By Calvin Biesecker
Thales last week announced several changes to its organization in the United States, including renaming the operations and creating a new subsidiary to better focus its offerings in the defense and security space.
Thales USA, Inc., formerly known as Thales North America, Inc., was re-branded to reflect that there has been a separate organization in Canada for a while and because the new name demonstrates a commitment to the U.S. market, Chip Sheller, vice president of communications for Thales USA, Inc., told Defense Daily yesterday.
The new subsidiary, called Thales Defense and Security, Inc., will report directly to Thales USA. Thales has yet to announce its leadership for the new Defense and Security business.
Thales Defense and Security provides a greater focus within the entire Thales Group, which is headquartered in France and has six divisions with dozens of business lines throughout the world, to channel products and services into the U.S. defense and homeland security market, Sheller said. It also incorporates business lines in the U.S. that were either previously within Thales North American or operated as separate subsidiaries, he said.
The restructuring is also intended to “elevate our value to customers and partners from that of a trusted supplier to the level of trusted partner,” Allan Cameron, president and CEO of Thales USA, said in a statement. Sheller explained that currently Thales’ business in the United States involves selling components and systems, basically “boxes,” to customers and partners. Thales Defense and Security will be able to move up the system integration “food chain” by offering more complete solutions, he said.
Thales Defense and Security has three divisions, Naval and Military Air Systems, which are based in Northern Virginia along with their parent organization and Thales USA, and Aerospace Defense Systems, located in California.
Thales Communications remains as its own subsidiary reporting to Thales USA. Thales Communications is on the Joint Tactical Radio System program and also is developing the Liberty radios for first responder and homeland security customers. Thales’ various joint ventures in the United States such as those with Raytheon [RTN] and DRS Technologies, a division of Italy’s Finmeccanica, will continue to serve their customers.
Hinting at future plans, Cameron also said that Thales Defense and Security will eventually be going after classified programs. Thales has 2,500 employees in the United States at 15 locations in 10 states.