Thales has been awarded a contract by the French defence procurement agency (DGA) to contribute to the development of the Rafale F4 standard, enabling the Rafale combat aircraft to maintain its superiority against new threats.

Under the Rafale F4 development programme, Thales says it will enhance the aircraft's onboard sensors and improve connectivity to offer a broader range of capabilities and new operational functions by enabling greater interconnection between the Rafale and other assets deployed on the mission.

In particular, Thales will prepare for the introduction of the CONTACT radio; secure, intelligent communications server technology; and a Syracuse IV satellite communications capability. To ensure high survivability, new threat detection and jamming capabilities will be developed for the aircraft's Spectra electronic warfare system.

Further improvements to the air-to-ground mode of the RBE2 active electronic scanning array (AESA) radar are also planned. In addition, the Talios optronic pod will incorporate artificial intelligence to analyse tactical data almost instantaneously in flight and extract and identify targets.

To satisfy equipment availability needs, Thales aims to develop predictive maintenance based on technologies such as Big Data and artificial intelligence.