Sagem’s Euroflir 350 Optronic Observation System Chosen for Caracal Helicopters Deployed by French Special Forces

Published:

June 16, 2009

Updated:

March 7, 2025

Eurocopter has picked Sagem’s new Euroflir 350 sight for the EC725 Caracal fleet that supports French special operations. The move links a fresh sensor suite to a helicopter already central to high-risk rescue and assault missions.

The Euroflir 350 sits on a four-axis gyro platform that holds the line of sight steady in rough air and low-hover profiles. Pilots keep the target framed even while the aircraft yaws or jerks during evasive moves.

A single turret houses all channels, so crews avoid separate pods that complicate balance. Sagem pairs the sight with its Sigma inertial navigator, giving gunners a tight link between what they see and where they are.

Key hardware inside the Euroflir 350:

Matis fourth-generation mid-wave infrared imager
High-definition low-light color camera
Eye-safe laser rangefinder with coded output
Laser pointer with selectable pulse profile
Automatic mover detection and geo-reference tools

This mix lets a Caracal team track a pickup on a desert track or read a grid off a ridge without breaking cover. Targets drop straight into the helicopter mission computer, shaving time from sensor to shooter loops.

French special forces demanded a sight that works on moonless nights, in brown-out dust, and above the chill of Afghan mountain passes. Euroflir clears that bar by cooling the detector deep below ambient and by using a large-aperture optic that drags in faint heat signatures.

The helicopter already carries a refueling probe, armor, and a hoist rated for full kit. The new sight fills the last gap: long-range eyes that match the aircraft’s legs. Crews can push 600 km, drop commandos, spin, and pull survivors from a valley floor before first light.

Euroflir’s sealed gimbal cuts maintenance. Sagem quotes a mean time between failure over 1,000 hours, helped by an internal vibration damper and a self-heat cycle that drives out moisture after cold-soak flights.

Certification moved fast because Sagem designed the sight to bolt straight onto Eurocopter’s standard-issue interface plate. No changes to wiring or weight-and-balance paperwork were required, so flight trials finished in weeks, not months.

Sagem will supply the French defense ministry with an initial batch for three Caracal squadrons. Production sights roll off the Dijon plant line this summer. The first operational sorties will support Task Force 32 once the aircraft redeploys from Kabul to Toulouse for refit.

The company sees a bigger market. Cougar crews in the 4th Special Forces Helicopter Regiment already fly with an earlier Euroflir set. Talks with the navy cover Panther upgrades, and Safran marketing staff are showing mock-ups to Poland and Brazil.

Euroflir 350 draws on a decade of infrared work inside Safran. Engineers lifted code directly from the AASM smart bomb seeker, saving years of lab time. They also borrowed the fast steering mirror from the Felin soldier sight to sharpen stabilisation.

French procurement officials point to common parts across land and air kits as a hedge against spares delays. One pallet in a forward base now supports drones, gun-trucks, and helicopters alike, trimming logistics tails for remote deployments.

Sagem’s avionics arm leads the regional navigation market; its flight control computers sit in most civil helicopters built in Europe. The Euroflir contract keeps the firm’s sensor division busy after two lean years tied to airliner slowdowns.

Workers at the Fougères optics shop coat each germanium lens in an ion-beam chamber that hardens the surface against blowing sand. The same plant grinds mirrors for French spy satellites, giving the helicopter glass an unusual pedigree.

Defense analysts view the deal as a signal that Paris wants home-grown tech for sovereign missions. Import restrictions on cooled detectors remain tight, so domestic output protects supply even if export rules shift.

The Caracal first proved its haul-and-haul-back profile during hostage snatches in Chad. Crews flew at ridge height, flared behind a dune, and kept rotors turning while commandos stormed a camp. The new sight should shorten exposure by cutting the search spiral.

Planners also eye medical evacuation. A medic can watch a casualty’s thermal outline on a cabin screen, guiding hoist speed to avoid limb fouling in rotor wash. Such feedback was impossible on legacy glass-only systems.

Sagem says software hooks stay open for growth. A future patch could cue a laser-guided rocket or push a full-motion feed to a Mirage cockpit without extra boxes. Bandwidth rides on the helicopter’s existing Ku pipe.

