Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense Air Force Command concluded contract with French defense company Dassault Aviation for technical maintenance of existing Taiwanese Mirage 2000-5 fighter fleet. Contract is designed for five years, takes effect September 13 this year and runs through September 13, 2031.
As AeroTime reports, agreement value reaches approximately $29.3 million USD (926.47 million Taiwan dollars). As of now Taiwan's Air Force numbers 53 Mirage 2000-5 fighters, which amounts to slightly over $110,000 per fighter annually.
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Against this background, interesting to recall earlier reported quite expensive Mirage fighter maintenance for Ukraine, for incomplete 2025 and considering one aircraft loss in July (meaning initially three then two aircraft maintenance) sum as high as €10 million was named.
However, comparing Ukraine and Taiwan examples is still not very appropriate. Reason being Ukrainian Mirage 2000-5 fighters are actively used in combat conditions, accordingly having different maintenance requirements considering intensive battlefield exploitation.
Additionally, important nuance regarding Taiwanese Mirage fighter maintenance is it proceeds within framework of several separate contracts covering various individual systems.
For example, agreement discussed in this news concerns airframe maintenance and does not cover full Mirage fighter lifecycle. Similar five-year contracts concern separately engine, avionics, weapons, personnel training and logistics and so on.
At the same time, as publication emphasizes, Mirage 2000-5 operation for Taiwan's Air Force is more expensive than same F-16 or AIDC F-CK-1. Overall country has long-running debates about how worthwhile it is to keep these aircraft in service, especially considering they will hardly be competitive against PRC fighter fleet.
Social media even features calls to transfer available Mirage 2000-5s to Ukraine and purchase Rafales from France instead. However, new aircraft purchase is long and expensive process, especially considering substantial Rafale queue, let alone India's 114-aircraft contract where final bureaucratic steps were recently taken.
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