Arriving on Fenua on April 25, an A400M Atlas transport aircraft was deployed for a month in support of the Armed Forces in French Polynesia. During its deployment, the A400M carried out three refueling missions in the Australia and Marquesas Islands, two missions to repatriate Polynesian residents stranded in Australia and New Zealand, and a particularly sensitive medical evacuation mission to ferry an infant to be operated on in New Zealand. These operations were systematically carried out at the request of the High Commission, following requests from the country concerned. They illustrate the good coordination between these different regional players.
The aircraft also carried out missions aimed at strengthening the operational capabilities of French sovereign forces in the Pacific. It carried out a logistic liaison mission for the benefit of the Armed Forces in New Caledonia (FANC), two training missions in coordination with the transport squadron ET 82 “Maine”, two logistic missions for the detachment based at Mururoa atoll, as well as several reconnaissance missions of all the landing strips in the five archipelagos, to consolidate the emergency response capability for the benefit of the local populations. The Atlas A400M has successfully completed its reinforcement on Operation Resilience. He left on Sunday May 24 in the direction of the metropolis.
This deployment made it possible to make the best use of the capabilities of this new generation transport aircraft: its maneuverability, its long reach, its very significant logistical carrying capacity… Its ability to land on fairly short runways notably enabled it to link almost all the islands of French Polynesia. The 20 soldiers from the 61st Transport Wing, stationed at Air Base (BA) 123 Orléans-Bricy (45), therefore left Polynesia. The A400M Atlas logged 80 flight hours during its deployment in French Polynesia.