French Navy receives last Atlantique 2 submarine hunter modernized to Standard 6
France’s Navy has taken delivery of the 18th and final Dassault-Breguet Atlantique 2 (ATL2) maritime patrol aircraft upgraded to the Standard 6 configuration, completing a modernization effort designed to keep the fleet operational into the next decade.
The handover took place on February 17, 2026, when France’s defense procurement agency, the DGA, delivered the aircraft to the Marine nationale. The upgraded ATL2s are based at Lann-Bihoué naval air base in Brittany.
The Standard 6 modernization of the ATL2 combat system traces back to a DGA contract award on October 4, 2013. Under the program, 18 aircraft were slated for upgrade, with seven modernized and delivered by Dassault Aviation between 2019 and 2023, while the remaining 11 were upgraded by the French armed forces’ aeronautical maintenance organization, SIAé.
Dassault has described the workshare as a broader industrial effort, with Thales as co-contractor, Naval Group involved in the combat system software, and SIAé contributing modernization work and new tactical consoles.
What Standard 6 changes on the ATL2
While the ATL2 was designed primarily as an anti-submarine warfare platform, Standard 6 has centered on refreshing its sensors and mission system to address modern threats and expand flexibility across maritime and even overland missions.
Dassault lists the Standard 6 package as including the Thales Searchmaster radar, a new Thales acoustic subsystem for processing sonobuoy data, a WESCAM optronic turret, and new navigation and tactical consoles.
The Standard 6 upgrade supports a range of missions, from traditional submarine hunting and anti-surface warfare to broader support tasks, including roles in protecting France’s nuclear deterrence submarine component, as well as airborne support for land combat and intelligence gathering.
During Operation Barkhane in Mali, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces reported cooperation between a French Navy ATL2 Standard 6 and a French Air and Space Force MQ-9 Reaper, with the two platforms alternating surveillance and persistence as the ATL2 returned to base to refuel while the Reaper maintained coverage.
Replacement planning and the MAWS dead end
The ATL2 fleet has been in French Navy service since the late 1980s, with 28 aircraft delivered, and the Standard 6 upgrade has been positioned as a way to keep the platform credible through the 2030s while a successor is defined.
That successor was initially meant to emerge from a joint effort with Germany. In 2018, the Franco-German Maritime Airborne Warfare System (MAWS) was launched to replace Germany’s eight P-3C Orion aircraft and France’s Atlantique 2 fleet. But the rupture came in 2021, when the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a potential sale of five Boeing P-8A Poseidon aircraft to Germany, a step French officials said they only discovered through the US notification process, not through prior bilateral coordination.
Paris attempted to offer Berlin an interim solution, including a proposal involving four Atlantique 2 aircraft, but Germany declined and proceeded with the Poseidon purchase. Berlin later expanded the plan, contracting three additional P-8As in November 2023 to bring its future fleet to eight aircraft in total.
With MAWS no longer providing a credible near-term path, France shifted to a national “Patmar” replacement effort, launching parallel studies in January 2023 with Airbus and Dassault Aviation, before the DGA selected an Airbus-led A321XLR-based concept in February 2025, with Thales as a key partner, as the baseline for further definition and risk-reduction work.