and it's a good message that Ukraine now also operates this type of aircraft. There was a lot of concern back when the decision was made whether it would be too complicated to operate two types of Western aircraft. It's very complicated to operate an aircraft. It's a very sophisticated technical platform. You would need a different logistics chain to handle the French aircraft in addition to the American F-16s. But I think the way that things have turned out in world politics, I think it's probably a good thing that there is a bit of diversification here and that Ukraine also operates these platforms that are entirely European and that also primarily use European-made missiles and other types of weapons.

And the way I think we should understand this thing about Ukraine getting these aircraft is very much that it's also an investment in a future Ukrainian Air Force. It's an investment in Ukraine having air power also five years from now, 10 years from now. And you have to start somewhere, but it's a transformation away from the old Soviet-era types of aircraft that Ukraine used to operate to Western types of aircraft.

F-16 was a very good platform for that because there just is a lot of F-16s in the world, so potentially Ukraine could receive a lot of F-16s. But it really requires the Americans to be in on the idea. And if the Americans are not enthusiastic about providing F-16s and supporting that development, then it's important that Ukraine has other providers. And I think the Mirage is a good start in that sense.

Also something that is maybe interesting about the Mirage that Ukraine is getting now is that there is speculation that they might have a better radar system on board than the F-16s. There are different generations of radars on the F-16s, and some of them have a very long range, but there was a lot of speculation that Ukraine would not be getting those. So they would get older types of radars and that maybe this was actually something the Americans insisted on, that the Biden administration did not want Ukraine to get the newest equipment there. That means that the F-16s Ukraine has are really limited in how close they can go to the frontline because if the Russian jets have a longer range radar than the Ukrainian ones, then it's just too dangerous to be there because there might be a threat that they can't see.

So maybe it's possible if the Mirage fighters have a better radar than the F-16s Ukraine has that they will be able to go closer to the frontline and operate there. It's quite clear that the Mirage fighters don't have the longest range air to air missiles. There are definitely types that have a much longer range and could be a threat against Russian aircraft on bigger distances. But just the fact that you have the radar would allow them to go closer to the frontline, which might be useful in, for example, hunting down different types of Russian aircraft that are close to the frontline or Russian helicopters or other things, or just allow them to move in to do that support role to the fighting that's going on on ground.

So these are just some of the perspectives. I think it's a good move. I think it's also been quite fast that the French have been able to pull this off in, I don't know, some eight to nine months since the announcement. I think that's a good sign. And maybe there is something to build on here that could prove to be valuable. So it's not something that's going to change the war in the very short term, but something that has perspective for the future and points to something that could be relevant for a future Ukrainian Air Force. Okay, I will end it here. Thanks for watching.