Thales Underwater Systems

Thales Underwater Systems (TUS), formerly known as Thomson Marconi Sonar, is an international defence manufacturer specialising in sonar systems for submarines, surface warships, and aircraft as well as communications masts and systems for submarines. TUS is a subsidiary of Thales Naval, part of the Thales Group, and has sites in the United Kingdom, France, and Australia. TUS is made up of three subsidiary companies: TUS Ltd. in the UK, TUS SAS in France and TUS Pty. in Australia, but it operates as a single company with headquarters in southern France. TUS had annual sales of €400 million in 2006 and employed around 2,100 people.

TUS Ltd. has two main sites, Cheadle Heath near , Greater Manchester and Templecombe in Somerset. The company had a turnover of around £85 million with a total of 853 staff in 2006.

The Cheadle Heath site was set up in 1977 as an overspill of the Ferranti Military Systems Division based at Wythenshawe. It comprised groups covering training simulators, communication systems and a small Underwater Systems Group which was engaged in the development of displays and computer interfaces for sonars equipment. The main parts of these sonars were developed by the Plessey Marine Research Unit at Templecombe, Somerset.

The sonar work at the Cheadle Heath site expanded into digital signal processing, algorithm development, display generation, simulation, LCD and TV displays, mass storage, computer interfaces and highways. Takeovers of other companies brought new expertise in sonar arrays. The Sonar Systems Group increased in size and successfully bid against Plessey for parts of sonar 2054. Other parts of the Ferranti empire started to crumble, aided by the merger with International Signal (James Guerin) in 1987 to form Ferranti International. Ferranti eventually went bankrupt (again) in 1993, however the small, idiosyncratic Sonar Systems Group had become a successful standalone business. A Joint Venture Company was formed between the Ferranti liquidators (49.9%) and Thomson-CSF (50.1%) to form Ferranti Thomson Sonar Systems. The Ferranti share was bought out by GEC-Marconi to become Thomson Marconi Sonar Systems.

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