By Vishnu Makhijani and Arvind Padmanabhan, IANS
New Delhi : French defence and electronics major Thales is to convert four to six Indian Navy minesweepers into state-of-the-art mine hunters in a deal believed to be worth $50 million.
The company is also in advanced negotiations with the Indian Air Force (IAF) for a generational upgrade of its Mirage-2000 combat jets, even as it is “completely open to collaboration” with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the fabrication and launch of satellites.
“Yes, I can confirm that we have signed a contract with the Indian Navy for upgrading four to six of their minesweepers and converting them into mine hunters,” a top Thales executive said.
“There will be a complete change of the sonar suites and combat systems to give the vessels leading edge capabilities,” the official told IANS, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Citing contractual obligations, the official was not willing to put a value to the deal but enquiries from other sources put this at around $50 million.
The Indian Navy currently operates a dozen Soviet-era minesweepers, equally divided between the western and eastern fleets and it was not immediately clear which of these ships would be upgraded. The vessels were inducted between 1978 and 1988.
However, since the refit is to be conducted at Visakhapatnam, the headquarters of the eastern fleet, it would be logical to conclude that the six vessels based there would undergo the upgrades.
Experts from Thales Underwater Systems will conduct the refits in collaboration with their Indian counterparts and the project is likely to take four years to complete.
Speaking about the Mirage-2000s, the official said the project would involve a “total upgrade of avionics and radars minus the engines”.
“We will be completely changing the generation the aircraft to take from 1980 vintage to 2010-era jets that can operate for another 25 years,” the official added.
“Our negotiations are in an advanced stage and we are now awaiting an RFP (request for proposal) from the Indian Air Force,” the official said, adding that the process could take anything from six months to two years.
As for the ISRO project, the official said talks on this had begun after Thales last September acquired French electronics giant Alcatel’s satellite division.
Thales has also appointed Indian-born Frenchman Manod Jinnuri as its point person here for talks with ISRO officials on laying down the roadmap for the project.
Thales, which expects orders of 250-300 million euros during 2008, is slowly seeing a turnaround in its ratio of civilian to military contracts.
“This is now shifting. From 80:20 in favour of civilian contracts in 2007, we expect this to be 50:50 in the current year, with our order book growing 10 percent every year,” the official said.
The company, which employs some 120 people in Delhi and Mumbai, will also ramp up its 150-strong IT operations at Chennai to 500 by 2009.
“The Chennai centre looks after our global software operations with a small amount of work being done for our projects in India,” the official said.
Globally, Thales employs 22,000 R&D engineers out of a total workforce of 68,000 employees in 50 countries with 2007 revenues forecast in excess of 12 billion euros.