Pierre-Eric Pommellet is Thales's senior vice president of defence mission systems. He talks to Flightglobal about the growing importance of unmanned aerial vehicles, the significance of India's shortlisting of the Dassault Rafale fighter and the likely impact of the 'Arab Spring' on the global defence market

Which products will take centre stage on the Thales stand at this year's show?

Unmanned air vehicles obviously will be a big theme in the defence domain. The big star of the show for us will be the Watchkeeper Tactical UAV, which we are presenting for the first time at Paris, with a real ground station that will be in operation in the UK this year. We are of course promoting tactical systems for France. Thales is involved in the full UAV chain - tactical assets with the Watchkeeper programme, but also the lower end with mini UAVs, which is potentially a very big market. At the higher end, we are ready to participate in the future UK MALE [Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance UAV] programme. The [Dassault] Rafale will again be our core defence activity for mission systems and we will present a range of equipment. We are now in production with the AESA [active electronically-scanned array] radar for the French Rafale, so we will present the technology we have and the capability we give to the aircraft with this AESA technology. This is still in flight tests and the first production batch will be delivered in 2017.

RAF Thales Watchkeeper 450 UAV
 © Thales

Has Thales reduced its marketing spend for this year's show?

We are following the trend. We have reduced by 15% the size of our pavilion - we were 1,200m², but now it's 1,000m². We are keeping the same way of presenting Thales. There is a kind of empty space in the middle with all the topics we are presenting around it. We are reducing this middle a little bit, but we are staying with the presentation of all the actual equipment. It's a slight reduction in size, but of course keeping the same assets and the same messages.

How do you think attendance at the show will compare with two years ago?

We expect the number of exhibitors to be the same, or even more, and we expect a similar number of visitors. The trend is good and we should definitely have a very good show.

When will we see more UAVs participating in the flying display at Paris?

A major topic in the UAV industry today is the application of these systems and their ability to fly in controlled airspace and over populations. Very few UAVs are certified [to fly in controlled airspace], but the Watchkeeper will be the first UAV to be certified in Europe. Allowing a UAV to fly in the very complex area of the Paris Air Show is another story, but it's clear that the extension of this market will require a new way of thinking in terms of the systems that equip UAVs, the architecture, innovation, sense and avoid, intelligence, and secure communications. Thales has expertise in all of these areas and is involved in these discussions.

It would be great [to include UAVs in the flying display] - really a demonstration that a UAV can be certified and that you can use UAVs safely over populated areas, and demonstrate the capacity to move from pure military systems to defence and security systems. Flying UAVs will be a key objective for future shows. It's a small bird so it will not be very spectacular, but on the other hand it will demonstrate that you can fly and train absolutely everywhere.

How significant in the effort to secure a first export order for the Rafale fighter is India's decision to downselect the type alongside the Eurofighter Typhoon?

It's obviously very good news for the programme. They said at Aero India 2011 that they would decide the shortlist in April, and they decided in April. The programme is keeping to its milestones, but of course we still have a long way to go with the final competition between us and Eurofighter. The shortlist was decided on technical issues, and it confirms for those who are not fully aware that the Rafale is state of the art and top of its class in terms of performance. The Rafale has been selected because it meets requirements that were very challenging.

What impact will the 'Arab Spring' pro-democracy uprisings have on the defence market?

Everyone has been surprised by the rapidity of the change. It's very difficult to know how it will evolve and how it will change things. In any case, at Thales we decided more than two years ago to really change our model of exports - not just in Arab countries - because we want to be more local and work with local industry in order to develop our presence in those countries. I am sure that one of the effects of this change will be an acceleration of this trend. The old model of purely exporting from Europe to every country in the world is changing, and the 'Arab Spring' will very probably accelerate the willingness of those countries to develop themselves, and so it has encouraged us to go quicker in our model. In terms of pure business, of course Libya is an issue - but I will not comment on that. But of the other countries, we were not much involved in Egyptian defence equipment or Tunisia, for example, or any other country that has seen trouble. It's more a question of how those countries - not only in the Arab world but also elsewhere - will view their way of acquisition of defence equipment, and it is really encouraging us to go forward and be involved in local industry everywhere.

How will Thales deal with shrinking defence budgets as European nations attempt to rein in public spending?

It has started in the UK with the search and rescue helicopters, and now France is slowing the pace. It is a fact that the situation with the defence budgets in European countries will affect investment, so we have to be ready for that. For a company like Thales, we need to continuously work on competitiveness. That means if there is less money, we can still sell products - but we will have to work on our costs. For us, it's also an encouragement to continue with our competitiveness and productivity plan, and of course look for more markets outside Europe and secure more exports. We have a willingness and ability to be more present in exports with our model of multi-domestic presence, with acquisition of companies and developing companies locally. Defence budgets will be reduced. We don't know exactly where - countries still need to decide what they will cut - but nevertheless we need to be prepared for a reduction in defence budgets.

How closely do Thales's defence businesses work with their civil aerospace counterparts?

One of the strengths of Thales is its duality: you cannot sustain the defence business without developing dual products. That's very strong in what we're doing today in creating synergies between the domains in terms of technology and product policy. We need to address markets in terms of value-added services - new services can be added as a way to resolve defence budget problems by offering new services that allow our customers to spend less for better services. Duality is a very strong asset for that, and we are presenting this at the show.

What impact will new consumer technology such as the Apple iPad have in the defence sector?

Of course the iPad is incredibly powerful and we are using it now for maintenance books. We've started providing our customers with iPads instead of paper manuals, which is very useful for them, so the iPad has become part of our global offer. It is clear that those in the military forces are young - the average age is just above 20 years old - so those guys really breathe those technologies, and we have very strong studies on how our systems could be used with much more interactive 'man-machine' interfaces. We are demonstrating new interactive cockpit and mission system technologies at the show, which really integrate these technologies. Innovation in recent years has been tremendous, and in terms of interface, those innovations can be quite rapidly installed into systems.

Source: Flight Daily News

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