Later combat deployments brought the Mirage 2000C aircraft back to the Persian Gulf to strengthen the no-fly zone established by Operation Southern Watch. The Mirage 2000C undertook escort missions for attack and reconnaissance packages over Kuwait and southern Iraq during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990–1991, before making its combat debut during combat air patrols over Saudi Arabia. The majority of that flying in the last year was used to train new pilots for more sophisticated and efficient Mirage 2000-5F air defense fighters and the accompanying Mirage 2000D conventionally armed strike aircraft. There were many voices across the board that considered the aircraft to be obsolete quite some time ago. On June 9, one such sortie-defending France’s southeasterly airspace- marked its last mission. The ‘Ile de France’ jets performed missions as part of France’s air defense network in addition to training exercises and maintained a round-the-clock quick reaction alert (QRA) role until the very end. This aircraft participated in an “elephant walk” on the runway at the squadron’s Orange-Caritat base in the south of France earlier this month, along with another jet decorated to honor the squadron’s 80th-anniversary last year. The black and silver color scheme on Mirage 2000C to commemorate its retirement (via Twitter) One of EC 2/5’s Mirage-2000C was painted in a unique retirement scheme of black and silver, with “Mission Accomplished” labels on the trailing edges of the traditional delta wing. The ‘Ile de France’ was the first fighter squadron created by General de Gaulle on British soil in 1940 and only the last frontline unit to operate the fleet of Mirage-2000C, which was primarily an air defense fighter. However, it is expected to re-equip with the newer ‘4+ generation’ Rafale fighters in 2024. The last unit to use the aircraft, the Escadron de Chasse 2/5 or EC 2/5, known as “Ile de France,” was also disbanded with the retirement of its Mirage-2000C fighter jets. The aircraft was the “legacy” variant of the Mirage 2000, which had been in service for almost 40 years and had logged more than 235,000 flight hours. On June 23, 2022, a ceremony at Air Base 115 in Orange saw the French Air and Space Force bid farewell to the final Mirage 2000C.
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