Seems like they’ve been cleaning up lately. This time from across the channel:
French electronics firm Thales announced here April 1 that it had won a multi-million-pound contract to provide submarine support services to Britain’s Royal Navy. The deal, worth an initial 35 million pounds (44 million euros, $69 million), was the result of a partnership between Thales and the Ministry of Defence, Thales UK said in a statement.
The British Submarine Service, like the rest of the Royal Navy, has suffered terribly from Labour’s defense cuts. The small British SSBN fleet of Vanguard class submarines, for example, is in a horrible state of disrepair and isn’t scheduled to be replaced until 2024. And while $69 million might seem like chump change in the defense world, that’s a sizable cost for what appears to be a mere servicing and logistics contract for the once mighty Submarine Service’s diminutive force of 13 boats.
