Dassault Aviation Backs Sovereign Cloud Platform For FCAS

FCAS
Credit: Julien De Rosa/AFP/Getty Images

LE BOURGET—Dassault Aviation plans to develop the next-generation fighter, part of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) industrial collaboration, using sister company Dassault Systemes' 3DExperience (3DX) sovereign cloud platform.

The [3DX] platform provides a "dedicated sovereign defense cloud" in which Dassault Aviation and its partners can develop the fighter with greater agility in a highly secured and scalable environment, the company says.

“What we’re offering today is to say that there is program data that will need to be exchanged and stored … They must be structured and put ... somewhere and include functionalities that allow them to be used according to each company’s wishes,” Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier told a press conference here at the Paris Air Show. “The sovereign cloud is a strategic topic.  

“In this area of sovereignty it’s not just the defense industry but other types of administrations and companies that would like to have a more hermetic strategy for storing data, from a legal point of view too,” Trappier added. He noted at the June 20 briefing that when data passes through systems belonging to a country it is subject to the laws of that country.  

“It seemed obvious to us, we do it already for the support of Rafale aircraft in operation in France—putting in place cloud-based structures between the armed forces and Dassault Aviation and its partners to allow them to communicate,” Trappier continued.

“Tomorrow there will be cooperation projects, for example the FCAS. We will have to work with foreign partners so there we will have even more of a need to secure the exchange and storage of data, all while respecting each party’s intellectual property in a sovereign and secure cloud,” he added.

Dassault is proposing 3DX to other European companies and administrations that require a sovereign cloud platform for their data, relating to areas such as energy, finance and health care.

Helen Massy-Beresford

Based in Paris, Helen Massy-Beresford covers European and Middle Eastern airlines, the European Commission’s air transport policy and the air cargo industry for Aviation Week & Space Technology and Aviation Daily.