L-R: Christophe Salomon (Thales Group), Roy Chan (DSTA), Emily Tan (Thales)
Aerospace and defence group Thales have signed a master agreement with the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) in Singapore to enhance long-term service capabilities including maintenance, support, operational availability, and local development to meet end-user needs.
The agreement will also enable the setup of a secure data exchange platform for a seamless working relationship between the two organisations.
The first order of business will be the launch of the Thales Singapore Defence Hub to improve operations at the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF). The hub will capitalise on digital and engineering expertise from its Radar Centre of Excellence (CoE), located in the city-state.
This will ensure that trained Thales engineering and services experts will be based in Singapore and be more ‘hands-on’ to provide optimum service quality, such as having a faster turnaround time for maintenance and other services.
The CoE is established within the Thales research & technology department and allows partners to co-develop new radar digital technologies. It also aims to be a key driver in developing local radar expertise in Singapore.
“Our commitment to provide extensive long-term maintenance, best-in-class development and local engineering expertise by investing in a defence hub in Singapore for defence service capability was naturally the next step given the strong relationship and years of collaboration between Thales, DSTA and SAF,” said Christophe Salomon, senior VP of Land and Air Systems at Thales.
“This is especially significant with Thales celebrating its 50th anniversary of operations in Singapore this year and in the continuation of the Radar Centre-of-Excellence and engineering set-up. We are proud of our advanced radar systems and air defence solutions’ proven credentials in supporting governments and armed forces worldwide.
“Through this hub, we aim to provide the highest technical advancements and standards expected by our customers and end-users with the latest and best technology for defence capabilities on our systems.”
DSTA and Thales have been exploring radar digital collaboration to support health monitoring of equipment and co-developing a Radar Digital Twin to facilitate developments that can help to address new and future threats, as well as drastically reduce time to market for various solutions.
Meanwhile, the partnership between Thales and SAF have spanned over five decades, with the group providing equipment like radar systems, naval sensors, and communications.
“We look forward to partnering with Thales to equip our Armed Forces with the latest cutting-edge technologies, as well as building up capabilities in the face of new and emerging threats,” said Roy Chan, deputy chief executive (operations) of DSTA.
“This new agreement moves DSTA to take an agile and nimble approach to capability development. It enables us to continuously innovate and upgrade our systems to retain the capability to handle new threats in our challenging operating environment, in great contrast to the conventional way of developing mid-life upgrades every 10 to 15 years. This partnership will also ensure better optimisation of maintenance support and cost of the system.”
