MIRAGE F.1 CR - FRENCH ARMÉE DE L’AIR - 2008

Description

The Dassault Mirage F1 is a French fighter and attack aircraft designed and built by Dassault Aviation as a successor of the Mirage III family. The Mirage F1 entered service in the French Air Force (Armée de l’Air) in 1974. Powered by a single SNECMA Atar turbojet providing about 7 tonnes-force (69 kN; 15,000 lbf) of thrust, the F1 has been used as a light multipurpose fighter and has been exported to about a dozen nations. More than 720 F1s have been produced. When it became clear that the Mirage F1 was becoming a successful production aircraft, Dassault began investigating the possibility of a dedicated reconnaissance version for its most important client, the French Air Force. However, the escalating cost of fighter aircraft meant that add-on pods for this purpose were a more economical alternative. The Mirage F1CR carries reconnaissance equipment, internally and externally: a SAT SCM2400 Super Cyclone infrared linescan unit is installed in the space previously occupied by the port cannon. a space under the nose can be used for a Thomson-TRT 40 panoramic camera or a Thomson-TRT 33 vertical camera. The Cyrano IVM-R radar has extra ground- and contour-mapping modules. A variety of sensors can be carried in external pods carried under the fuselage centreline. These include the Raphaël TH Side-Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR), the ASTAC ELINT pod and the RP35P optical reconnaissance pod. A total of 64 Mirage F1CR’s were ordered by the French Air Force. The first air force unit equipped with the CR was Escadron de Reconnaissance 2/33 which became operational in September 1983. (Scale : 1/72e)