Celebrating Collaboration
Following on from an exciting day of meetings conducted with Canadian sales partner Simex Defence at DSEI, Wednesday sees SMI celebrating another important partnership. In October 2018 Thales and SMI signed an agreement to collaborate in delivering state of the art underwater defence products.
The agreement, which builds on the strong existing relationship and the combined skills and expertise of the two companies, provides world leading, innovative solutions for connectivity across a range of maritime platforms. Both companies formalised their relationship to develop technology and capability for maritime, civil, security and military domains.
In the months since SMI and Thales have accepted a MoD contract to see Thales’ sea-to-screen sonar intelligence delivered onto further UK submarine platforms utilising SMI’s TelemetrixTM Multi-Gland Penetrators and SMI were delighted to act as a Supply Chain case study for the Oxford Economics report on “The Contribution Of Thales to The UK Economy” published in March 2019.
Thales Maritime have a lot to showcase at DSEI 2019, its definitely the year of Maritime not just for Thales but for many companies. With the pace of technology and innovations from industry, SME’s and academia coupled with the aspiration from the Royal Navy there is great change and excitement amongst the naval community.
Sam McBriar (Head of Strategy and Marketing Maritime Thales) spoke at the Strategic Maritime Conference on Monday, focusing on Maritime autonomy, the rate of change, what the challenges are and how Thales is making a difference in that market and Matt Hunt responded to questions on Marine Autonomy capabilities on the tech UK Panel.
We are looking forward to visiting the Thales Portable Operations Centre on HMS Medway to meet the operators and hear from the experts how this unique capability will change how we look, find and disarm/ destroy mines in the future. The Royal Navy and the French Navy will be the first the world to have the capability.
Thales has presence on the Royal Navy stand along with two models of new and novel technology. The SMART LMM Radar on the Understand Stance and the Hero 30 on the Strike Stand. To find out more visit the Royal Navy Stand.
SMI, an agile cable systems designer with employees spread across the UK, France and Australia, has 25 years’ specialist expertise in the design and manufacture of fit and forget cable systems. They are designing cabling systems for current and future platforms around the world.
The partnership promises to see innovation and reliability extended to a range of global programmes which will further cement Thales’ position as global leader in underwater systems and the world’s top exporter of sonars and related systems for naval forces.
Main picture shows Chief Executive Officer of SMI, Keith Wells with Phil Jones, Managing Director of Maritime Mission Systems Thales UK in October 2018.