French defence group Thales said on Monday it had opened a sonar facility in the Western Sydney suburb of Rydalmere to produce and maintain towed array sonar systems for the Australian military's submarines, ships and maritime platforms.
The site, co-funded by Thales Australia and the Commonwealth, will supply sonar for Hunter-class frigates, Collins-class submarines and the BlueSentry autonomous system.
Investment is described as multimillion Australian dollars; no specific figure was disclosed. Thales noted that the facility's hall is 100 metres long and is designed to facilitate the end-to-end manufacture of towed array sonar systems.
Local sustainment is intended to cut offshore maintenance periods and extend deployment times for Australian intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.
Thales owns about 35 per cent of Naval Group, which lost a submarine contract with Australia in 2021 when Canberra cancelled the programme in favour of the AUKUS pact, triggering a diplomatic dispute between France and Australia.
(Reporting by Hugo Lhomedet and Florence Loeve, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)
