Under the agreement signed with Naval Group, Thales will supply the sonar suite for the future Orka-class submarines to be deployed by the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) under the RNSC (Replacement Netherlands Submarine Capability) programme assigned to the French shipbuilder in September 2024
The contract assigned to Thales covers the supply of the entire multi-array sonar and acoustics suite for the Dutch new Orka-class four submarine fleet to be built by Naval Group to replace the in-service aging Walrus-class boats. The Dutch MoD has selected the conventionally powered,Blacksword Barracuda oceanic platform, the derivative of the Suffren-class (also known as Barracuda) nuclear-powered attack boat for the Marine Nationale.
The undisclosed value sonar suites contract is the first in 15 years outside Thales domestic market including France, the UK, the US and Australia, said Emmanuel Michaud, vice president for submarines and surface vessels at Thales.
The acoustic suite for the new four Dutch submarines will form the basis for Thales’ export offer for other incoming submarine programmes, he highlighted, speaking to a group of defence journalists.
“We are equipping about 50 submarines in the world, among conventional- and nuclear-powered boats, which is more or less 50% of the accessible sonar market, with customers being the French Navy, the UK Royal Navy, the Royal Australian Navy as well as the navies of Singapore, Chile, Malaysia and Brazil,” he explained.
The contract “is our stepping stone to a new generation of export contract submarine systems,” Michaud said. “That’s why this contract is absolutely key for us because it is the first one of hopefully a long series of contracts. The submarine market is pretty active in this period.”
Thales signed an agreement with Naval Group to supply the four sonar suites, with a contract value somewhere between €100 million and €1billion, according to Michaud, adding that Thales is extremely happy with this contract, without providing specific figures.
“The sonar suite being delivered is highly derived from our development made on the French Barracuda (Suffren-class) submarines,” said Michaud. Thales has already provided the sonar suite for the first three boats and is currently working on the additional three submarines for the French Navy. The same team working on this programme is going to work on the Dutch contract, he added.
With the Barracuda programme Thales invested a lot, thanks to the French MoD and French Navy, “and this gave us a competitive edge,” he highlighted, in terms of people, technology, facilities and production sites, including converting the Gemenos site (near Marseille) to participate to military activities in the sector. “We keep improving our product with this export contract with very tough requirements from the Dutch Navy.”
As remarked by Michaud and the press statement detailing the agreement, this programme is an opportunity for Thales to align with the Dutch Government’s policy of support and empowerment of strategic national industries. It will consolidate the company’s agreement with the naval defence ecosystem in the Netherlands, within the framework of the RNSC programme. “The advanced acoustic suite being provided to the Dutch Navy will include a passive towed-array sonar which will be developed and delivered by the Dutch company Optics11 under a contract signed in November 2024.” Using their advanced OptiArray technology, it will be seamlessly integrated into Thales sonar suite.
Being an incremental development vis-à-vis the Barracuda-class submarine, it will be the baseline for the company’s sonar suite for the next 10-15 years on the export market for larger boats as the Dutch ones and smaller platform including the Scorpene family of submarines from Naval Group. Most of the products included in the sonar suite for the Dutch submarines are already available and progressively improved with regards to hardware and software, he said.
The first two submarines in the Dutch contract are scheduled to be delivered by 2034 and “we are already working full speed to be in on time for the delivery of the first submarine,” he explained.
With this contract, Thales is delivering the full array of what can be installed on a submarine as far as acoustic is concerned, he continued. The suite includes the bow-mounted cylindrical array and the mine and obstacle avoidance sonar, the latter providing some seabed mapping as well as allowing to detect the special forces divers to direct back to the submarine or to recover them, the echo sounder, the self-noise monitoring system, the underwater communication system, the intercept array, the planar flank array and the towed array – the latter being provided in partnership with Optics 11 – in addition to the electronics cabinets for signal and data processing as well as the human machine interface (HMI) to assess the acoustic situation. The suite maintains the architecture and board-based processing used on the French Barracuda boats, but Thales is looking to the server farm for signal and data processing in the future.
To respond to the demanding RNLN requirements, the new submarines will be fitted with a double row of flank array sonar as a cost-effective way to increase the sensor surface and improve detection, in particular to have a more powerful gain and more discrimination in detection, among other capabilities. “Developing a new array would have been extremely expensive,” and would take time.
Thales is working with the Dutch company Optics11to provide a reelable thin-line towed array using optical technology, which according to the same Dutch company is leading in the fibre optic sensing technology for ultra-sensitive early warning systems.
“It is a very challenging technology, but a very promising one,” Michaud said. “However, the technology readiness level for the system is not yet at a stage that would allow us to go full production from day one,” he explained. In November 2024 at the Netherlands Defence and Security Exhibition Thales signed with Optics11 a feasibility study to integrate the towed array, which will last most of the 2025, with the goal of integrating the new technology on the Dutch submarines,” Michaud continued. “Thales believes in this technology because that would be a very good addition to our product portfolio. Today, it’s a bit early to say, because we are in the feasibility study phase. But it is clearly our intention that if this is successful, and we are working hard to make it successful, we will definitely adopt this technology or this product for export contracts.”
Thales is also developing a fibre optic based towed array for the French MoD, however this is proprietary “and we will never be able to export it”.
Looking to the potential customers, being asked about the plans of the Polish MoD to buy submarines, Thales did not comment on Naval Group activities, but Michaud said the group strategy is to offer a “very versatile” sonar suite being progressively improved, that can satisfy the requirements of different customers, as new developments would increase cost, time, and risk.
Photos and images courtesy Naval Group and Thales/Q. Reytinas