“Speed and execution reliability are becoming decisive factors”

The strategic environment has deteriorated sharply in recent years. What new challenges are navies facing today?

Éric Chaperon: The number of crises continues to grow, but the biggest shift is their increasing simultaneity. Navies must now be able to operate across several theatres at once, at a time when the return of high-intensity warfare is no longer a distant prospect but a near-term possibility.

Another major development is the growing influence of land-based capabilities over the maritime domain. Advances in radar, satellites, missiles and drones now make it possible to detect, monitor or strike targets hundreds of kilometres from the coast. This considerably extends the littoral battlespace and reduces the areas in which naval forces can operate beyond the reach of land-based systems. Operating in littoral waters is becoming increasingly challenging, even for top-tier navies. Ongoing operations in the Black Sea and the Gulf of Oman are striking examples.

Above all, however, time is becoming a decisive factor. Two races are now taking place in parallel. The first is operational. Faced with ever-growing volumes of information and expanding areas of operation, the challenge is to understand an increasingly complex environment and act faster, with assurance and in a coordinated way, while preserving the force’s resilience — in other words, its ability to sustain operations over time. This means combining intelligence with tactical data within command-and-control systems (C2), then sharing it securely across platforms and allied forces.

Our adversaries are trying to do the same thing, so we need to do it better — by remaining discreet, manoeuvring faster and acting with greater assurance. This is the purpose of today’s multi-domain collaborative combat. Built on hybrid connectivity and large-scale data processing, it tightly integrates sensors and effectors into a distributed, high-performing and resilient system able to save the few seconds that can make the difference, including in degraded environments. With its distinctive multi-domain and cross-domain expertise, Thales is a leading player in this field.

The second race is about capability development. Navies need to integrate innovation more quickly, adapt their systems in response to lessons from operations and field new capabilities without delay. This acceleration creates a number of challenges, not least integration: the aim is to avoid the kind of “digital chaos” that would result from layering technologies that do not work well together. The priority is therefore to ensure a coherent, cyber-secure and evolvable architecture capable of incorporating new technology throughout the equipment lifecycle. Here too, Thales’s broad digital expertise places the Group at the heart of this transformation.

Does the industrial model therefore need to move towards continuous modernisation?

Exactly. The operational environment and the pace of technological change are forcing us to accelerate on two fronts: ramping up production, and innovation and continuous adaptation.

Navies need to increase mass, lethality and resilience quickly. That requires a significant increase in industrial production rates, and Thales is already moving in this direction. The Group has tripled its production of surveillance radars and will increase production of laser-guided rockets fivefold by the end of 2026.

But accelerating is not simply about producing more. We also need to deliver innovative, affordable solutions that can be made available quickly. Modularity and containerisation are good examples. At the same time, increasingly connected systems must be integrated, secured and upgraded over time — and that connectivity also makes them more exposed to cyberattacks.

The pace of change is not the same for every technology. For software, we are moving towards continuous updates, allowing new functions to be introduced quickly and systems to adapt as threats evolve. Hardware follows a different cycle, with regular upgrades rather than continuous change. This represents a technical, industrial and budgetary shift: systems now need to be designed from the outset with evolution in mind, throughout their entire lifecycle.

It also means staying as close as possible to users. Operational feedback enables us to identify emerging needs quickly. Thales teams, for example, have deployed aboard the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle during recent missions to respond directly to the force’s software evolution requirements. Strengthening our presence in Toulon follows the same logic: understanding operational use more closely so that solutions can evolve more quickly.

Drones are playing an increasingly important role in the air, on the surface and underwater. How are they changing the way naval operations are conducted?

Drones and autonomous systems are fundamentally reshaping the balance. They help keep people out of harm’s way, provide greater mass at lower cost and support a wider range of missions. They are both a new capability for navies and a threat against which they increasingly need to defend themselves. 

Drones also lower the barrier to entry for certain missions. Navies with more limited resources can gain access to capabilities that were previously the preserve of better-equipped fleets. In that sense, drones can act as a power equaliser. Ukraine’s successes at sea against Russia clearly demonstrate this. Drones also give forces greater flexibility: some can be used to monitor and protect littoral areas, allowing warships to focus on operations further offshore.

But this proliferation also creates a new threat. Low-cost drones can be deployed in large numbers to saturate an adversary’s defences. They can threaten ports and critical infrastructure, including in Europe, and can even be brought close to their target aboard merchant vessels. Maritime surveillance and counter-drone capabilities are therefore becoming a priority.

Navies need to be able to detect, identify and then neutralise aerial, surface and underwater threats using responses that are both appropriate and economically sustainable, without systematically resorting to very costly effectors. 

This is a major challenge that can only be addressed collectively, through close cooperation between navies, industry and organisations such as the European Union, because threats at sea do not stop at national borders. There is real urgency: the threat is already a reality, and the scale of the protection requirement is considerable.