Aircraft Mirage 2000 The Mission Fighting
French pilots began their stay by familiarisation missions, in order to memorise alternate airfields (with their
VFR and IFR procedures) and some key landscape elements such as specific Hellenic islands and coastline.
The air to air missions featured:
■ Basic Fighter Manoeuvring in one versus one set ups,
■ Two versus two Full up and Heaters set ups,
■ Four versus two Heaters versus Full up set ups. (Heaters means using IR combat missiles only, Full-up means using war time configuration without any limitation.)
French Mirage 2000s carried one 1300 l fuselage tank and training Magic II missiles. 16 sorties were achieved on a daily basis by both Air Forces, with an average flight time of 1 hour per sortie. All operational procedures were in English.
The Mirage 2000 availability was excellent, all along the exercise with a 98% rate. No mission was cancelled due to a mechanical failure. The Mirage 2000 demonstrated its benefits in the Greek combat zones, allowing pilots to fly low altitude manoeuvres where the aircraft is particularly efficient. The increased power of the M53-P2 made combat manoeuvres easier for Hellenic pilots.
The Hellenic 331 pilots are accomplished air to surface specialists. They were excellent in BFM missions and flew their Mirage 2000s efficiently. They specially demonstrated strong capacities for learning and enhancing air to air BVR techniques. They are now impatient to receive their brand new Mirage 2000-5 Mk2s.
For the French 1/5 pilots it was really a very instructive exchange with a very good atmosphere, and
interesting missions. The global feeling with Hellenic pilots was excellent. “The operation shows the depth of our friendship and our desire to exchange again our operational experience in the near future”.
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