Jay Clemens
Thales and BAE Systems will collaborate with their partners in France and in the U.K. to develop an autonomous system intended to detect and counter sea mines and underwater explosive devices.
The team will work to design a system prototype during the contract’s first phase, then manufacture and test the future mine countermeasure systems of both France and the U.K. under contract options, Thales said Friday.
Thales will provide the systems to both the French navy and British navy for two years of tests.
Each system consists of an unmanned surface vehicle, an obstacle detection and avoidance sonar, a threat identification and neutralization capability, a towed synthetic aperture sonar and autonomous underwater vehicles.
BAE Swill provide the mission management system, ASV Ltd. the surface vehicle, ECA Group the underwater unmanned vehicles, Saab the remotely operated vehicles and Wood & Douglas the communications system.
Thales will also supply a portable operations center service to incorporate Thales-BAE command and control tools.
