Atlas Cheetah C

Introduction

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The Atlas Cheetah programme grew out of South Africa's requirement for a modern fighter and strike aircraft in the 1980s. There was a need for more advanced aircraft to attain an edge over the ever more sophisticated Soviet aircraft such as the MiG-23 being supplied to Angolan and Cuban forces in action against South African forces in the Border War. Furthermore, the increasing cost of maintenance due to sanctions and the age of the aircraft used by SAAF had to be addressed. The arms embargo imposed at the time by United Nations Security Council Resolution 418 prevented South Africa from purchasing new aircraft from other countries, thus making an upgrade of existing aircraft the only option. By this stage, the South African aviation industry had reached the level of technical capability to make a large and sophisticated upgrade possible, leading the SAAF to make the only possible decision, to radically upgrade one of the existing types in service.

At the time the SAAF's fast jet fleet consisted of Dassault Mirage III (EZ/CZ/BZ/DZ/D2Z/RZ/R2Z) aircraft and Mirage F1 (AZ/CZ) aircraft. Though the Mirage F1s were the most modern of the fleet, having been delivered from 1977 onwards, they were the primary element of South Africa's air defence and strike fleet and to withdraw them for an upgrade would have left an unacceptable gap in its air defence and strike capability. In addition there were already a few successful Mirage III upgrades from which to learn, such as the Kfir and Mirage III NG, so the SAAF's Mirage III fleet was chosen as the basis for the upgrade.

(Source: Wikipedia)

This mod, based on Mirage Factory's Mirage IIIE and using (temporarily) the cockpit from the Kfir C7, represents the ultimate evolution of the Mirage III family, the Atlas Cheetah C.

Credits

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Thanks to Olivier ANGUILLE and the whole of Mirage Factory for his great airplanes, as well as for his kind permission to distribute his model packed with my mod, making installation easy.

My thanks also go to Anton Dyason from IPMS SA (http://newsite.ipmssa.za.org/) for his permission to use some of his pictures for the hangar screen.