Thales To Provide Avionics Support To French Air Force

Thales has been awarded the SILOUET 3[1] support contract by SIMMAD, the integrated structure at the French defence ministry in charge of through-life support for aeronautical equipment. 

Under this five-year contract, which will have a maximum value of €112m, Thales will provide technical and logistic support, as well as through-life support for its avionics systems flying on 750 French armed forces fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft.

This involves managing more than 800 listed items of equipment on 25 aircraft types including Alphajet, ATL2, Gazelle, Mirage 2000, Puma and Tiger. 

Under the new contract, Thales will be in charge of the entire supply chain and, to provide the closest possible support for users, will set up a dedicated telephone hot line to deal with requests immediately. 

With the aircraft covered by the contract expected to log a total of 700,000 flight hours over the life of the contract, SILOUET 3 will help to improve long-term fleet availability. Through this latest agreement, SIMMAD and Thales are continuing to simplify through-life support operations while optimising support performance for the French armed forces.