The Baroudeur (French Foreign Legion slang for brawling soldier) was the brainchild of Wsiewołod "John" Jakimiuk, a Polish engineer who had worked on similar concepts at PZL and Avro Canada.

The rationale behind the design was to operate tactical jet interceptors from unprepared sites in case the air force bases were destroyed in a preemptive strike (drawing from the German experience in the last stages of World War II).

Apart from the landing gear the aircraft was a conventional shoulder-wing monoplane with a 38 degree swept wing and tail surfaces and powered by a SNECMA Atar 101C turbojet with wing-root intakes.

It proved capable to fly with its take off trolley in place (so it could easily switch to another unprepared airstrip), to take off with the skids only on some suitable terrain (sometimes with RATO rockets for extra thrust), to land on beaches (it was test flown off the La Baule beach; on one occasion barely escaped the incoming tide), frozen lakes, motorways, even marshes.

Testing also included high speed runs with a mocked-up crude rocket propelled airplane (with straight wings and some working controls) on the real rocket-powered trolley, complete with final separation at over 160 km/h (100 mph).