Key Points and Summary – The Ukrainian Air Force suffered a significant blow on July 22, losing its first French-donated Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet.
-The crash was attributed to equipment failure during a training mission, not combat, and the pilot ejected safely.
-This loss is critical because the Mirage is one of the few aircraft in Ukraine’s inventory capable of launching long-range Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles.
-Unlike the F-16s used for air defense, the Mirage provides a vital deep-strike capability, and the loss of even a single airframe diminishes this rare and powerful asset.
Ukraine’s Air Force Loses its First Dassault Mirage 2000
WARSAW, POLAND – On Tuesday, 22 July, the Ukraine Air Force (PSU) lost a French-made Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft that had been donated in February 2025.
This is the first crash of this aircraft type by the PSU, which has previously lost four of its donated F-16 models, with three of the pilots of those aircraft killed.
According to the PSU, “In the evening of July 22, 2025, during the performance of a flight mission on a Mirage 2000 fighter, an aviation equipment failure occurred, which the pilot reported to the flight director. He acted competently, as required in crisis situations, and successfully ejected. The search and rescue team located the pilot, and his condition is stable. There were no casualties on the ground.”
The single-engine aircraft was reportedly lost during a training mission and not due to combat conditions.
Ukrainian news reports stated that the incident occurred in the northwestern Volyn region.
More Mirage 2000 Details
The Mirage 2000-5 is one of the later versions of the fighter developed by Dassault Aviation.
The original baseline version of the aeroplane had its first flight in 1978 and has been in French service for decades.
The PSU had announced the arrival of the first batch of six Mirage aircraft this year with additional airframes promised to be delivered at a later date.
The Mirages arrived a few months after the US-made F-16 fighter jets began arriving from different European NATO countries.
These are mostly nations that are retiring their jets from service as they take delivery of the 5th-generation F-35.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in his evening address on Tuesday that Russia did not shoot down the Mirage 2000-5.
“Unfortunately, we lost our combat aircraft today, a French machine, a very effective one. One of our Mirage jets,” Zelenskyy said. “The pilot managed to save himself, and this was not a Russian shoot-down.”
Design and Capability
Ukraine’s Western allies have explored several options to assist Kyiv in upgrading the PSU, which was almost exclusively equipped with Soviet-era combat aircraft when the war began in February 2022.
These were Russian-design Mikoyan MiG-29, Sukhoi Su-24, Su-25 and Su-27 models and numerous types of the Czech-made Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatross jet trainer.
Together they formed almost the entirety of the fleet until the PSU received western-made models in 2024 and 2025.
The Mirage 2000 was one of the more capable designs produced by Dassault aviation, which has been France’s primary combat aircraft supplier since the end of the Second World War. The air defense variant of the aircraft entered French service in 1984.
Dassault has produced approximately 600 different variants of this aircraft, nearly half of which have been exported to foreign customers in Brazil, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Greece, India, Qatar, and the Republic of China (ROC), also known as Taiwan.
The UAE Air Force’s modernized version of the Mirage, which was designated Mirage 2000-9, is the most advanced variant ever built and utilizes a Thales-developed electronic warfare (EW) suite. That EW equipment is based on the self-protection suite that is also used in the Dassault Rafale.
“The Mirage and other European-made fighter aircraft have been popular with countries that would like to have a western-design platform but are wary of going ‘all-in’ with the US,” explained a former Polish military intelligence officer working here in Warsaw as a defense consultant.
“There are many countries that would like to be able to have a fighter in the class of an F-16 or F/A-18, but some are reluctant to be in the position where the US can dictate which capabilities they are allowed to buy or what weapons they can have,” he said. “This is why the UAE picked the Mirage – and then later the Rafale – the same with India and Greece.”
Longer Reach
The PSU has been utilizing its Western aircraft, particularly the F-16s, primarily for air defense missions.
The US aircraft has been employed to take down Russian air-launched cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, which is how most of them to date were lost.
The attractiveness of the Mirage 2000-5 was that the aircraft, first of all, could be used for air-to-ground attack missions. Another was that French and Ukrainian defense industry had integrated several upgrade modifications to the Mirages, including an electronic warfare system.
These modifications would allow the jets to approach and strike ground targets with greater accuracy.
They also permitted the aircraft to launch on targets from greater distances.
Foremost among that strike capability, the Mirage 2000-5 is one of the only PSU platforms that can launch the MBDA long-range Storm Shadow/SCALP air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM).
These are just some of the missiles that the UK and France have provided to Ukraine, which the Mirage can fire.
Only the Russian-made Su-24 has been able to launch the Storm Shadow/SCALP missile after modifications to the weapons pylons and on-board systems. The F-16 is not configured to launch this munition, and the US has not supplied any ALCM with comparable range.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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