Thales Wins £100 Million Communication Systems Contract For Royal Navy Fleet

Thales has secured a seven year contract worth £100 million to provide through-life support for communications systems of the Royal Navy’s fleet.

The awarded contract provides an intelligent, unified approach to supporting the Thales communications systems, including those fitted to the Queen Elizabeth Class (QEC) aircraft carriers coming into service.

Thales will have the responsibility to maintain, support and manages through-life the Royal Navy’s communications systems across the majority of the Fleet’s platforms, from the state-of-the-art systems aboard the new QEC aircraft carriers and the Type 45 Destroyers through to older systems such as those on Landing Platform Dock and many other platforms across the Fleet.

The systems fitted to the QEC aircraft carriers, and supported under this contract, enable the ship’s company to talk to each other within the vessel, its aircraft, the rest of the Navy and associated taskgroups, allies, civilian vessels and air traffic securely anywhere in the world.

Without these systems operational the vessels cannot go to sea. This capability builds on the significant installed base already in-service across the Royal Navy. The contract secures around 40 jobs at Thales in the UK at Crawley, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Bristol and involves in excess of 40 UK companies across the associated global supply chain.

“The Royal Navy relies on Thales for its key sensors, communications, sonar, radar and electronic warfare systems giving the Fleet that critical situational awareness capability. This latest communications support contract builds upon our century long relationship with the Royal Navy providing its critical communications systems and will ensure that those systems are ready to meet the daily challenges of operations for years to come,” Victor Chavez, CEO of Thales in the UK.