Defense Business Brief: Thales’ frigate pivot + 2026 lookahead with Leonardo DRS

Anybody need a towed sonar array? Thales has been brainstorming how to repurpose some that were designed for the U.S. Navy, but the service canceled the frigate that was supposed to tow them. It’s a situation that could befall other defense companies as Pentagon leaders urge nimble acquisition and insist that suppliers take on more risk.

Thales delivered two Compact Active Towed Array Systems to Fincantieri before the Constellation-class program was suddenly axed in November. The systems are now stored in warehouses, and parts for four more are on standby, Tony Lengerich, vice president for naval programs at U.S.-based Thales Defense & Security, told Defense One.

Lengerich says the sensor system—already installed on 50 NATO-member ships—could be attached to drone boats controlled by a “joystick and a button.” The company is working with companies competing for the Navy’s fast-attack USV program, Modular Attack Surface Craft, to bring the idea to bear. 

“We’ve already demonstrated the capability to put it at sea on a not-gray-hulled vessel,” said Lengerich, a retired rear admiral and surface warfare officer. “We could do this tomorrow. This is not something new.”

It’s an example of how defense companies are handling pressure from the White House, and Pentagon, to take on more risk and self-fund new technology needed for war.

“Overall, the big theme for what we’ve been trying to interest the Navy in follows the Navy’s operational concept of Distributed Maritime Operations,” Lengerich said. “In an anti-submarine warfare context, you also need to distribute sensors that would find submarines and detect them early.” 

Since there’s arguably an operational need, let’s see if the Navy likes the idea of putting them on USVs—or maybe even the new frigates.

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CEO 1:1

I caught up with Leonardo DRS CEO John Baylouny last week on the sidelines of the Surface Navy Association’s national symposium. Here’s a quick Q&A with him, edited for clarity and length:   

How are you adapting to White House and Pentagon policy changes?

• The future of defense really has to do with how fast we change, how fast we adapt. A lot of people look at [the war in] Ukraine and say, ‘what are the lessons from Ukraine?’ That it’s drones. I look at it differently. I think that the change is really how quickly they adapt. And drones [are] a tool, but I think it’s important to realize that speed is really important here. So I think [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] has this right: We’ve got to move faster because deterrence is really about how fast we move. 

Golden Fleet thoughts?

• We are going to need multiple, different kinds of ships. Whether it’s a battleship or a destroyer, or a series of medium USVs or small USVs—we’re going to have to have that full spectrum. So, focusing on the ability to develop a new ship class, I think, is spot on. I would suggest, though, however, that the nation approach this from a flexible standpoint. That, rather than building a destroyer or a battleship, we say, ‘let’s build an architecture that’s adaptable.’ 
• Look at what’s happening in the automotive industry. You look at Toyota, you look at Ford, [many of] the cars that come off those lines are built off the same chassis. Let’s build a chassis, for lack of a better term, architecture that’s adaptable to a battleship or destroyer or a frigate, or a medium USV, or even smaller.
• We’ve designed and manufactured and tested the Columbia-class propulsion system components. It turns out that that propulsion system is adaptable [that] way. If you want to build an architecture for a new ship class, or new ship classes, make it full electric, so that now you have the flexibility of pushing energy to the sensors or to the weapons…perhaps the AI infrastructure.

What’s in store for 2026?

• You’re going to see us moving more and more into autonomous platforms. You’ll see us move into USVs, for instance. We put a USV into the water last year that had a counter-UAS mission equipment package—you’ll see more of that in ‘26. 
• You’re also going to see [us], as we progress our software capability…bring all these sensors together. We’ve got infrared cameras, electro-optic cameras, radars, passive [radio frequency] sensing. We’ve got lasers…Now, we pulled together a software operating system we called SAGEcore…and that pulls all of these [sensor] data together and makes sense out of it. You’re going to see more use of that. 
• One step further, we also put a payload into space late last year. That payload has a software-defined radio in it, so we can talk on, on any waveform that we like, sort of a software-defined [cryptography] that we actually put on that payload. So we now have the ability to encrypt and decrypt in space. 

What about cloud computing and AI on ships?

• We found that there’s just not enough cooling on board these ships for that capability. And so we’ve invested money in another cooling technique for immersion cooling. All of these things, I think, are elements of a future ship. It’s an electric infrastructure that allows flexibility of where the power goes. It’s got modern sensors, modern weapons, a modern cloud computing infrastructure, and adaptability to different ship classes.