Colonel Sylvain Debarre

Director NATO Space Centre of Excellence

Married and father of two children, Colonel Sylvain DEBARRE was born on April 01, 1980. He entered service in the Air Force on 29 August 2001 at the French Air Force Academy on Salon de Provence Air Force Base (AFB) as an officer cadet mechanic. He was then posted in 2004 to Cambrai AFB, where he successively joined the Aircraft Division of the Specialized Technical Support Squadron 2E012, then the Fighter Squadron 02.012 «Picardie» as Technical Assistant Officer then Deputy Chief of Technical Services, where he was in charge of maintaining the availability of the Mirage 2000 C and B fleet of the squadron. He participated in numerous international exercises as Mirage 2000 technical manager in Scotland, Brazil, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and was deployed in 2007 to Siauliai in Lithuania as part of the Baltic States Air Police Operation “Balto”. In 2009, he passed the Military Higher Scientific and Technical Education (EMSST) entrance exam and joined the SUPAERO institute in Toulouse, where he studied engineering for two years, specializing in aerospace propulsion systems. In 2011, he was assigned to the French Air Force Academy as a professor of Propulsion, Thermodynamics and Flight Mechanics for the benefit of officer cadets of the French Air Force. He then became head of the Aerospace Vehicles Department, and in 2016 he became Deputy Commander of the Division of Training in Science and Humanities, in charge of all academic programs of the French Air Force Academy. In 2017, he joined the Strategic Air Forces and the Technical Support Squadron 15.093, based on Istres AFB, as Head of the Business Control Division on Boeing K/C135. He was then engaged in multiples deployements, first in Chad within Operation “Barkhane”, then in the United Arab Emirates for the benefit of Operation “Chammal”, as technical manager Boeing K/ C135. Laureate of the War College the same year, he became Deputy Commander of the ESTS 15.093 in 2018, and took command between 2019 and 2021. Between 2021 and 2023, he completed his War College training in Germany, being integrated into the German War College class (LGAN21), based at the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr (FüAkBw) in Hamburg. Promoted to Colonel, he took up his duties as Director of the NATO Space Center of Excellence on 21 August 2023. Colonel Sylvain DEBARRE is a Knight in the National Order of Merit, holder of the Silver Medal of the National Defence with bars «Combat Air Force», «External Operations» and «Strategic Air Forces», of the Overseas Medal with bar «Middle East» and the medal of Protection of the Territory with bar «Jupiter»