SEA wins 15-year deal to support Royal Navy resilience

SEA, a Cohort plc company, has secured a 15-year, £8 million contract with Thales under the Maritime Sensor Enhancement Team (MSET) programme, supporting the long-term resilience and availability of Royal Navy vessels.

The MSET initiative forms part of the UK’s strategy to maintain the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent and enhance critical capabilities like sonar, periscopes, masts, and electronic warfare systems. SEA’s role includes sustaining functionality, reducing system obsolescence, and improving long-term cost efficiencies for the Ministry of Defence.

Under the agreement, SEA’s engineers will continue to deliver waterfront support, inspections, and defect maintenance for towed array handling systems used at UK dockyards and overseas. The company’s Maritime Support & Services division will also play a key role in repair management, failure analysis, and proposing upgrades to improve performance.

“Ensuring naval platforms and capabilities are mission-ready is the backbone of naval operational readiness,” said Kerry Parfitt, Head of Maritime Support & Services at SEA. “Through the MSET programme, we’ll work closely with Thales and the Royal Navy to integrate maintenance, innovation, and training into operations.”

SEA has a long-standing relationship with both Thales and the Royal Navy. This latest contract builds on that partnership and follows SEA’s recent success supplying and supporting the Ancilia trainable decoy launcher for Royal Navy surface ships.

Steven Lockley, Managing Director of Underwater Systems at Thales UK, welcomed the continued collaboration. “SEA’s proactive approach to tackling obsolescence and enhancing resilience is critical to ensuring Royal Navy ships remain mission-ready,” he said. “As we begin this 15-year programme, we’re excited to strengthen our partnership and deliver long-term availability for the UK Royal Navy’s critical assets.”

The contract follows on from SEA’s work under the Sensors Support Optimisation Project (SSOP) and is intended to ensure seamless operational availability of key equipment on Royal Navy platforms well into the 2030s.