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The world’s largest mobile showroom

As well as being the largest Naval force assembled in a generation, the Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is also the world’s largest mobile showroom of Thales’ expertise in cutting-edge maritime defence capabilities. We spoke with Elizabeth Baker, Head of Exports for Thales in the UK, about some of the capabilities on show and how Thales collaborates with governments and industry partners to support over 50 Navies around the world.

Can you give us a brief description of your role?

My responsibility lies across all our business lines in Thales in the UK and all our markets internationally. It’s my job to grow our UK export business and support our most strategic campaigns. It's very broad. The export contribution to our business is really important and growing, but securing export wins is a complex process and involves multiple stakeholders across Thales, and, obviously, in any country we’re exporting to. A typical export deal involves our end customer – the user of the capability, a procurement organisation, a business partner, a local Thales entity, and one or more business lines from the UK. Plus, there are other capabilities from our global business units. In all, that’s a lot of moving parts. Our campaigns take a long time, often many years, so it requires a strategic approach and our Export Capture Leads are experts in bringing everyone with them. 

What Thales capabilities are on the vessels in the CSG? 

There are a quite a few, so I’ll run through them quickly. We have anti-submarine warfare sonar equipment on the ships and helicopters – all designed to locate submarines at distance and ensure safe passage for the carrier and her task group. Another early warning capability is Electronic Warfare – also both on ships and submarines. It provides information advantage for vessels above and below the waves. We deliver the optronics masts for submarines. We provide a lot of other mission-critical systems too, such as radar and communications solutions – including those enabling HMS Queen Elizabeth to coordinate a strike group incorporating other nations’ vessels. Thales integrates across domains to provide intelligence and mission-specific data from live sensor feeds across defence to provide CSG with a complete global view of threats. Lastly, our missile systems arm the helicopters and our fuzing solutions support much of the firepower on board.

That’s quite a menu of capabilities. How do Navies go about procuring these kinds of capabilities?

It depends. There are some nations with a similar procurement process to the UK. So, countries like Australia, Canada, France, Italy, German, Belgium, and the Netherlands will identify their capability gaps, then create a formal requirements document that clearly articulates their needs, objectives, budget and so on. They’ll then closely compare one company’s bid to another’s before awarding a contract.

For other countries, the endorsement by an allied nation is often enough to get the ball rolling, as they might not have the time or resources to create a detailed requirements document. In those cases, we can support them through the process to make sure they’ll get the very most value out of any capability. Exporting often means supporting customer’s own manufacturing industries by ensuring some components are made domestically and I’m a firm believer that export success and domestic success go hand-in-hand.

Thales in the UK is at the leading edge of maritime defense capabilities. What’s behind the company's success?

A lot of it is down to our UK heritage. Our deep and long-standing experience and expertise builds trust. Ultimately, it’s trust that the UK Government and our other export customers put in us to deliver for them. Also, our past experience enables us to work closely with the MoD to see into the future – to identify capability gaps, to innovate, and to see what they need to achieve next. It’s close relationships like this that give us a very good understanding of where our customers want to go, and as a result, we've got some amazing technical roadmaps.

When customers see a roadmap they understand how every single item on it has been analysed, tested, rejected or invested in. The depth of the research and science that goes into it is incredible. We are now factoring in new technologies like digital twins, for example, which we’re using to rapidly innovate and accelerate qualification and testing of systems we’re bringing into service. 

Plus, to make sure we’re always bringing cutting-edge tech into our programmes, we work with a well-established ecosystem of agile and very specialist small-to-medium innovation companies. In many ways, this embodies and ensures we live up to our value proposition, “Decisive technology for decisive moments”.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Two things. The first is that it’s amazing how formidable, but also welcoming, the CSG is for someone in my role. It’s like bringing a small part of the UK with you. It gives you an opportunity to host in a country where you’re a visitor. That convening power is very impactful. And second, you can find out more about the capabilities we’ve provided for the HMS Queen Elizabeth and the wider Carrier Strike Group – as well as the other capabilities Thales exports so effectively from the UK – here