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Thales Delivering ISTAR Capability

17 July 2006

Thales is a prime system integrator for the delivery of capability based ISTAR solutions. The company favours a ‘system-of-systems’ development approach that takes into account all aspects of a capability over its life cycle, not just the traditional equipment and support aspects. This innovative approach to delivering ISTAR capability is built upon a strong Thales heritage in delivering ISTAR and UAV systems.

Thales uses a capability engineering approach that factors in every aspect of the response to an ISTAR capability requirement, such as concepts and doctrine personnel, organisation, equipment, training, infrastructure, information and logistics, known to the UK MoD as the "Lines of Development". Underpinning the Thales approach is an understanding of the use of UAVs system and information architectures and military command and decision making processes required to Network Enable military capability.

Thales has made a considerable investment in forming the Battlespace Transformation Centre, a mixture of skills domain knowledge and Battlelab facilities that allow the evaluation of ISTAR and UAV problems at a number of levels of complexity in partnership with the defence stakeholder community.

The capability engineering approach frees Thales from constraints associated with the traditional platform-centric viewpoint and offers cost-effective solutions that optimise all aspects of UAV capability.

The Thales capability engineering approach was behind the company's successful bid for the UK's Watchkeeper programme, currently the most sophisticated tactical ISTAR system in the world and Europe's largest UAV programme.

The contract, worth close to a billion euros, was awarded in July 2005. Thales is the prime system integrator on the programme and will also supply various key system components.

Thales is working closely with Elbit systems and other partners to deliver Watchkeeper.

The Watchkeeper system is a long term programme that will meet the needs of the UK armed Forces for the next 30 years and will include incremental delivery of capability and through-life technology insertion.To this end, Thales ensured that the basic system infrastructure is flexible enough to facilitate introduction of new technologies and operational concepts throughout the life of the programme, and as such the Watchkeeper system is designed for growth. Although not part of the Watchkeeper requirement possible future roles for the system could include electronic warfare, mine detection or weaponisation.

This experience on the Watchkeeper programme places Thales in a excellent position in the international tactical ISTAR UAV systems market, offering competitive UAV system solutions as part of an integrated ISTAR "system of systems" capability.

In NATO, based on its long ISTAR heritage, Thales is a first-tier member of TIPS Industries, the consortium selected for the AGS (Alliance Ground Surveillance) programme to provide a strategic surveillance capability based on a combination of manned and unmanned air vehicles that deploy the TCAR radar. Thales is engaged at both system and equipment level within the consortium.

In France, the Army is defining its tactical UAV requirements under the SDTT programme (Système de Drone Tactique Terrestre). Thales is proposing a capability-based approach building on the achievements of the Watchkeeper programme. Specifically, Thales proposes the use of European Watchkeeper 450 platforms under cooperative arrangements between the governments of France and the United Kingdom.

Thales has also been retained by the French defence procurement agency (DGA) for an advanced study project to assess the feasibility of firing munitions from a tactical UAV.

Thales is prime contractor for the study programme, which has a resolutely European dimension: the proposed weapons would be French and the platform - the same air vehicle that has been selected for the Watchkeeper system in the United Kingdom - would be provided by U-TaCS, the Thales/Elbit UK joint venture.

Thales's UAV systems experience and capabilities also represent substantial export potential. The company expects to generate 500 million euros in revenues from this sector over the next ten years.