The Gendarmerie Air Forces

Text and photography by Roelof-Jan Gort and Bjorn van der Flier of FlyHighAeromedia.com

Colonel DRY (name withheld for security reasons) is group commander at the Gendarmerie Air Forces and has been serving in that position from August 2021. He has been with the Gendarmerie Air Forces since 2006 and has about 4000 flight hours on various types of helicopters, and he still flies about 180 hours per year. He told us about the history, organization, and training within the Gendarmerie Air Forces.

An EC145 awaits its next mission while an H135 takes off - Björn van der Flier

Organization

Brigadier Emmanuel Josse was appointed chief of staff of the French Gendarmerie Air Forces in August 2020. His career has comprised postings in both territorial ground units and gendarmerie air units.

Student at Saint-Cyr, the French Army's military academy and a graduate of the French War College, he is also a recognized specialist in air safety issues after two assignments at the BEA-E (Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for State Aviation Safety), first as an investigator and subsequently as deputy director.
The Gendarmerie Air Forces (FAGN) has about 500 members, which, compared with 100,000 Gendarmerie personnel, means that they are a mere 0.5% of the total Gendarmerie. They have around 150 pilots, who are based at 30 bases, training centres and headquarters.

The pilots have a 24/7 duty. That means they must run shifts on a frequent basis. In addition to the 150 pi-lots, the Gendarmerie Air Forces have about 200 mechanics, flight engineers, officers, and non-commissioned officers. They also have about 450 drone pilots, and about twenty-seven drone instructors.

The headquarters of the Gendarmerie Air Forces is based at BA107 Vélizy-Villacoublay near Paris, which also houses an operational unit. This unit is specialized in all types of operations, and is responsible for planning, supervision and debriefing of all helicopter missions of the units throughout France and the over-seas departments. At the headquarters, there is also a special group of people, and their work has every-thing to do with logistics and implementation, for example purchasing uniforms and computer equipment, but they also prepare all external maintenance contracts. There are different levels in this system, and everything is about extracting the most use out of the equipment, from helicopters and camera systems to other smaller equipment, for the missions.

Colonel DRY in front of the EC145 of BA107 Vélizy-Villacoublay - Björn van der Flier

Locations

The Gendarmerie Air Forces have about 24 locations in France and six overseas (see the map below). The location that is not shown on this map is Calais. Since the migration problems and the 32 people that drowned in November 2021, French authorities have decided to station one Gendarmerie helicopter in that region.

Those who are deployed to one of these six overseas locations, are stationed there for about three years. “For the people who are working at one of these six overseas locations, it is very special. This is because they are very far from their home base in France. So, they must be versatile, and they have to do almost everything by themselves. Their home base is about 12 hours’ flight from the base where they are working. There is a very important purpose for them and that is, sovereignty overseas,” Colonel DRY stated.

A student pilot in the cockpit of anEC145 - Roelof-Jan Gort

Missions

The missions carried out by the Gendarmerie Air Forces can be divided into four different categories.

The first mission is observation. This is because they must be able to assist all the Gendarmerie and Police on the ground, with special camera-equipped helicopters to assist them with their jobs, whatever the con-ditions.

The second type of mission is counterterrorism, which is a support mission, but with special task forces, GIGN for Gendarmerie and RAID for Police, two specialized units in the vicinity of BA107 Vélizy-Villacoublay serve this purpose. Within ten minutes of the call, they can be in helicopters to travel any-where in France. “We will fly the GIGN and RAID forces when they need to go faster or to be dropped on inaccessible places like rooftops, in a forest, on a ship, or when they need sniper overwatch,” DRY commented.

“We use the EC135 for observation and the EC145 for transportation and hoist operations. We can take about four or five of them with us, depending on their equipment.”

The third type of mission is intervention in a specialized environment, which means that they have special capabilities to fly in the mountains or over the sea, but especially in the mountains. Flying in the mountains is special work for pilots and flight engineers. So, they have dedicated training and a dedicated unit for this environment.

