Thales and SAES Deepen Sonar Partnership Behind Spain’s F-110 Frigates
Leadership from Thales’s Spanish division visited SAES’s facilities in Cartagena on October 20 to review their joint programs and explore new avenues for industrial and technological cooperation. Thales España president Jesús Sánchez Bargos, writing on LinkedIn after the visit, highlighted more than three decades of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) collaboration between the two companies.
No new contract was announced during the visit, and the companies have not detailed which programs might be added to the partnership going forward. The meeting instead put a spotlight on where the €27 million hull sonar (BMAS) contract, signed in 2019 to equip the Spanish Navy’s five Navantia-built F-110 frigates, currently stands — and on the potential for that relationship to expand further.
Three decades of partnership, a new chapter
The relationship between Thales and SAES dates back to 1992, when Thomson Sintra ASM — now part of Thales — took a stake in the Spanish company. Over the years, Thales transferred the technology needed for SAES to manufacture, integrate and test hull sonar systems in Spain, a capability that had not previously existed domestically. Sánchez Bargos said the transfer “has been a success” and turned SAES into an approved supplier for Thales’s export markets, though no specific export contracts have been announced yet.
The first sonar in the F-110 series was completed in May 2025 using materials from local suppliers. Around the same time, the integration of Thales’s Sonoflash sonobuoy into SAES’s SPAS acoustic processing system was ratified at the Feindef trade fair and is now operational aboard Airbus C295 aircraft. Sánchez Bargos stressed that such industrial alliances matter for keeping technological capabilities within the country, supporting what he described as Spain’s and Europe’s strategic autonomy.
The sonar backbone of the F-110 program
The BMAS hull sonar forms the backbone of underwater detection for Spain’s five-ship F-110 frigate fleet. The ten-year contract comes as European navies step up investment against submarine threats, and it reflects Thales’s technical confidence in the Spanish supply chain. Also present at the meeting were Guillermo Roselló Massa, Thales’s director general of defense, and José Javier Mármol Peñalver, president of SAES — though neither was quoted directly in the report.
Why it matters
While Thales’s statement did not include a new contract, it signaled that the relationship between the two companies is unlikely to remain confined to the current F-110 program. SAES’s status as an approved supplier for Thales’s export markets points to deeper potential integration of Spanish industry into Thales’s global ASW portfolio — evidence both that the supply chain supporting Navantia’s F-110 delivery schedule is maturing, and that Spain’s push for independent anti-submarine warfare industrial capability is advancing.
Sources
- Infodefensa, “Thales and SAES reinforce their alliance to develop anti-submarine technology in Spain and manufacture sonars for the F-110 frigates,” October 20, 2026. Used for the visit’s details, contract history and Jesús Sánchez Bargos’s statements.
