Eric Bernard is Director General of Military Support.

The Military Support Directorate provides technical and logistics support for more than 1,000 military aircraft produced by Dassault Aviation and operated by the French and foreign armed forces. Based at the Saint-Cloud and Mérignac sites, the Directorate has also included, since January 2015, the company’s support engineering activities for both civil and military aircraft.

Eric Bernard, 59, is a SUPAERO graduate and holds an Advanced Master’s degree in International Project Management from ESCP. He began his career within the Thales Group, where he held several positions, including radiocommunications product manager and business manager for civil aircraft simulators.

He joined Dassault Aviation in 1998 as after-sales manager for the Taiwanese Mirage 2000 fleet before being appointed deputy head of the Export After-Sales Department. In 2004, he joined the Military Support Directorate’s Purchasing, Costing and Sales Directorate, taking responsibility for the Commercial Department. In this role, he notably led the contracting of logistics support for the Rafale F3 and F3R standards with the DGA, as well as the first long-term fixed-price in-service support contracts for the Rafale, Mirage 2000 and ATL2 with SIMMAD.

In 2015, he was appointed Commercial Director for all military aircraft support products and services and Deputy Director General of Military Support. In this role, he led negotiations with the DMAé for vertically integrated MRO contracts (Ravel, Océan, Balzac) and defined the support component of Rafale export offers, before being appointed Director General of Military Support on 1 April 2025.

Alongside his duties, Eric Bernard has chaired the GIFAS Customer Services Commission since 2024. He was also an auditor of the 45th national session of CHEAR, now the Armament and Defence Economics branch of IHEDN.