Let us test you! That is the latest offer from the French Ministry of Defense, which is putting 10,000 employees and 20 test centers at the disposal of the world's aerospace industries.

France is one of the few countries in the world with full capability in all specialties, from airframes and powerplants to electronic warfare systems and missiles. Not surprisingly, it has also developed an indigenous testing, measuring and qualification infrastructure that it believes is second to none-and is now underemployed.

The centers were recently grouped together under the Systems Evaluation and Test Directorate (DCE), which is exhibiting here at Farnborough for the first time. Its main customer remains the French MoD, followed by Airbus Industrie. Now the organization is bidding to test and evaluate European defense and commercial programs, and is offering its services to the rest of the world as well.

"We are at the very top in technical capability," business manager Michel Frossard told Show News. "Now we are offering it on a commercially efficient basis." The DCE has set a goal of selling 20% of its testing capacity to customers outside the French MoD over the next five years.

Among its strengths, according to Frossard, is the ability "to fly or fire anything without the constraints you find in the rest of Europe," coupled with monitoring, measuring and simulation equipment that matches the complexity of next-generation systems. Unique capabilities include the largest dynamic drop test machine in Europe, used for evaluating Airbus landing gears, and an engine and missile test facility at Saclay that can simulate flight up to Mach 6.0 at altitudes of up to 75,000 feet.

Recent commercial contracts include braking, turning and towing tests on landing gears for the Airbus A340, and qualification tests under vibration conditions of two Russian plasma engines at the ballistic and aerodynamic research laboratory in Vernon.

The DCE operates one of only four schools in the Western world devoted to training flight test specialists-the Flight Test Center's EPNER at Istres, which competes for students with the British Empire Test Pilot School and U.S. schools at Patuxent River and Edwards Air Force Base. It claims to be the only one to train students as a flight test team, and to qualify personnel both into military and civilian aircraft testing and certification.

The Flight Test Center operates a large, mixed fleet of aircraft for the EPNER, and to test weapons and electronic warfare systems. It oversees the air-to-surface and surface-to-surface firing range at Calamar, and coordinates airspace requirements for aircraft, missile and UAV testing throughout the whole of France.

Concerns that testing at French defense facilities would be the same as handing over secret information were countered by Frossard. "First, we are aiming at European programs in which we already participate, so security is not a problem," he said. "Second, customers can still have industrial secrets that are not threatened by the testing and evaluation processes."

Behind commercialization of France's test facilities is another concern-that of survival. The DCE realizes that Europe's test centers will eventually be rationalized to eliminate duplication, and that only the most sophisticated and most useful will remain. One measure of their worth will undoubtedly be the breadth of their customer base as clients choose the most cost-effective facilities to help develop and qualify their European programs.