Mirage F1
ICAO MRF1A 1960s Dassault fighter with a second career as an American adversary aircraft. Live Mirage F1 positions.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No Mirage F1 is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Dassault
- Role
- Fighter and adversary training
- Class
- L1J — Landplane, 1 jet engine
- Crew
- 1, or 2 in the B
- First flight
- 23 December 1966
- In service
- 1973
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the Mirage F1
The Mirage F1 broke Dassault's delta habit — it has a conventional swept wing and a tailplane — and it sold widely across Europe, Africa and the Middle East through the 1970s and 1980s.
Its unlikely second life is in the United States. Draken International bought a large batch of retired Spanish and French airframes and flies them as contract adversary aircraft, providing opposition for American fighter training. Those aircraft are US-registered and appear on ADS-B far more readily than any air force F1 would.
Morocco, Gabon and Libya are among the few remaining military operators.
Callsign prefixes
- DRAKN
- Draken International contract adversary flights
- CTM
- Cotam — historic French Air Force use
How to recognise it
- —A high-mounted swept wing with a conventional tailplane — unusual for a Dassault fighter of the era.
- —A single engine, a pointed nose radome and wingtip missile rails.
- —Draken aircraft wear grey or splinter adversary schemes with civil registrations.
Common questions
+ Why does a private company fly fighter jets?
Contract adversary training. Air forces need opposition aircraft for their own training, and buying that as a service from companies flying retired fighters is cheaper than using front-line squadrons for it.
+ Is the Mirage F1 still a military aircraft?
In a few countries, yes. Most surviving airframes are now in contractor hands in the United States, doing adversary work rather than serving an air force.
+ Why does the F1 not have a delta wing?
Dassault wanted better low-speed handling and shorter takeoff performance than its deltas offered. The F1 uses a conventional swept wing with a tailplane, which does both at some cost in high-speed performance.