Air Base 105 at Évreux, in Normandy, has a new signals-intelligence jet on its ramp. The first Archange, a Dassault Falcon 8X business jet rebuilt around a Thales electronic-warfare system, landed there on Oct. 7, 2026, to begin the trials that should lead it into French Air and Space Force service.
The aircraft is the long-awaited successor to the Transall C-160G Gabriel, France’s previous airborne eavesdropper, which left service in 2022. Until Archange is cleared for operations, France is covering that gap with a leased interim aircraft, according to The Aviationist.
The arrival was announced by the French Air and Space Force on Oct. 23 and reported by The Aviationist on Oct. 25. “The aircraft landed in Évreux, Normandy, on Oct. 7, 2026,” the outlet reported, describing a program with “a total fleet of three aircraft to be delivered by 2030.” The service’s own post on X could not be opened for this article, so the arrival date and the 2030 target rest on The Aviationist’s account.
Trials with the Dunkerque squadron
Évreux is home to Escadron électronique aéroporté 5/64 “Dunkerque,” the airborne electronic warfare squadron slated to fly Archange, according to The Aviationist. The air force’s Military Air Expertise Center, the CEAM, “is participating in technical-operational experimentation” to prepare the aircraft for service, the outlet reported. Neither the outlet nor the service gave a date for the end of those trials or for operational clearance.
The jet that arrived first flew on July 25, 2025, and carries the registration F-ZJFM, The Aviationist reported. Its report does not explicitly say this airframe is the first of the three in the planned fleet, only that it is the first Archange to land at Évreux.
Three Falcon 8X jets and a Thales payload
The program’s outline comes from its makers and the French defense ministry. In a Jan. 14, 2020, press release, Dassault Aviation said France’s armament agency, the Direction générale de l’armement (DGA), had notified the program on Dec. 30, 2019. The release said the program would rest on three Falcon 8X aircraft, that the order for the first two had been placed, and that the jets would carry the Capacité universelle de guerre électronique, or CUGE, a universal electronic warfare capability developed by Thales.
Dassault handles modification of the airframe, integration, flight testing and certification, while Thales supplies the electronic warfare payload, with its CUGE system carried in a ventral fairing, according to The Aviationist. The Falcon 8X is a three-engine business jet, and the ministry describes Archange as “avions triréacteurs Falcon 8X modifiés,” modified tri-jet Falcon 8Xs.
A French defense ministry program sheet for its military planning law says “trois systèmes complets et une plateforme d’entraînement au sol,” three complete systems and a ground training platform, will make up the capability, based at Évreux for the Dunkerque squadron. The undated sheet lists deliveries “attendues en 2025, 2026 et 2028” and says the system will succeed the two Transall C-160 Gabriel aircraft.
Behind schedule, with the Gabriel gap still open
That 2025 start did not happen. “The program has already been delayed a few years, with deliveries originally slated to begin by 2025,” The Aviationist reported. The two C-160G Gabriels “were retired prematurely in May 2022,” the outlet said, and “an interim Saab 340 leased under the SOLAR contract provides some replacement capacity.”
France fields other electronic-intelligence tools in the meantime, according to The Aviationist, including the Mirage 2000D RMV carrying the ASTAC pod, the CERES satellites and the Beechcraft 350 ALSR.
For now, Archange’s work at Évreux is evaluation, with the CEAM taking part in the technical-operational trials of the first jet. The Aviationist puts the target for the full three-aircraft fleet at 2030.