On June 10, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces announced the launch of the program for the design and construction of the 10 deep-sea patrollers to take over from the venerable PHM, A69 advisos retrofitted for this mission in the 90s, and which now exceed 40 years of service. This program is the last part of a very eventful BATSIMAR program aimed at replacing the patrol boats of the French Navy. While no information is obviously available today concerning the precise configuration of these 10 vessels, as the design phase has not yet started, several announcements point to interesting prospects in terms of performance and capacity.
The first dimensioning information is the budget allocated to the program, an envelope of € 1 billion which allows vessels to be considered between 1000 and 1500 tonnes, positioning the French program at the top of the spectrum of European OPV programs. With such a tonnage, French offshore patrol vessels will potentially be able to have a helicopter platform, making it possible to extend the building's engagement capacities, in addition to the drones whose use on board has already been announced.
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