Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei signs a contract with the United Arab Emirates Navy for an ASW Suite jointly supplied with Thales

9th October 2009 - 01:00 GMT | by The Shephard News Team

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Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei (WASS) and Thales are pleased to announce the signature of a contract with the UAE GHQ Armed Forces for the supply of an Anti-Submarine-Warfare (ASW) suite to the UAE Navy.

Under the terms of the contract, the WASS/Thales/Eurotorp team will provide a comprehensive ASW system composed of a sonar suite with its underwater communication telephone, torpedo decoy launching systems and light weight torpedo launching system. All the systems will be provided to the UAE Navy and installed on the “Abu Dhabi” class corvette by Fincantieri.

“The UAE Navy will benefit from a state-of-the-art ASW capability. The increasing success of our anti torpedo countermeasure system proves the need of acquiring a highly performing self defence capability against the new generation of torpedoes in the market today. Moreover, due to its modularity, such an ASW System will significantly enhance the ASW capabilities of different Navies with similar needs”, commented Filippo D’Antoni, WASS Commercial Director.

Thales, as a subcontractor to WASS, will provide the sonar suite including the hull mounted Kingklip sonar and its low frequency active variable depth sonar, the Captas Nano.

“At Thales we are particularly proud of this contract award. Drawing on the many successes of the well-known CAPTAS product family, this CAPTAS NANO contract highlights the relevance of our approach to move towards compact sonar systems that are perfectly suited for mid-size platforms”, said Marc Darmon, Senior Vice President of Thales and Head of Naval Division.