Dassault Mirage IIING (Nouvelle Generation)

History of Dassault Mirage IIIING

The single-seat single-engine Mirage IIIING with delta wings is a further development of the "Mirage III" series of the French company Dassault Aviation. It employs the assisted fly-by-wire (FBW) control scheme eventually used on the state-of-the-art Mirage 2000 fighter jet, and receives (among other improvements) new canard front wings located above the air intakes on the sides of the fuselage.

All of this is built into the "Phantom 50" in the development of the existing airframe.

The Mirage 50 itself is an offshoot of the Mirage V/5 attack platform family of the 1970s, continuing the fine features of the previous Mirage III. The aircraft was fitted with new avionics (with Cyrano IV radar) as well as SNECMA Atak 09K-50 afterburning turbojets to increase the maximum take-off weight (MTOW), thereby increasing wartime payload capacity and rate of climb.

In addition to the simple single-seat form, Dassault also proposed a two-seat model to decentralize the pilot's workload and improve situational awareness.

Orders and production of the Mirage 50 (582 units) were much lower than the Mirage III (1,422 units) that made it. Nonetheless, Dassault continued to develop the product line and through additional work contributed to the production of an evolution of the Mirage IIIE model, available as the advanced "Mirage III NG" (NG = "Nouvelle Generation"/"Next Generation").

IIIE/IIIING overhauled its systems and subsystems (mainly inherited from Mirage 2000), carried forward cradle-mounted aircraft and continued to use Mirage series features - single rudder fin, tricycle landing gear, delta Wing Plane. A significant difference in the principal plane is the greater sweep of the leading edge near the root of the wing.

Additionally, the Phantom IIIING gained similar aerial refueling capabilities as the Phantom 2000. Power comes from a SNECMA Atar 9K-50 afterburner turbojet rated at 15,873 pounds of thrust.

In addition, four weapon mount points (along the fuselage centerline, while maintaining an underwing position) were introduced to expand the aircraft's weapons carrying capacity and tactical value (due to increased MTOW).

The first flight (in prototype form) was recorded on 27 May 1981. However, the market showed little interest in this "Advanced Phantom III", so further development of the type was abandoned, as only a flight-ready prototype was completed for testing.

However, work done on this aircraft influenced the Mirage III version, which was sold to Brazil and Venezuela.

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