Posted on 10/11/2017 10:32:32 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
The pilots in the U.S. Air Force fly a bunch of planes. The F-15 Eagle, the C-17 Globemaster, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, and the Mirage 2000D… Wait, that can’t be right. The Mirage 2000D is a French plane, and not in service with the Air Force.
Four 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions are released from an F-15E during a developmental test at Edwards Air Force Base in 2002. Photo courtesy of USAF.
Yet, that list is accurate. Right now, Maj. Raymond “Banzai” Rounds of the U.S. Air Force is based out of Ochey Air Base in France, flying with the Armee de l’Air. The French have three squadrons of Mirage 2000Ds.
In one sense, the Mirage 2000D is like the F-15E. Both are multi-role fighters that are based on air-superiority planes (the Mirage 2000C and the F-15).
A Mirage 2000D at Kandahar air base. (Wikimedia Commons)
According to Military-Today.com, the Mirage 2000D is capable of carrying a wide variety of air-to-surface weapons, including dumb bombs, laser-guided bombs, Exocet anti-ship missiles, APACHE and SCALP missiles, the AS-30L missile, and rocket pods. It can also carry Magic 2 air-to-air missiles.
This is just one possible loadout the Mirage 2000D can carry. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Air Force has a program that enables pilots like Rounds to do exchange tours with other countries’ militaries. But that’s not the only exchange.
There are also inter-service exchanges, where members of American military services fly with a unit in another American service. Perhaps the most famous of those pilots is Marine John Glenn, who scored three MiG kills while flying with the Air Force’s 51st Fighter Wing.
Rounds’s exchange tour will last for two years. After that, he will return the Air Force and bring over lessons he’s learned from the French.
You can see a video from the Joint Forces Channel that not only discusses Rounds’s exchange tour, but also what it takes to support the airmen who taken on these tours, below.
Damn, that is cool..!
And this is surrender switch which deploys white flag.....
Is there a white flag surrender pod attached?
Great minds...
Our C-130 copilot was a Canadian Leftenant on loan from the RCAF. He was one interesting dude but that was before they all became “Canadian Forces - Forces Canadiennes”.
Cool plane. Perhaps we will see an “incident” of unidentified Mirage fighters attacking something that needs killin’.... Wonder if the foreign legion has pilots...
I count five 2,000 lb. bombs coming off that F-15E. Five tons of hurtling steel and high explosive would put a crimp in anyone’s day.
They’re back to RCAF
That Mirage would have looked right at home on the ramp at Udorn, in 1970,
This is a pic of a test bird from the mid-1980s.
One time during a pre-flight at the plane, our wing commander came by to show the flag and just about choked on the salute.
There’s plenty of hostile countries that fly Mirages, the French will sell to anybody. It’s probably a good idea to know how they handle and how to defeat them.
Is there an aircraft under all of that?
Too funny! I bet he did. Was he a bird colonel or a one star?
Do our guys have to learn Arabic before they can understand the lessons on the French planes?
So stupid. The French military has surrendered less than the British overall, and took more casualties in WWI by far. We hear on an on about Flanders fields, and the 744,000 poppies etc for the Brits. The French lost 1.1 million battle dead and 1.3 million from all causes. The Brits lost 1.9% of their population while the French lost 4.29%.
Or Maybe you mean WWII where they lost 200,000 dead soldiers, again far exceeding British war dead per capita.
Meanwhile the Brits fled the battlefield at Dunkirk leaving the north flank exposed. The Brits at Singapore surrendered to a Jap force one third their size. Yet we never hear about tea sipping surrender monkeys.
“There’s plenty of hostile countries that fly Mirages, the French will sell to anybody.”
Yeah, because we would never sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, etc...
I love the old Cold War paint camouflage. That is a cool picture and serious hurt. The B-52’s and A-10’s painted in green are just as awesome looking.
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