IAI Nesher

The Israel Aircraft Industries Nesher (Hebrew: נשר, "Vulture" - often mistranslated as "Eagle") is the Israeli version of the Dassault Mirage 5 multi-role fighter aircraft. Most were later sold to the Argentine Air Force as Daggers, and later upgraded as Fingers.

Design and development
Israel had to replace more than 60 aircraft lost during the Six Day War and the War of Attrition which followed. Before the war Israel began the cooperation with Dassault to build the Mirage 5 and it was eventually built by Israel and named Raam in Hebrew (thunder).

Dassault Aviation had developed the Mirage 5 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.

In January, 1969 the French government arms embargo on Israel (on the eve of the Six Day War and after the Israeli attack of the airport of Beirut, in 1969) 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.

This was bad news for the Israeli Air Force, who needed the new Mirage to compensate for the losses of the Six Day War and was still using the origin of this version derived from the Mirage III. Israel then decided to build this plane (Raam A and B project) as it had the necessary plans, although Israel did not officially obtain a manufacturing license.

Officially, Israel built the aircraft after obtaining complete blueprints. However, some sources claim Israel received 50 Mirage 5s in crates from French Air Force (AdA), while the AdA took over the 50 aircraft originally intended for Israel.

Production began in 1969 with the first empty cell (no weapons, no electronics, no seat, no engine) delivered directly from Dassault Aviation because spare parts were not subjected to the embargo. The first Raam A is delivered in May, 1971. In November, 1971 the plane was renamed Nesher.

The Nesher was identical to the Mirage 5, except for the use of some Israeli avionics, a Martin-Baker zero-zero ejection seat, and provisions for a wider range of AAMs (Air-to-Air Missiles), including the Israeli Shafrir heat-seeking missile. Fifty-one Nesher fighters (Nesher S) and ten Nesher two-seat trainers (Nesher T) were built in all.

The Nesher had simpler avionics than the Mirage IIIC, although it was found by Israeli pilots to be slightly less maneuverable. However, it had longer range and bigger payload. The reduced maneuverability did not prevent the Nesher from giving a good account of itself in air combat during the Yom Kippur war.

Nesher production was phased out from 1978 to make way for an improved Mirage derivative that had been planned in parallel, in which the Atar engine was replaced by an Israeli-built General Electric J79 engine, the engine used on the American Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighters. The result was the IAI Kfir.

Israel
The first Nesher prototype flew in September 1969, with production deliveries to the IAF beginning in May 1971, ending in February 1974. These aircraft performed well during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, claiming over a hundred kills.

Argentina
Survivors of Israeli aircraft were refurbished and exported to the Argentine Air Force in two 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 formed a new unit, 6th Air Group, and were immediately enlisted with the help of the 8th Air Group (Mirage IIIEA) and the Peruvian Air Force, already a user of the Mirage 5, due to the escalating crisis with Chile of that year.

During the 1982 Falklands 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, managed to make 153 sorties against both ground and naval targets on the 45 days of operations. In the last role, they damaged HMS Antrim (D18), HMS Brilliant (F90), HMS Broadsword (F88), HMS Ardent (F184), HMS Arrow (F173) and HMS Plymouth (F126). Eleven Daggers were lost in combat (nine by AIM-9L Sidewinders fired from Sea Harriers and two by surface to air missiles).



In the 1979 contract with IAI, the Argentine Air Force stipulated that the Daggers would 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 Falklands War broke out. With the war over, as some of these systems were made by the British Marconi Electronic Systems, they needed to be replaced after an arms embargo was imposed by the UK. The replacement of such systems took the planes to the final Finger IIIB standard mainly by replacing the British equipment with French-built 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.

Operators

 * Argentine Air Force: 39
 * Israeli Air Force: 61
 * 🇿🇦 South Africa
 * South African Air Force: 5
 * 🇿🇦 South Africa
 * South African Air Force: 5