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.
Amen.
In his defense we had the green bag name tags that showed Lt Smyth's RCAF wings. The Col was ready to ream Lt Smyth (and those of us enjoying it) out then saw the Canadian wings. Most of us were smart enough to run into the cargo bay to laugh.
The look on the colonel's face was priceless, cherry red with white bug eyes. Then Lt Smyth smartly saluted again as the Colonel departed!!
No joke, Saudi and Pakistan are the ones that really kill me.
No joke. A lot of people think that the pic is photoshopped to show more bombs than it actually carried (at least on that test flight, don’t ask me how feasible it was or what it did for its combat range!). It’s not fake, I was in high school in the mid-80s and this was a poster on my wall for years until I joined the Navy at age 18.
Kind of:
I’m not some great lover of the French but there’s a few things that I like.
First off, I like that they’re not members of NATO. NATO is a joke, it is a huge fail. The world laughs at NATO, it’s an organization that can’t get out of its own way. The only purpose it serves is to be a cushy assignment for generals and their perfumed staffs.
Second, I like that France doesn’t let anybody tell them what to do with their nuclear programs (energy and weapons). They tested a new hydrogen bomb in an underwater test in the mid-1990s and told anybody who didn’t like it to go suck it. I like that. Whenever the enviralists don’t like something the USA is doing and starts whining, we always kowtow to them and shut it down. We buckle like a belt and it pisses me off to no end.
Third: and speaking of nukes, it’s the worst-kept secret in the world that we provided France with all kinds of nuclear information in the 1970s, including the design of the neutron bomb, which they’ve tested and have in their inventory. It’s pretty sad when we can’t trust our future govt. officials to be proper stewards of our nuclear inventory, so we have to turn it loose on France who is more trusted to do what’s right and show strength in the face of liberal whiners.
I love it! Thanks for the story!
The current user base of the Mirage 2000 is listed as Egypt, India, Peru, United Arab Emirates, Greece, Taiwan,
Qatar and Brazil. All of these countries have military ties with the U.S. and do buy U.S. weaponry. So I’m not sure which of these can be termed as hostile.
I'm still pissed at them for surrendering to Germany twice and forbidding our F-111s crossing their territory on the way to Libya, as well as taking in Muslims by the tens of thousands. BTW, I had not heard about any of their recent military exploits, but then I don't read LeMonde.
I thought that Iran and Syria were flying it, too. Or is that just Mirages in general, not the 2000?
I’m not sure if Syria has used any type of Mirage yet. Iran operates a few Mirage F1s, an older swept-wing design. There is no point in exercising with a newer delta-wing design to plan against F1s.
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