Pakistan Air Force fighter jet crashes in Balochistan
A Dassault Mirage V supersonic attack jet crashed near the Sonmiani area in the province of Balochistan yesterday.
Originally, there were a total of 82 Dassault Mirage 5 available with the PAF. Including the one involved in the latest crash, three of the jets were lost in accidents. Most of these aircrafts were acquired during the last decade after upgrading the fighters with the Project ROSE (Retrofit Of Strike Element) system. Last year also, two of the Mirage V aircrafts were lost in crashes.
Squadron Leader Muhammad Nadeem informed the media that the reason for the crash is not immediately known. The aircraft had taken off from the largest of the PAF bases in Pakistan, the PAF Base Masroor, located in the Mauripur area of Karachi. The crash site is about 30 miles from the Base.
The Dassault Mirage V is one of the five types of attack aircraft the PAF is having. In addition to the 79 Mirage-5, PAF is also in the possession of close to 40 General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons, 41 Chinese designed CAC/PAC JF-17 Thunder (CAC FC-1 Xiaolong) multi role combat aircrafts, 70 Dassault Mirage III aircraft, and a total of 180 Chengdu F-7 Skybolt (the Chinese version of MiG-21).
3 Comments
Dassault mirage is a old fighter its navigation system is not digital so it is hard job to make it fly..job get more hard when it comes to landing it… But I am happy that there were no casualties. With love from India
Mirage 5 info
The first Mirage 5 flew on 19 May 1967.[2] It looked much like the Mirage III, except it had a long slender nose that extended the aircraft’s length by about half a metre. A pitot tube was distinctively moved from the tip of the nose to below the nose in the majority of Mirage 5 variants.
The Mirage 5 retained the IIIE’s twin DEFA guns, but added two additional pylons, for a total of seven. Maximum warload was 4,000 kg (8,800 lb). Provision for the SEPR rocket engine was deleted.
Rising tensions in the Middle East led French President Charles de Gaulle to embargo the Israeli Mirage 5s on 3 June 1967. The Mirages continued to roll off the production line, even though they were embargoed, and by 1968 the batch was complete and the Israelis had provided final payments.
In late 1969, the Israelis, who had pilots in France testing the aircraft, requested that the aircraft be transferred to Corsica, in theory to allow them to continue flight training during the winter. The French government became suspicious when the Israelis also tried to obtain long-range fuel tanks and cancelled the move.
The Mirage 5 was sold to Abu Dhabi, Belgium, Colombia, Egypt, Gabon, Libya, Pakistan, Peru, Venezuela, and Zaire, with the usual list of subvariant designations and variations in kit. The Belgian aircraft were fitted with mostly US avionics, and Egyptian aircraft fitted with the MS2 attack avionics system from the Dassault-Dornier Alpha Jet.
In 1978 and 1980, Israel sold a total of 35 of their Neshers plus 4 Nesher trainer aircraft (Nesher Ts) to Argentina where they were locally known first as Daggers and after their last upgrade as Fingers. The Argentines lost two IIIEA and 11 Daggers during the Falklands War in 1982, and, as a measure of solidarity, the Peruvians transferred 10 their Mirage 5s to Argentina, under the name Mirage Mara to help make good their losses.
Chile incorporated some Mirage 5s under name Mirage Elkan.
A total of 582 Mirage 5s were built, including 51 Israeli Neshers.
Mirage V was built on the specification of Israel. They wanted speed which compromised some of the avionics. Pakistan really should now replace these jets quickly.I am afraid PAF’s attrition rate is increasing.