NEW DELHI: In yet another military crash, a frontline twin-seater Mirage-2000 fighter jet of the IAF went down at Shivpuri near Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday afternoon. The two pilots managed to eject safely.
The Mirage-2000, which had taken off from the Gwalior airbase, developed “a system technical malfunction” and then crashed around 2.40 pm. “A court of inquiry has been ordered to ascertain the exact reason for the accident,” an IAF official said.
The IAF has around 50 Mirage-2000s, which were inducted in the mid-1980s, in its combat fleet.
The French-origin fighters have undergone a major upgrade in a Rs 17,547 crore project, which includes 490 MICA missile systems for Rs 6,600 crore.
The Mirage-2000s were deployed to fire the Israeli Spice-2000 precision guided penetration bombs during the pre-dawn bombing of a JeM terror facility at Balakot in Pakistan on Feb 26 in 2019.
The IAF’s ‘Top Gun’ school called Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment is also based in Gwalior.
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