Dassault Aviation notifies a contract to Thales to equip future maritime surveillance aircraft for the French Navy – Military Zone

In November 2020, as part of the AVSIMAR program [Avion de surveillance et d’intervention maritime], the Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, announced the decision to acquire twelve Falcon 2000 LXS planes [appelés « Albatros »] from Dassault Aviation. And this in order to replace the five “Gardian” Falcons and the eight Falcon 50Ms currently used by the French Navy.

With a range of 10 to 30% greater than the latter, the Falcon Albatros will be equipped with “sensors necessary for maritime surveillance and intervention missions”, with “information superiority capabilities” [SATCOM et Liaisons de données tactique L22], a “Search and rescue beacon detector” [SAR] and a “means of dropping a survival boat and smoke markers”, underlined, at the time, the General Directorate of Armaments [DGA].

Regarding sensors, Thales let know, on September 20, that Dassault Aviation had just selected the radar SearchMaster to equip the Falcon Albatrosses, but also the inertial navigation system TopAXYZ, the satellite geolocation receiver [GPS/Galileo] TopStar 100-2 and the anti-jamming system TopShield CRPA [antennes à diagramme de rayonnement contrôlé].

As a reminder, the SearchMaster is an active antenna radar [AESA] operating in X-band. According to Thales, it offers a “high level of performance making it possible to carry out a wide range of missions” such as anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare, maritime surveillance, search and rescue and cartography. And its capabilities “come with tremendous growth potential thanks to software developments”.

This system “uses a variety of advanced radar modes to provide simultaneous short and long range detection capabilities. At small targets in rough seas, it is also able to detect land vehicles and track their movements. Very high resolution imagery and advanced target detection modes will increase operational performance to improve tactical situational awareness, even in extreme environmental conditions, ”Thales underlines.

As for the TopAXYZ inertial unit, it is based on Ring Laser Gyro technology. [RLG – gyromètre laser]. Its architecture is based on two information channels [au lieu d’un seul habituellement], with a “navigation” lane [dédiée au calcul des altitudes, cap, vitesse et position] and a so-called “stabilization” channel, optimized to “provide low delay, low noise accelerations and rotations without any undesirable frequency in the bandwidth sought by the electric flight controls or the servo-controls of on-board optical sighting instruments”, explains Thales.

“This contract validates our strategy of developing high-performance solutions for military platforms and of constantly anticipating the needs of our customers. Our high-performance navigation systems and surveillance radars such as SearchMaster are based on the very latest technologies and are already in service in the armed forces ”, argued Philippe Duhamel, Thales Deputy Director General for Mission Systems. defense.

This equipment will thus complement that supplied by Safran, such as the Euroflir 400 optronic ball.

For the moment, seven Albatrosses – out of the twelve planned – have been ordered from Dassault Aviation, for an estimated amount of 1.3 billion euros. [soutien compris]. The first three devices will be delivered by 2025.

“The first Falcon 2000LXS serving as a basis for the program will be manufactured in France, the following will be produced in India as part of the offsets linked to the Rafale contract of 2016. The transformations of the 12 Falcon 2000LXS into Albatrosses will all be carried out in France”, had by elsewhere indicated Dassault Aviation.

These 12 Albatross maritime surveillance aircraft constitute the first phase of the AVSIMAR program. The second, which will be launched later, provides for the acquisition of additional resources, such as drones.