Djibouti Naval Base (Naval Base of Héron)

The Heron naval base at Djibouti is the French Navy's installation in the Republic of Djibouti, on the Gulf of Tadjoura at the southern approach to the Bab el-Mandeb. It forms the naval component of the French forces stationed in Djibouti (Forces françaises stationnées à Djibouti, FFDj), a joint command whose general officer commanding holds a joint staff and whose personnel numbered around 1,450 in 2018. Day-to-day management of the installation falls to the Djibouti Defense Base Support Group.

The French Navy maintains a CTM landing craft at Djibouti for amphibious lift and logistic movement in the region. From the mid-to-late 2020s two RP10-class tugboats are deployed with the naval forces based there. The base also supports French special forces deployed for training and for counter-piracy work off the Horn of Africa.

The naval installation operates alongside the other FFDj components. Air Base 188 Djibouti "Colonel Emile Massart" is a joint support base holding around fifteen aircraft, with Escadron de Chasse 3/11 Corse on Mirage 2000-5F and Mirage 2000D and Escadron de Transport 88 Larzac, which flew the Transall C-160 until July 2019 and since then the CASA CN-235 and SA330 Puma. Ground-based air defence at the airfield includes 20 mm twin mountings and Mistral firing posts. A naval aeronautics detachment is permanently stationed there, formerly on the Breguet Atlantic and now on the Atlantique 2, providing maritime patrol coverage of the approaches. Army units are grouped in the Brière de l'Isle district under the 5th Overseas Interarms Regiment (5e RIAOM), the last combined-arms regiment of the French Army, with an infantry company on VAB, an armoured squadron on AMX-10 RC and an artillery battery with TRF1 guns and 120 mm mortars; the attached DETALAT flies Puma and Gazelle helicopters. The regiment also runs the Djibouti combat training and hardening centre (CECAD), used by FFDj units, units and schools from metropolitan France, and Djiboutian and foreign forces.

French forces have remained in Djibouti continuously since the territory's independence, their status set from June 1977 by a provisional protocol equivalent to a defence agreement, replaced by a further agreement in force from 2014. Negotiations on a new defence cooperation treaty opened in December 2023. In June 2025 the French National Assembly adopted the bill authorising ratification of that treaty and of the agreement returning the land of the Heron naval base to Djibouti.