Thales : and Airbus Defence and Space to produce new digital maps for French defence
April 05, 2016 at 08:42 am EDT
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Key Points
The French National Institute of Geographic and Forestry Information (IGN) has awarded the Thales-Airbus Defence and Space consortium the GeoMaps contract for the next six years.
French armed forces will get high added-value geographical data that will give them the upper hand in missions in theatres of operations.
The IGN has awarded Thales and Airbus Defence and Space the GeoMaps contract to supply the French Ministry of Defence database with digital geographic data on a range of scales, including city maps. The data will mainly be based on images acquired by the two Pléiades satellites, significantly increasing the accuracy of the maps to be produced. This contract runs from 2016 to 2021 and guarantees the consistent geometry and formatting of all reference mapping data to optimise interoperability between the French Ministry of Defence's different systems and services, as well as with their allies and partners.
The IGN, acting for the Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA), the French defence procurement agency, has thus renewed its confidence in this consortium, founded more than a decade ago, to create TopoBase Défense, which GeoMaps now supersedes. It is one of the main building blocks of the GEODE 4D programme - the four-dimensional defence data (geographical, hydrographic, oceanographic and meteorological) - which integrates all the systems required to keep the French armed forces sufficiently informed of the nature and characteristics of the theatre concerned. In the future, the GeoMaps data will be managed by the GEODE 4D programme and disseminated to all the defence systems and in all theatres of operations.
The French Military Staff will be capable of generating highly value-added data to meet the challenges that defence forces now face: to recall the latest multi-scale geographical data (from national to urban level) and to keep it highly precise and updated regularly to ensure that the information is accurate. The areas to be produced will be defined according to the respective needs of the armed forces.
The Thales-Airbus Defence and Space consortium will handle the whole process: from analysing what the Military Staff need, through to running quality control checks on the products supplied. This also includes managing specifications, defining the production framework (procedures, tools, controls) and is based on a large network of SMEs to ensure that all of the data is consistent and homogeneous.
THALES SA issued this content on 05 April 2016 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 05 April 2016 12:41:34 UTC
Original Document: https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/press-release/thales-and-airbus-defence-and-space-produce-new-digital-maps-french-defenc-0
Thales is one of the European leaders in manufacturing and marketing of electronic equipment and systems for the defense and security, aerospace, and transportation sectors. Net sales break down by product group as follows:
- defense and security systems (53.4%): C4I defense and security systems (control and monitoring systems, communication, protection, cyber-security, and other systems), defense mission systems, naval systems, electronic war systems, drones, air operation systems (air defense, air surveillance), ground defense systems and missiles;
- aerospace systems (28.4%): avionics equipment (cockpit, cabin multimedia, and simulation equipment), space systems (satellites, payloads, etc.);
- digital identification and security solutions (18.2%).
Besides, the group owns a 35% stake in Naval Group (manufacture of naval equipment for defense and nuclear energy sectors).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: France (29.5%), the United Kingdom (6.6%), Europe (24.8%), the United States and Canada (14%), Asia (9.4%), Near and Middle East (6%), Australia and New Zealand (4.4%) and other (5.3%).