An important military derivative of the Fokker F.27 was the F.27 Maritime, a patrol aircraft for submarine hunting, marine search-and-rescue, pollution control, fishing inspection and other offshore duties. A general increase in territorial waters protection operations appeared to create further sales opportunities but these did not materialize. A total of 15 Maritimes was sold which was somewhat less than Fokker had hoped. A version of the Maritime having underwing attachment points for bombs and rockets was called the Maritime Enforcer.

Not all designs of F.27 variants were actually built, one of them being project P 301, a four-engined STOL version for very short runways. A model was shown at the 1971 Paris Air Show. It looked very much like the later de Havilland Canada Dash 7, for which demand proved to be limited.

The P 301 was never built - neither was the F.27 MS, a troopship version with rear-loading doors not unlike on the Andover variant of the Avro (now British Aerospace) 748.

Vehicles could easily be driven in and out through these doors. An F27 flying boat and a jet-powered F27 were two more variants that were never built.

The Kingbird was an AEW (airborne early warning) F27 having a retractable radome in its belly. Both the Kingbird and the Sentinel, fitted with mock-ups of the SLAR and radome, were shown at the 1984 Farnborough Air Show. Fokker did not build the F27 all by itself.

At an early stage in the series production, manufacture of the fuselages was sub-contracted to Dassault-Breguet.