French Ministry of Armed Forces chooses Dassault Aviation’s FALCON SIGINT aircraft

On 1 March Dassault Aviation was awarded a contract for the integration of Thales’ Universal Electronic Warfare Capability (Epicure programme) on three FALCONs.

The three FALCONs, which will be known as FALCON Epicure, will replace the two Transall GABRIEL electronic warfare (EW) aircraft currently serving the French Armed Forces and which will reach their end-of-life cycle by 2025. The FALCON was chosen over Airbus’ A320 due, primarily, to the fact that the miniaturisation of the sensors will allow the use of a much smaller aircraft; as such, this will also facilitate the take-off and landing on any types of landing strips, including short ones. The FALCON was also chosen for its greater autonomy.

The required level of performance of the Epicure FALCONs necessitates highly complex integration work, something that is at the core of Dassault Aviation know-how, of its role as industrial architect and of its partnership with Thales. “I am very proud and happy with the decision of the Ministry of the Armed Forces. TheFALCON Epicure will serve the French forces in the same way as the FALCONs 10, 200, 50, 2000, 900 and 7X are already doing it,” declared Eric Trappier, Chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation. “The military FALCONs provide the perfect illustration of the dual competences of Dassault Aviation: our civil aircraft benefit from the cutting-edge technologies developed for our combat aircraft, which in return benefit from the industrial processes deployed for the highly competitive production of theFALCON aircraft.“

The replacement of the TRANSALL GABRIEL is one of the priorities within the French 2019-2025 military programming law (Loi de Programmation Militaire).

For an exclusive MONS analysis, please see here.