Because France is supposed to be a democracy, Zone Militaire assumes that the government’s word must be trusted. Thus, in September 2023, during a parliamentary hearing, and while a rumor about a possible transfer of Mirage 2000D to Ukraine was becoming more insistent, the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, assured that the transfer of aircraft from combat was “not the first request of the Ukrainians vis-à-vis France”. This he reaffirmed again last February before the deputies of the Defense Committee.
“On the question of aviation, overall, we are also trying to do something useful. To be transparent, I never said it publicly, upon delivery of Mirage 2000, of which we have few and of which the MCO [maintien en condition opérationnelle] would present terribly complicated challenges, we preferred to start general pilot training,” explained the minister. And to insist: “We preferred to put money and engineering into the adaptation of so-called A2SM bombs [Armement Air Sol Modulaire] on generations of Soviet Sukhoi aircraft [Su-24 « Fencer »] and MiG [MiG-29 « Fulcrum »] that the Ukrainians already have rather than making a move only around the Mirage.”
This position was all the more plausible given that Sweden recently announced that it was going to suspend its plan to transfer JAS-39 Gripen combat aircraft to Ukraine, with priority given to putting the aircraft into service. F-16 promised by the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Belgium.
And for good reason: delivering several types of combat aircraft to Ukraine required setting up as many logistics chains and training pilots and technicians. Which takes time… However, the Ukrainian air force does not have any time.
It is therefore in this context that, on June 6, after Mr. Lecornu’s denials, President Macron announced that France would offer to cede Mirage 2000-5s to Ukraine.
“We still have the same philosophy: we help the Ukrainians to resist, but we do not want escalation. We are not at war with Russia. Tomorrow, we will announce the transfer of Mirage 2000-5 which will allow Ukraine to protect its airspace. We will launch training. France is building a coalition with other partners. The important factor is training time. The objective is the end of the year, for planes and training,” declared the tenant of the Élysée, on the antennas of TF1 and France 2.
Incidentally, a training program has already been launched since Ukrainian student pilots are currently at the Cazaux air base, where they are learning their future profession on Alphajet. But, apparently, future Ukrainian Mirage 2000-5 pilots still need to be recruited and trained.
“What is the determining factor is the pilot training time. We are going to propose to President Zelensky that pilots be trained this summer. It normally takes five to six months. And so, by the end of the year, he can have pilots and planes,” added Mr. Macron.
Except that it takes more time to train a patrol leader… “A fighter pilot, in peacetime, only reaches his technical peak after four to five years of operational life, having experienced a range of missions broad enough to be technically agile, tactically literate, and productive for the unit. Of course, we can cut training of this type in order to ‘launch’ a pilot into the deep end earlier. We can train in 3 months instead of 6, ignore the supplies [ravitaillement en vol] or lighten certain aspects if the pilot is ‘combat proven’, but this has to be paid for in times of war”, thus underlined the account “French Fighter Squadrons”, via |formerly Twitter]while the rumor about the sale of Mirage 2000D was starting to appear in March 2023.
The first consequence of this announcement is that the 1/2 Cigognes fighter group, which is currently the only formation of the Air & Space Force to be equipped with Mirage 2000-5, should be disbanded here at the end of this year… while it is regularly called upon for the Baltic Air Policing mission, the aim of which is to ensure air policing missions for the benefit of the Baltic States, under the aegis of NATO. Unless, however, the planes in question are the Mirage 2000-5 that Greece wishes to withdraw from service soon.
Furthermore, Mr. Macron also mentioned France’s wish to form a brigade of the Ukrainian army. “The challenge facing Ukraine is that it has mobilized tens of thousands of men to go to the front. The challenge is obviously to train them, to equip them. What we are proposing is to train 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers. And therefore to equip them, to train them and then to provide them with the ammunition, the weapons, which will allow them to defend their soil. And that, this brigade, if I can say French, is key. This is a very significant factor. […] We are moving to a new stage,” he explained.
What was not possible for the Army during the debates on the Military Programming Law [LPM] 2024-30 has therefore become it for Ukraine…
