Paris has signed a follow-on order to provide the French navy with a maritime surveillance derivative of Dassault Aviation’s Falcon 2000LXS business jet.
Awarded on 26 September, the five-aircraft contract was placed by France’s DGA defence procurement agency. It builds on a first-batch order covering seven of the aircraft, which was signed in December 2020.
Named Albatros, the adapted twinjet will deliver the service’s maritime surveillance and intervention aircraft, or Avsimar capability.
To replace a departing mixed fleet of eight Falcon 50Ms and five Gardian-variant Falcon 200s – respectively operated from Morbihan, northwest France, and locations in the Pacific – the Albatros “will have a range 10-30% greater”, the DGA says.
“Their withdrawal from service began in 2025,” it adds of the current operational types, with the new system scheduled to reach initial operational capability “at the end of 2026”.
The first flight of a modified Albatros took place on 24 January 2025, with test and certification activities now being performed from the DGA’s Istres flight-test centre.
Key equipment includes a Thales Searchmaster active electronically scanned array maritime surveillance radar, Safran Euroflir 410 electro-optical/infrared sensor and Naval Group-supplied onboard mission system.
The type also is equipped with enlarged observation windows and a search and rescue kit-release capability.
Dassault is conducting conversion work on the 2000LXS airframes at its Merignac production facility.
The DGA notes that beyond fielding the adapted Falcons, “the second phase of the [Avsimar] programme provides for the acquisition of additional resources, in particular drones, in order to achieve 100% of the surveillance objectives”.
