Thales has won a 7 year £100m contract with the Royal Navy to provide communications systems support to the fleet.
The £100m 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”, say the company.
A press release states:
“The seven year contract provides Thales with 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.”
Victor Chavez, CEO of Thales in the UK said:
“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.”
The systems fitted to the 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 task groups, allies, civilian vessels and air traffic securely anywhere in the world.
Without these systems, Thales say, operational the vessels cannot go to sea. This capability builds on the significant installed base already in-service across the Royal Navy.
£100 million for a support contract seems step. That is about the money needed to equip both QE carriers with a vital SAM system.
For all major warships!
Yeah, from the release: “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.”
£100 million for 7 years, £14 million a year. 40 UK jobs at £100,000 each including staff overheads, building, equipment is £4 million a year, then presuming it’s swap out components plus diagnosis, repairs and installation and testing on-site (at sea maybe?), keeping an inventory, plus if it includes training, it could turn out to be cheap at half the price.
Full 24/365 support contracts don’t come cheap in any industry.
Aware of that thanks Geoff, have read the article. But these are existing systems, not new, why does it cost £100 million to service them? Seems very steep and too expensive to me. Even though for entirety of the RN fleet. Does this cover damage repair? If so fine. Including battle damage, weather damage or damage by sea states?