NAVAL GROUP
| Registered office | France - Paris |
|---|---|
| Other branches | Bagneux (FR), Toulon-Ollioules (FR) |
| Industries | Arms Industry |
| Categories | surveillance, research, arms |
| Sources | Unspecified |
| Website | https://www.naval-group.com/en |
About the company
The Naval Group is a defense company largely owned by the French state. The remaining shares are held (up to 2.5%) by the armaments company Thales. While Thales focusses on the aerospace industry, the Naval Group specializes primarily on equipping naval forces and coastguards. Besides the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, the Naval Group produces various frigates, i.e. for the French and Italian navies, as well as nuclear-capable submarines and torpedoes. Besides armament in the narrower sense, the Naval Group is also involved in the planning and construction of power plants, including nuclear power plants.
Contribution to the EU border regime
Apart from the Naval Group equipping coastguards around the world (often in cooperation with Thales) and benefitting from the increase in international naval missions - including to combat illegalized migration - the company does not have a explicit focus on internal security and border protection. The Naval Group also benefited extensively from EU research funding for more than 20 projects, with some of these projects having an open connection to the topic of border protection: From 2011 to 2015, the company was involved in the PERSEUS project under the leadership of Indra and participation of Airbus, among others. According to the advertisement of the project, it contributes to the "protection of the European seas and borders through the intelligent use of surveillance". The total budget for this project was quite ample at around 43 million euros, and the Naval Group received 1.75 million from the EU budget for its participation. As part of the CAMELOT project, the company was involved from 2017 to 2021 in further developing a control and surveillance system together with Thales, Tekever, among others and the PIAP. CAMELOT aimed at the coordination of the various sensor platforms at the EU's external and internal borders and the fusion of their sensor data to establish an integrated situational picture of the area under surveillance. CAMELOT was certainly able to build on a comparable project called I2C, which was managed by the Naval Group between 2010 and 2015 with a budget of almost 16 million euros. The Naval Group is currently (May 2021) still involved in the EFFECTOR and COMPASS2020 projects. COMPASS2020 (with the participation of Airbus and Tekever, among others) is intended to improve the coordination of manned and unmanned systems; EFFECTOR (with Thales, among others) aims to provide authorities with "decision support systems" on the basis of an integrated situational picture.
Added: Jan. 11, 2024
Last update: Jan. 28, 2024, 12:03 p.m.