Thales press release
Within the framework of the French-Japanese bilateral Defence agreement, France and Japan have signed a Project Arrangement for the second phase of the cooperation project consisting of the development by Thales and MHI of a dual frequency sonar demonstrator for mine countermeasures aboard an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV).
While mines or even the possibility of mines potentially threaten everyone at sea, dealing with them effectively is vital in keeping key trade corridors open and guaranteeing maritime access and force projection—this is especially important for countries with highly valuable assets or ports that have a high volume of commercial traffic. In response to the growing threat posed by bottom laid, semi or fully buried mines in coastal areas, DGA and ATLA have decided to cooperate in order to study the performances of innovative dual frequency sonar technology.
« Au Japon, Thales s’attache à mettre en œuvre des partenariats durables et à long terme avec les acteurs et industriels clés du pays. Ce partenariat étendu avec MHI atteste de notre engagement auprès du Japon et de notre volonté de renforcer les liens bilatéraux entre les deux nations. Je suis certain que nos technologies et notre étroite collaboration permettront d’offrir des solutions uniques et innovantes qui renforceront les capacités de la force maritime d’auto-défense japonaise, en jetant les bases d’une expertise locale pour l’avenir. »
Cyrille Dupont, Président et CEO, Thales au Japon
To achieve this, both countries have chosen to trust MHI and Thales, who share technological excellence and complement each other, strengthening through this agreement their continuous and successful collaboration. As a world leader in mine countermeasures with over 300 mine-hunting systems in service worldwide, Thales will provide its recognized expertise in sonar processing as well as its latest generation High Frequency synthetic aperture sonar, SAMDIS, with multi-aspect capability. MHI on its side will provide its Low Frequency synthetic aperture sonar and the OZZ-5 AUV.
The smart integration of the High Frequency & Low Frequency sonars, coupled with a combined automatic detection and classification function, will not only provide capability and performance enhancement into a single solution but will also mutually benefit each sonar’s processing and imaging. This will result in a unique autonomous mine countermeasure system capable of detecting, classifying and localizing all types of mines (from fully buried mines to ground mines).
« Thales est très fier de contribuer à ce premier projet de coopération franco-japonaise dans le domaine de la Défense, aux côtés de notre partenaire MHI. Nous sommes impatients de pouvoir mettre en œuvre notre expertise, largement démontrée en conditions opérationnelles, avec notre sonar à haute fréquence SAMDIS, dont bénéficieront les forces de défense française et japonaise grâce à cette coopération unique pour des mers plus sûres. »
Alexis Morel, vice-président Underwater Systems, Thales
This agreement kicks off a 5-year project for design, development and integration of the dual frequency synthetic aperture sonar processing, and at sea experiments (in Japan & in France). Testing will be conducted in Japan through 2024, followed by trials in France.
This is the materialization of years of long cooperative efforts between the DGA, ATLA, Thales and MHI to jointly build a project that satisfies both French Navy and Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force requirements and allows France and Japan to stay at the forefront of innovation on unmanned mine countermeasure systems.
