The French Minister of the Army, Florence Parly, and the Directorate of Aeronautical Maintenance (DMAé) have initiated the in-depth transformation of the maintenance of operational condition (MCO) for aircraft, which has resulted in the notification of more than fifteen verticalization contracts in three years. New verticalization contracts were notified on 29 December. 

A new MCO strategy 

The availability of the aircraft fleets of the three armed forces was considered too low, to the detriment of crew training. The reform desired by the Minister of the Armed Forces led to the creation of the DMAé and the resulting reform of aeronautical MCO, with the objective of giving the armed forces the necessary capacity for their training and for the accomplishment of their missions, whether on French territory or in external operations. In 2017, for the MCO of an aircraft, the Ministry of the Armed Forces could enter into up to 30 different maintenance contracts. Now, for each fleet, there is a prime contractor for maintenance with a one-stop shop for logistics. At a press briefing at the beginning of the year, the Ministry of the Armed Forces pointed out that “the manufacturer has all the levers in hand”, and “has the visibility, the duration, it has the whole chain under its responsibility. It can therefore plan, it can recruit, it can invest, it can innovate, it can anticipate technical obsolescence”. In addition, the manufacturer’s remuneration is incentive-based, based mainly on the number of flight hours. This total overhaul of the relationship between the Ministry of the Armed Forces and private and public industry has led to particularly tangible initial results for the 2019 contracts, particularly in terms of the number of flight hours, which has continued to increase since 2018 for the training fleets (where the DMAé has outsourced all support), the Tiger helicopter fleet and the Rafale. 

Of the 16 verticalization contracts signed since 2019, six were signed the previous year: Falcon 50M and 200G (Calipso), Rafale M88 engine (Bolero), Air Force Fennec (Sahara), Guépard, SCCOA aerospace operations (Vassco) and Mirage 2000 (Balzac). The duration of the contracts has also been extended: up to 14 years for the Mirage 2000 fleet. 

Verticalization with Dassault Aviation for the Mirage 2000 

The year 2022 has begun with the new contract for the support of the French Air Force’s Mirage 2000 aircraft, awarded to Dassault Aviation by the DMAé. This contract, named BALZAC, will cover the entire fleet of Mirage 2000 aircraft of the French Air Force and the French Space Agency until they are retired from service. The fourteen-year contract covers almost all the equipment of the aircraft in their B/C, -5 and D versions (including those undergoing mid-life renovation). Until now, the maintenance of these aircraft has been carried out by means of some fifteen separate contracts. The director of the DMAé said that the contract will put an end to “a very fragmented industrial chain that prevented the major obsolescence problems of the Mirage 2000 from being dealt with proactively”. For Dassault Aviation, “BALZAC follows on from the Rafale MCO contract (RAVEL), which was awarded to us in May 2019 for a period of 10 years, and the Atlantique 2 MCO contract, which was awarded to us in September 2020, also for 10 years. Our skills as an industrial architect and integrator of complex systems enable us to take on contracts of this type. We are very honoured by the renewed confidence shown in us by the French Ministry of Defence,” announced Eric Trappier, CEO of Dassault Aviation, in a press release. The verticalization contract covers all electronic systems, including those produced by Thales.  

Finally, there are other levers of improvement in perspective to obtain full efficiency of the contracts, such as digital transformation with the development of a future information system for the Brasidas aeronautical MCO, the development of which is being led by the DGA. In addition, simplification measures for the application of airworthiness regulations are being studied by the DMAé with the armed forces.