Benoit Antoniou heritage is from Greece. His grandparents left from Greece and searched for a better luck in France the previous century. He entered the Armée de l'air in 1993 and graduate as a fighter pilot in 1997. . He joined the Escadron 1/5 "Vendée" in 1998 and served for 8 years from the cockpit of Mirage 2000s. As a pilot of French Air Defense Quick Reaction Forces, he participated in the Alysse Operation (Better known with the American name as Operation Southern Watch) in Saudi Arabia twice. He also took part in lots of exercises in various countries (especially in Greece in 2002). From 2005-2008 he was attached to a unit near Paris in which he was responsible for flight crew equipment programs (replacement of MK4 seats with MK10L on the Alphajet fleet and commissioning of new flight helmets) while he was in direct communications with the military industry during various programs development ensuring that these were aligned with the financial resources and the strategy of the armed forces. For the next four years he was posted to Mont de Marsan and acted as a Director of the Combat Training Center (distributed simulation) and he was engaged in training of Armée de l’air and foreign air forces personnel. As part of this command, with a team of 5 instructors he trained almost 80 specialist’s officers per year, from France, Peru and Taiwan all Mirage 2000 operators. From 2011 to 2013 he became an Air base operations commander with responsibilities in various aspects, such as Protection & Security, Air traffic control, Fire protection and animal peril; coordinate the use of available resources. He left from Armée de l'air active service in 2013 and employed for 2 years Joint Staff private company with responsibilities regarding planning of joint air operations. During this time he engaged in the Operation SANGARIS participating in the development of the operation and the deployment in a few weeks of a detachment of 2,000 men in Africa. Operation SANGARIS was a military intervention of the French military in the Central African Republic, from late 2013 till 2016. It has been the 7th French military intervention there since the independence of the country in 1960.[4] On 30 October 2016, France announced it officially ended Operation SANGARIS. From 2015 onwards he is employed in the Ministry of Defense in Paris where he elaborates and leads the development programs of the Mirage 2000 fleets and mission preparation tools. He is also manages relationships with manufacturers involved in the ministry projects and assures that these aligne with the available financial resources.