The fourth type of mission is projection, which means that with each helicopter they can send a special unit to the appropriate location in France, for example after the crash with the Germanwings Airbus in 2015. All special police officers and air crash investigators were in Paris, and they had to be transported to the crash site as quickly as possible. So, from BA107 Vélizy-Villacoublay, they had to bring them to the site in the French Alps. The crash site was only accessible by foot or helicopter because of the remote location within the mountains.

Left to right: Four members of the GIGN in front of an EC145 at BA107 Vélizy-Villacoublay; Major WNK in front of an AS350 at the GMCO that is based at BA123 Orléans/Bricy; Mechanics working on the AS350 at the GMCO; An Airbus EC135 takes to the sky from BA107 Vélizy-Villacoublay - Photographs by Roelof-Jan Gort

The helicopter fleet of the Gendarmerie Air Forces

The Gendarmerie Air Forces has about 56 helicopters in its fleet. First is the AS350 Écureuil in two variants, the BA (15) and the B2 (11). The B2 is an updated and stronger version of BA, with a stronger engine and updated avionics, while the airframe and gearbox are pretty much the same.

“When they want to operate them in the mountains, they need the B2 version, and also at sea to rescue people”, said Colonel DRY. They fly this helicopter in Cayenne in French Guyana, for example. “Because it is very hot and wet over there, it’s not the most fun place to fly,” he stated. “But this type of helicopter is doing very well in these circumstances; it’s like a Swiss knife for us.” He continued, “The pilots can do al-most everything with this helicopter. It is very easy to maintain and to fly, but they are getting pretty old now, so there is a decision to make in the coming years.” At the moment, they have 26 AS350s and most of them are based overseas.

In addition to the AS350s, they operate EC145s, and these are currently about 20 years old. In the Gendar-merie, they are used in two different environments. At BA107 Vélizy-Villacoublay, they are used for the transportation of the RAID and GIGN, but most of the time they are used in the mountains, because they are much bigger and more powerful.

Finally, is the EC135 and is the youngest helicopter type of the fleet. The main feature used by the Gen-darmerie is the L3 Wescam MX-15i camera system. “When the first helicopter arrived with the Gendarme-rie in 2010, it was a major gamechanger for the Gendarmerie”, said Colonel DRY. For the first time, they had a camera system which was already fully integrated into the helicopter. That means that they can use them for surveillance, criminal investigation, and assist ground units in their daily operations. When intro-duced 10 years ago, it was a state-of-the-art camera system, with a good infrared camera for night opera-tions. Although superseded by more powerful cameras, the Gendarmerie is still happy to work with these. Another part of the equipment is the searchlight. Once again, something that is quite common now, was something very new twenty years ago, and it was the beginning of their night operations. Before the night missions began, there were only ferry flights from point A to point B. With this kind of equipment, it started with air support of the police officer on the ground.

A flight engineer keeps a close eye on the screen of infra-red camera during a night sortie over Paris - Björn van der Flier

Gendarmerie Air Forces (FAGN) - Number and helicopter types per base:

15x EC135: 2 Villacoublay, 1 Metz, 1 Dijon, 1 Colmar, 1 Lyon, 1 Hyeres, 1 Montpellier, 1 Mérignac, 1 Toulouse, 1 Cazaux, 1 Rennes, 1 Tours, 1 Amiens, 1 for maintenance.

15x EC145: 2 Villacoublay, 1 Chamonix, 1 Modane, 1 Dignes, 1 Briançon, 1 Pamiers, 1 Tarbes, 1 Ajaccio, 1 Cayenne, 1 Saint Denis de La réunion, 1 Cazaux, 3 for maintenance.

23x AS350 Écureuils: 1 Guyane, 1 Mayotte, 1 Martinique, 1 Guadeloupe, 2 Nouvelle Calédonie, 1 La Réunion + 1 Metz, 1 Rennes, 1 saint nazaire, 1 Lyon, 1 Hyères, 1 Mérignac, 1 Bayonne, 1 Toulouse, 2 Cazaux, 1 Limoges, 1 Egletons, 5 for maintenance.

10x H160 will arrive in 2024/2025: 4 Villacoublay, 2 Lyon, 2 Hyères, 2 Mérignac.

We would like to thank Colonel DRY and Captain Lahri of the Gendarmerie Air Forces headquarters for their help to make this article possible.