Video: 25 years of Thales TACTICOS Combat Management System

This year Thales celebrates 25 years of its TACTICOS combat management system (CMS). Navy Recognition recently went to the Thales site of Hengelo in the Netherlands to find out what makes TACTICOS one of the most popular CMS among navies around the world.

Human factors specialists and Navy personnel collaborated on the design of the TACTICOS HMI. The HMI standsout by adhering to the operator workflow which reduces the operator workload to a minimum.

TACTICOS was conceived in the early 1990s as an integrated and highly automated multi-warfare combat management system (CMS) to manage command and weapon control functions on board naval surface combatants. In 25 years, TACTICOS has been selected by 23 navies, aboard 127 ships: small, medium and large naval vessels making it one of the most popular CMS on the 7 seas.

TACTICOS was introduced in 1993 with the Turkish Navy Barbaros-class (MEKO 200) frigates and Kılıç-class fast attack craft. It is itself based on previous generations of CMS: STACOS (by Signal which is now Thales Nederlands) and TAVITAC (by Thomson-CSF which is now Thales). The merger of these two CMS resulted in the very first TACTICOS (baseline 0). Baseline 1 was introduced in 2005 (with addition of Link 16). Baseline 2 was introduced from 2009. There are today seven navies using TACTICOS Baseline 2.

Our video on Thales TACTICOS CMS recorded at Thales Nederlands in Hengelo

Some of the current TACTICOS users include the U.S. Navy (with the Independence-class littoral combat ship), Columbia (Almirante Padilla-class corvette), Poland (Orkan-class fast attack craft), Greece (Roussen-class fast attack craft), Germany (Braunschweig-class corvette), Morocco (SIGMA corvettes), South Korea (Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class / KDX-II destroyer), Indonesia (PKR Frigate, the largest TACTICOS CIC with 10 consoles), Malaysia (Kasturi-class corvette), Qatar (Barzan-class fast attack craft)...

A future user of TACTICOS is no other than the Royal Navy: Thales' CMS has been selected by the Babcock-led "Team 31" in a bid for the Royal Navy’s Type 31e frigate programme. Team 31 is composed of Babcock, BMT Group, Thales, Harland & Wolff, Ferguson Marine and Danish naval architecture firm Odense Maritime Technology (OMT). It is not clear yet which Frigate design is being pitched by Team 31: BMT's Venator, Babcock's Harrowhead or a variation of the Danish Iver Huitfeldt-class frigate designed by OMT. Team 31 is competing with BAE Systems and Steller Systems.

Easy teaming in a CIC with the MOC Mk4, Inter Console Unit and Collaboration Wall.

To keep TACTICOS up to date, Thales sticks to a "product management" approach: A new release/update to the TACTICOS system is released every six months and deployed in Thales' training and demonstration centers.

Thales also worked on new modules for its customers: Three years ago a "anti-piracy and counter drugs operations" module was successfully launched to help TACTICOS users with these specific missions.

The next generation of TACTICOS - the baseline 3 - is set to be unveiled in 2022. It will feature the latest improvements and technologies in term of elecronic warfare and cyber security.