Context is very important here.
The original aim in South Africa was to develop the New Generation Fighter Aircraft System, also known as Project Carver. Once this project was underway, it would have replaced a whole host of aircraft.
A few years into the programme, it was realised that the Carver would only have come into service in appreciable numbers around the year 2000.
This led to an interim multirole fighter project called Project Tunny, which resulted in the Cheetah C, with service entry in 1993.
The earlier Cheetah E programme, an upgrade of existing Mirage III airframes in the SA inventory, was also an interim project to enhance the capabilities of existing airframes, and was nowhere near as capable as the Cheetah C. These Cheetah E airframes were retired in 1992, after being introduced in 1986.
The Mirage F1 was not replaced by the Cheetah C. The Mirage F1 was the premier combat aircraft in the South African inventory.
The decision was thus taken, as the premier combat jet, to keep the F1 in service, and when enough Cheetah C’s were in service, the Mirage F-1 AZ and CZ would then in turn be taken into hand for modification to a common standard.
The intention was to keep the Cheetah C and the “Super” Mirage F1 in service together, with similar systems, until Carver then replaced both.
On another forum, an engineer who worked on the Cheetah C project stated that the F1 would have received a new nose with radar that was basically the same as the Cheetah C. His development brief on his side of the project was ensuring the digital “glass displays” in the Cheetah C (positioning etc) remain compatible with the intended Mirage F1 upgrade cockpit. Among other modifications to the F1, apart from the new radar and nose, was an air-to-air refuelling pipe, and a bulged redesigned base of the vertical fin similar to that found on the F16. Both Mirage F1 and Cheetah C airframes were fitted with and flew with a turbofan engine.
The end of the Cold War ended the Mirage F1 upgrade programme, just as it ended the Carver programme.
The SAAF were impressed with the Mirage F1 aerodynamic performance, and were willing to upgrade the internal systems/avionics to Cheetah C level. It was simply a matter of the timing of external events, leading to massive defence reductions, that stopped that from happening.
I would posit that the timing of the end of the Cold War probably came at exactly the time when the Mirage F1 was ready for a serious upgrade…but then, as in South Africa, defence budgets were slashed.
thank you very much for that detailed post.
in summary, the cheetah and mirage were supposed to be upgraded with the same stuff, but in the end, only the cheetah received it.
It would seem that this would make the cheetah the more advance of the two simply since it was kept more relevant throughout time
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