A versatile distress beacon system for an aircraft, a ship or other vehicles, including a beacon and a mounting to provide the function of an automatic beacon or a survival beacon. The automatic distress beacon system includes a mounting rigidly attached to the structure of the aircraft and a beacon removably mounted on the mounting. The mounting includes an electronic management unit having a first connector to connect to the data bus and to control the aircraft to receive data from the data bus and orders to activate the beacon, and a second connector to connect to the beacon to transmit data and activation orders to same. The beacon having a memory module to store the transmitted data and a radio transmission module connected to a transmission antenna. The mounting has a detector to detect abnormal events connected to the electronic management unit, with a view to activating the beacon.