Euroflir’s turret weight stays under 54 kg. That leaves margin for external fuel or a second door gun when patrol rules change. Engineers kept the mass down with an aluminum-lithium shell and a composite yoke.

Contract language sets a ten-year support window with options for software refresh at year five. The army can pull the sight, drop it in a padded case, and send it by commercial courier to the Sagem hub at Montluçon. Turnaround stays under 15 days.

Safran’s board credits the win to vertical integration. The firm builds each major block – from the detector to the gimbal motor – in-house. External buys touch only wiring harnesses and Zinc-Sulfide windows.

French special forces commanders add that a common sight across Cougars and Caracals eases pilot transition. Crews hop between types without re-learning symbology or hand controller layout.

The Caracal fleet will now hold a full day-night, all-weather kit that aligns with NATO combat search doctrine. That closes a gap flagged in a 2006 audit after an exercise where rescuers lost visual contact with a flare-illuminated survivor.

Sagem engineers note that Euroflir functions as a drop-in for fixed-wing patrol craft. Early talks with Dassault hint at trials on a Falcon 50M later this year, broadening the business case.

The June 2009 announcement crowns eighteen months of prototype flights, bench tests, and cold-soak trials in a cryogenic chamber at –40 °C. Data showed no optical drift across the temperature swing, a key pass criterion for arctic missions.

WHAT’S NEW – March 2025

French aviation officials finished a fresh chapter when the first two H225M Caracals from the 2021 follow-on order touched down at Cazaux on January 17. The newcomer carries the Safran Euroflir 410M sight, leapfrogging the 350 with a stronger zoom, sharper short-wave infrared channel, and four-color laser pack.

Crews note a step change. The 410M tracks a quad-bike at 20 km, nearly doubling the reach logged on the 350 during mountain tests. The wider eye also feeds two simultaneous video streams – one into the pilot helmet, the other down a secure link to a ground team that directs converging drones.

Upgrades did not stop at optics. Airbus wired the turret into a new modular avionics rack that rides on an open standards bus. Mission software now plots an auto-hover cue straight on the sight picture, easing one-handed hoist work when a gunner mans the cabin hatch.

Legacy Caracals have not been left behind. A 2015 contract funded a rebuild of fifty-plus Euroflir 350 sets. Each unit gained a continuous-zoom sensor, a faster eye-safe laser, and refreshed bearings. Field reports out of Gao show fault rates cut by half after the retrofit.

French special operators flew more than 3,000 hours over the Sahel during Operation Barkhane’s final phase. The sight’s see-spot mode let patrols on the ground mark pickup zones with a coded laser that helicopters could read through dust and heat shimmer. That tactic moved quickly into doctrine once units saw the hit rate.

The armed forces minister now pegs Euroflir as the baseline sensor family across the rotary fleet. NH90 Standard 2 prototypes already test the 410 on sea lanes. Tiger Mk3 attack helicopters will field the heavier 510, whose twelve-sensor mast borrows software modules first debugged on the Caracal line.

Industry tallies fresh revenue as well. Safran opened a sensor final-assembly cell at its Pont-Audemer site in 2023 to cope with export demand from Czechia and Indonesia. Production slots for 2026 sold out inside fourteen months, according to company figures.

On the frontline, operators speak of smoother workflow. A weapons system officer now draws a haptic box around a moving truck on the touchscreen; the 410M tags it, the Sigma navigator assigns global coordinates, and the data crosses instantly to a Caesar battery fifteen miles away. First rounds often land within two mint-tea boils, to quote one platoon leader.

With the new helicopters France brings its Caracal fleet to twenty-one. Older airframes rotate into a life-extension line where mechanics fit the 410M on an adaptor ring that replaces the 350 mount with no fuselage cutting. The program keeps the type relevant past 2040, the point when a clean-sheet successor is expected.

Safran and Airbus engineers already sketch post-2030 sensor growth. Concepts on the whiteboard include a machine-learning target recogniser that labels surface threats on the fly and a fibre-laser designator that halves beam divergence. Those ideas trace back to lessons written during fifteen years of Euroflir field time.

Sagem’s Euroflir 350 Optronic Observation System Chosen for Caracal Helicopters Deployed by French Special Forces

WHAT’S NEW – March 2025

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