IAI Nesher
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The IAI Nesher is an Israeli-built multi-role fighter aircraft based on the French Mirage V. Some were sold to the Argentine Air Force and renamed Dagger.
Dassault had developed the Mirage V 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.
The French government arms embargo on Israel (on the eve of the Six Day War and afterwards) prevented the first 50 Mirage 5 aircraft from being delivered and cut off support for the existing Mirage IIICJ fleet. The Israelis simply proceeded to produce a copy of the Mirage 5 themselves without a license, using manufacturing specs obtained by Israeli intelligence. There is an elaborate cloak-and-dagger story behind this exercise that doesn't quite eliminate the suspicion that the Israelis were discreetly helped by Dassault in this effort, with the French government turning a blind eye to the whole matter.
These suspicions seem to have a sound basis in fact. Marcel Dassault, before the war, was Marcel Bloch, producer of the Bloch series of fighters before the German occupation. As a Jew, he naturally suffered the persecution the Nazis were exposing all of Europe to, and Bloch was sent from camp to camp through the war. He narrowly escaped death in Auschwitz, by some accounts escaping death by a matter of hours as the American expeditionary forces entered the gates of the camp. He returned to France as soon as he was able, and re-established his aircraft company. Being of Jewish extraction, he therefore was happy to take a lead in France's contributions of armaments to the new state of Israel. The sudden refusal of the French government to provide the Mirage 5, especially after the notable success of the Israeli piloted Mirage III squadrons in the Six Day War, may have prompted Dassault to make his gift to Israel in the form of the Mirage V's complete blueprint set, minus that of the Atar engine. (These events have been described semi-fictitiously in the novel Mirage by Ken Follett)
The Nesher ("Eagle") was a complete copy of the Mirage 5, except for the use of some Israeli avionics, a Martin-Baker zero-zero ejector seat, and provisions for a wider range of AAMs, including the Israeli Shafrir heat-seeking missile.
The first Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) Nesher prototype flew in September 1969, with production deliveries to the Heyl Ha'Avir beginning in 1972. These aircraft performed well during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, claiming over a hundred kills.
51 Nesher fighters and 10 Nesher two-seat trainers were built in all. As mentioned earlier, most of these aircraft were refurbished and exported to Argentina in 1978-1982, under the name "Dagger". The Argentineans received 35 "Dagger A" single-seat fighters and 4 "Dagger B" two-seat trainers.
Nesher production was terminated to make way for an improved Mirage derivative that had been in planning in parallel, in which the Atar engine was to be replaced with an Israeli-built General Electric J79 engine, the same engine used on the American F-104 Starfighter and F-4 Phantom II fighters. The result would be the IAI Kfir.
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