Cubic To Participate In MoD's Watchkeeper Programme

UAV NEWS

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Farnborough UK (SPX) Jul 21, 2004
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced Tuesday the selection of Thales UK as the preferred bidder for the next phase of the acquisition cycle of the Watchkeeper programme. Cubic Defense Applications is a key part of the Thales UK team selected for the programme.

Watchkeeper will provide the UK armed forces with an essential Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capability based on a tactical unmanned air vehicle (UAV) system and will be a key component of the UK's drive for Network Enabled Capability (NEC).

Gerald Dinkel, president and CEO of Cubic Defense Applications, said, "Cubic employs more than 5,000 employees worldwide-with nearly 600 employees in the UK-and the selection of our team for this prestigious programme is great news.

Watchkeeper is a very important programme for the British armed forces and as such this decision is a strong vote of confidence in the Thales UK team and Cubic. The UAV systems market is growing strongly and the selection of our team positions Cubic well to win even further work in export orders."

Cubic will be providing its spectrally-efficient Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL) and High Integrity Data Link (HIDL) into Thales UK's Watchkeeper programme.

The TCDL will enable Watchkeeper to transfer time-critical information from multiple UAVs operating in the same geographical area without mutual interference. The HIDL, developed for command-and-control of multiple UAVs from a single ground station, provides a versatile, programmable back-up link.

The Thales UK Watchkeeper solution will create or sustain up to 2100 jobs, all of which will be in the UK. These high technology jobs in systems integration, prime contracting, engineering and manufacturing will be within Thales UK, the Thales Watchkeeper team companies and throughout the UK supply chain. Exports are expected to increase this total to 2500.

Thales UK intends to supply Watchkeeper and address the rapidly growing worldwide UAV systems market, estimated to be worth around GBP3bn over the next 10 years.

The operational benefits of the Thales UK team solution include: a fully integrated ground environment; higher endurance, lower attrition air vehicles; a minimal logistic footprint and the ability to deploy a full system to theatre in a single C-130 Hercules aircraft.

The Thales UK led team includes the Thales/Elbit JV company, Elbit, Marshall SV, LogicaCMG, Vega, Boeing, Cobham, Cubic, Supacat, QinetiQ and Praxis.

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