Want to make India hub, keen to co-develop missiles: Thales

European defence major Thales wants to leverage its presence in India to create an export hub that can serve third countries and is keen on co-developing new generation missiles with technology transfer, a top company executive told ET.

Speaking at AeroIndia, India's flagship defence aviation show, Thales International President and CEO Pascale Sourisse said there are prospects to develop missiles with public sector unit Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) for orders that can potentially be in the thousands to meet the requirements of the armed forces.

The company has an ongoing collaboration with BDL to supply STARStreak Laser Beam Riding MANPADs (LBRM) to the Indian Army. Sourisse said this could be expanded to include more missiles as well, including the Light Multirole Missile (LMM) and future co-development of a new generation of missiles.


"The prospects are in terms of 1000s of missiles. It would make a lot of sense for us to use the capabilities established in India to not only serve the needs of the Indian Army, but also export from India," the senior executive said.

The French company is also setting up a new Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in Gurgaon that will cater to Indian needs. Sourisse said the company is also looking to expand it for export of MRO services from India as well.

"When we install support capability, it involves spare parts, it involves test benches and it involves people. We first of all want to make sure that this is serving the needs of our domestic customers, but we always ask ourselves, how can we use these hubs to potentially serve other customers," the senior executive said.