Is Argentina Really Giving Ukraine Ex-French Super Étendards?
Be skeptical.
Argentina will donate to Ukraine five Dassault Super Étendard naval fighter-bombers that Argentina acquired from France in 2018, according to Infobae, a popular Latin American news site.
Don’t hold your breath. No other sources have confirmed the purported donation. And even if Ukraine did get those five Super Étendards, the jets currently are grounded. They would require repairs if not upgrades—likely in France—before they could join the war in Ukraine.
That said, Paris has signaled major support for Kyiv’s war effort, including a donation of ex-French Mirage 2000-5 fighters. And while the Super Étendards are old, they’re not useless—especially if Ukraine can acquire Exocet anti-ship missiles to arm them.
Super Étendards originally entered service with the French navy in the late 1970s. The French upgraded the carrier-capable jets in the 1990s and retired them in 2016.
The Argentine navy previously operated 14 Super Étendards, acquiring five of them in time for service during the 1982 Falklands War. Argentine Super Étendards firing 43-mile-range Exocet anti-ship missiles sank two British vessels: a destroyer and a cargo ship.
By late 2017 none of the original Argentine Super Étendards were flightworthy. Buenos Aires’ acquisition of the old French jets seemingly represented a minor turn-around in the fortunes of a military that long had struggled to keep planes in the air.
But the Super Étendards arrived in Argentina in 2019 without cartridges for their British-made Martin Baker ejection seats—and the United Kingdom embargoed shipments of fresh cartridges.
So those Super Étendards have been sitting at Espora air base in Argentina, unsafe to fly, for five years. Buenos Aires since has moved to rebuild its air force with two dozen ex-Danish Lockheed Martin F-16s.
If Infobae’s report is accurate, expect the Super Étendards to travel to France the same way they traveled to Argentina—by sea. With overhauls, ejection-seat cartridges and Exocets—and trained pilots, of course—the subsonic jets might make effective maritime strike platforms. Potentially major threats to what remains of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
It would take a while for the Super Étendards to arrive in Ukraine: months if not a year. Infobae speculated that this month’s parliamentary elections in France—which many observers predict will result in big gains for far-right parties—could derail any Super Étendard deal by depriving French president Emmanuel Macron of the votes he’d need to pay for major arms deals for Ukraine.
But right-wing parties would need to achieve historic wins in order to gain unified control over parliament. A coalition government seems more likely—and could blunt any anti-Ukraine sentiment among the new class of French lawmakers.
The election seems less likely than the logistical challenges to delay or even derail a Super Étendard deal. Assuming that deal isn’t simply fiction.
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