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DCNS and Thales to design and demonstrate UAV deck landing system

Written by thomas · Filed Under Aeronautics News 

December 17, 2008

thomas

Paris, 16 December 2008 – The French defence procurement agency (DGA) has awarded
DCNS and Thales an advanced study contract for a deck landing system for unmanned
aerial vehicles. The three-year contract calls for the design and demonstration of an
automatic take-off, landing and deck landing system for rotorcraft UAVs.
The system will be a vital component of future tactical UAV programmes, notably for the
French Navy and the French Army.
The project aims to provide reproducible, risk-controlled demonstrations of deck take-offs
and landings with the required discretion in a range of environmental, weather and sea state
conditions, as needed for fully autonomous UAV operation. Initial landing tests are scheduled
for 2009 with a view to demonstrating fully autonomous deck landing in high sea states on a
French Navy frigate in 2011.
DCNS and Thales have combined their expertise and experience for this project and will
develop the system under a co-contracting agreement. Thales is responsible for the landing
system, the UAV system and the trajectory control system. DCNS is responsible for ship
motion prediction, the deck landing strategy and for securing the UAV to the flight deck.
DCNS will draw on its experience in flight deck operations and the naval UAV integration
study contract it won in 2005. In October this year, DCNS demonstrated its know-how in this
area when it automatically recovered a lightweight rotorcraft UAV on the flight deck of a
French frigate off Toulon. The DCNS subsidiary Sirehna also has proven expertise in ship
motion prediction.
Thales will leverage its experience on tactical UAV programmes in the United Kingdom,
including its automatic all-weather landing system for fixed-wing UAVs, which was
successfully tested by the UK Ministry of Defence in mid-2008 as part of the Watchkeeper
programme. It will also draw on the results of the joint forces VTOL UAV study contract
undertaken for the DGA in 2005 with the support of Boeing. Boeing will also be associated
with this latest contract.
About a dozen small- and medium-size enterprises based in France will also contribute to the
new-generation UAV take-off and landing system.
About Thales
Thales is a leading international electronics and systems group, addressing defence, aerospace and
security markets worldwide. Thales’s leading-edge technology is supported by 22,000 R&D engineers
who offer a capability unmatched in Europe to develop and deploy field-proven mission-critical
information systems. To this end, the Group’s civil and military businesses develop in parallel and
share a common base of technologies to serve a single objective: the security of people, property and
nations. The Group builds its growth on its unique multidomestic strategy based on trusted
partnerships with national customers and market players, while leveraging its global expertise to
support local technology and industrial development. Thales employs 68,000 people in 50 countries
with 2007 revenues of €12.3 billion

About DCNS
The DCNS Group is one of Europe’s leading players on the world market for naval defence systems.
To meet customer demands for more comprehensive and integrated systems, DCNS acts as prime
contractor for naval shipbuilding, integration and support by combining its own development,
marketing and production capabilities with those of selected partners. To manage the complexity of
such projects, the Group draws on in-house expertise in naval architecture and systems engineering,
ship assembly and integration and equipment design and production, as well as through-life support.
The DCNS Group employs 13,000 people and generates annual revenues of around €2.8 billion.

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