Military

Thales awarded new PHAROS III contract by the Royal Netherlands Air Force

23 November 2006

The Dutch Ministry of Defence and Thales today signed a contract for the renovation of PHAROS (Plan Handling And Radar Operating System) - the system that has been used since 1994 by the military air traffic control centre which is located in Nieuw Millingen, The Netherlands.

PHAROS was initially supplied to the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) in 1994 by Thomson-CSF, later renamed Thales. Under the terms of the new contract, Thales will provide the RNLAF with state-of-the-art equipment and will ensure the migration of the operational software. The contract that includes initial delivery and maintenance was awarded to Thales following an international tender.

Although the initial PHAROS project was commissioned ten years ago, Thales has maintained the competencies, logistics, and maintenance services for safety-critical systems in order to provide customers with the most efficient migration process. The same PHAROS functionalities will be maintained to enable the Royal Netherlands Air Force to perform Area Control and to fully benefit from the new technology.

This contract is an illustration of Thales' ability to implement COTS solution in the ATC environment. Thales already performed such projects for several international customers including Denmark, Belgium, Australia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.