The purchase lifts France’s AVSIMAR fleet to 12 specialised aircraft.

France’s General Armaments Directorate (DGA) has ordered five additional Falcon 2000 Albatros aircraft from Dassault Aviation, expanding the Maritime Surveillance and Intervention Aircraft (AVSIMAR) programme to a total of 12. The order was placed on 26 September 2025 and announced on 3 October, following an initial batch of seven contracted in December 2020.

Developed by Dassault in partnership with Naval Group, Safran and Thales, the Albatros is a missionised variant of the Falcon 2000LXS business jet. It is equipped with a multi-function radar, a high-performance electro-optical turret, enlarged observation windows, tailored communication suites and a system for deploying search-and-rescue equipment, combining long-range endurance with purpose-built surveillance tools.

The underlying Falcon 2000LXS platform offers a range of about 4,000 nautical miles (7,408 km), strong low-speed handling and the ability to operate from demanding airfields, features that support maritime patrol profiles and rapid response tasks. Testing of the Albatros configuration is being conducted at Dassault’s flight-test centre in Istres, southern France, while conversion work is performed at the company’s Mérignac site in the west of the country.

The latest order underscores the continued evolution of France’s maritime surveillance capabilities under the AVSIMAR programme and extends Dassault’s decades-long practice of adapting Falcon airframes for governmental and special-mission roles. Over the past 60 years, various Falcon types have been customised for missions ranging from maritime patrol and medical evacuation to cargo transport, calibration, intelligence gathering and training, with multi-role Falcons now accounting for roughly a tenth of the global Falcon fleet in service.