IAI Nesher

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The Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) Nesher is an Israeli-built multi-role fighter aircraft based on the French Dassault Mirage V. Most were sold to the Argentine Air Force and renamed Dagger and now Finger.

Contents

1 Development
2 Service
3 Finger
4 Variants
5 Operators
6 Related content

Development

Dassault had developed the Mirage V at the request of the Israelis, who were the main foreign customers of the Mirage III. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) wanted the next version to have less all-weather capability in exchange for improved ordnance carrying capacity and range as the weather in the Middle East is mostly clear.

The French government arms embargo on Israel (on the eve of the Six Day War and afterwards) prevented the first 30 Mirage 5 aircraft (which were already paid for by Israel) plus optional 20 from being delivered and cut off support for the existing Mirage IIICJ fleet. The Israelis simply proceeded to produce a copy of the Mirage 5 themselves, using manufacturing specs obtained by Israeli intelligence. Dassault Aviation also helped the Israelis clandestinely.

The Nesher ("Eagle") was a complete copy of the Mirage 5, except for the use of some Israeli avionics, a Martin-Baker zero-zero ejector seat, and provisions for a wider range of air-to-air missiles, including the Israeli Shafrir heat-seeking missile.

51 Nesher fighters and 10 Nesher two-seat trainers were built in all.

Nesher production was terminated to make way for an improved Mirage derivative that had been in planning in parallel, in which the Atar engine was to be replaced with an Israeli-built General Electric J79 engine, the same engine used on the American F-104 Starfighter and F-4 Phantom II fighters. The result would be the IAI Kfir.

Service

The first Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) Nesher prototype flew in September 1969, with production deliveries to the IAF beginning in 1971. These aircraft performed well during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, claiming over a hundred kills.

As mentioned earlier, survivors of these aircraft were refurbished and exported to Argentina in 2 batches, 26 in 1978 and 13 in 1980, under the name "Dagger", comprising 35 "Dagger A" single-seat fighters and 4 "Dagger B" two-seat trainers.

They form a new unit, 6th Air Group, and they were immediately listed with the help of the 8th Air Group (Mirage IIIEA) and the Peruvian Air Force due the escalating crisis with Chile of that year.

During the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War, they were deployed to the southern naval airbase of Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, and an airfield in Puerto San Julián and despite the distance to their targets and lack of aerial refueling capability the managed to made 153 sorties against the British on the 45 days of operations. Eleven Daggers were shot down by Sea Harriers and/or Surface-to-air missiles.

Finger

In the 1979 contract with IAI, the Argentine Air Force estipulate that the Daggers will be equipped with new avionics and HUD systems to take them to the Kfir C.2 (and beyond in some subsystems) standard. The program, named Finger, was underway in 1982 when the War break out. With the War over, as some of these systems were made by the British Marconi Electronic Systems, they were needed to be replaced after the embargo settled by the UK. The replacement of such systems take the planes to the final Finger IIIB standard mainly replacing the British equipments with some built by the French Thomson-CSF.

Variants

Nesher S : Single-seat ground-attack fighter version for the Israeli Air Force.
Nesher T : Two-seat training version for the Israeli Air Force.
Dagger A : Refurbished single-seat fighter version for the Argentine Air Force.
Dagger B : Refurbished two-seat training version for the Argentine Air Force.
Finger I :
Finger II :
Finger III :

Operators