The Cheetah was developed amid the Border War of the 1980s as a major upgrade of the French-built Dassault Mirage III fleet operated by the SAAF.

The privately owned company Draken International intends to use the Cheetah as an adversarial aircraft for combat training services in the United States.

These factors contributed to the SAAF making the decision to authorise an extensive upgrade programme involving one of the existing types in service.

Withdrawing the Mirage F1 to perform an extensive upgrade would have necessitated opening a major gap in that nation's air defence and strike capability, which was deemed to be unacceptable by senior SAAF officials.

Consequently, the SAAF's Mirage III fleet was chosen as the recipient for this upgrade programme, which was initially referred to as Project Cushion.

Atlas was also able to acquire skilled technicians with relevant knowledge from Israel, following the cancellation of an advanced Israeli fighter project, known as the IAI Lavi.

[7] According to ACIG, a total of five IAI Nesher fighters may have been acquired from the Israeli Air Force for Cheetah trials and later absorbed into the existing fleet.

[citation needed] Reportedly, the Cheetah could carry three times as much ordinance (in terms of weight) as the Mirage III while possessing superior agility as well.

[3] However, according to aviation author Dick Lord, the Mirage F1 remained capable of superior performance in areas such as fuel efficiency, ease of handling, and range.

[14] While the type had been developed in response to the increasing pressure of the Border War, there is no evidence that any Cheetahs of any variant actually conducted offensive operations in the final years of the conflict.

[15] In addition to the upgrades described above, the Cheetah C incorporated more sophisticated avionics and navigation suite and an improved pulse-doppler multi-mode radar (ELTA).

[citation needed] Other improvements included the fitting of a single-piece wrap-around windshield in place of the previous three-piece version, a revised in-flight refuelling probe with less external piping, new undercarriage and suspension, the deletion of the wing fences, an Atar 9K50 engine and a new nose to incorporate the more sophisticated electronics and radar.

After the engine modification, the remaining aircraft received an avionics upgrade to bring them to the same standard as the Cheetah C. The original three piece front windshield was also replaced with a one-piece wraparound version.

[21] The performance increase offered by the Russian engine was impressive, but a combination of budget cuts and problems with the aircraft's centre of gravity contributed to the program's termination.

Its typical mission was as a standby interceptor, whereby a minimum of two aircraft armed with two V3B (later V3C) missiles, would be on permanent alert status in case of an attack from the north.

The Chilean Air Force (FACh) used the Cheetah E airframes as a source of spares for its similar ENAER Pantera aircraft until these planes were retired in late 2006.

The SAAF decided not to proceed with the Cheetah R programme and 855 was assigned to the Atlas Advanced Combat Wing (ACW) where it was used as a testing and development aircraft.