Accordingly, during July 1960, Israel had commenced work on a co-development effort with French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation to develop and produce a variant of their highly successful Mirage III fighter aircraft. This product of this programme became known as the Mirage 5 and it was eventually built by Israel and named Raam in Hebrew (thunder). Dassault had pursued the development of the Mirage 5 at the request of the Israelis, who were the main foreign customers of the Mirage III and generally favoured France as a military supplier during this era. Specific requirements established by the IAF for the next version of the type was to de-emphasis the aircraft's all-weather capability and deleting its main radar system in exchange for improved ordnance-carrying capacity and range; this was made possible by the mostly-clear climate and typical weather conditions present in the Middle East.