Thales Australia has entered into a new partnership agreement with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (OTS) which will enable the expansion of the company’s sovereign munitions capability focused on support of the Australian Defence Force.
Building on Thales’s 10-year sovereign Strategic Domestic Munitions Manufacturing (SDMM) contract recently announced by Australian Government, the new partnership will support technology transfer to Australia for the design, development, manufacture and sustainment of a variety of critical munitions products.
Thales’s partnership with General Dynamics – OTS is built on substantial work already achieved including most recently BLU-126 and BLU-111 aerial ordnance as well as undertaking the capability establishment of 155mm M795 HE projectiles as witnessed by US Embassy visit to the Mulwala and Benalla facilities in February 20211. This work is driving significant growth in Australia’s sovereign capability, boosting investment in SMEs, manufacturing and delivering long term jobs.
Increasing industrial capability will build Australia’s self-reliance and the capability of the broader Australian advanced manufacturing sector, which is vital to delivering a capability advantage to the Australian Defence Force.
For more than 30 years Thales Australia has built a national industrial ecosystem to support the delivery of capability to the Australian Defence Force. This demonstrates that maximising technology transfer to Australia on major Defence projects is a significant driver of growth in Australia’s sovereign industrial capability.
Thales Australia’s recent supply chain analysis with AlphaBeta Advisors demonstrated that there is a substantial economic benefit from domestic defence spending, delivering thousands of jobs through hundreds of businesses across the nation. In 2019 alone, Thales Australia spent $522 million with 1,362 Australian firms, 70 percent of which were SMEs.
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