President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France would send Mirage 2000 fighter jets to Ukraine, in what would appear to be a significant increase in his country’s direct military support to Kyiv.
“Tomorrow we will launch a new cooperation and announce the transfer of Mirage 2000 [jets], which help Ukraine protect its skies,” Macron said during an interview with broadcaster TF1 in the northern city of Caen, coinciding with the start of an official visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The French president also said Ukrainians would receive training in France for five to six months as early as this summer, with a target of training 4,500 service personnel.
Dude… the Viper’s a 50 year old design. Sure, we’ve kept updating it, but the A is (IIRC) still technically a bit better at BFM because it’s somewhat lighter. The Mirage 2k can still be deadly in the right hands. Also, I would absolutely put them on par with the MiG-29s they were getting.
Additionally, it’s kinda funny that Putin gets all pissy with the US because other NAFOs are donating F-16s, and yet they say nothing about the M2K, which is capable of launching an ASMP-A (tactical nuke cruise missile) - obviously they’re not giving them or training them on those, but neither were we or anybody else with the Vipers.