Thales has been selected for the French Ministry for the Armed Forces “Defence Platform” project. This project, which serves all of the Ministry’s users (military, civilian defense and affiliated personnel), enables the design, development in “agile mode” and the immediate production release of data-driven applications for new use cases, as well as their secure storage and exchange.

Since 2018, the Ministry for the Armed Forces has been engaged in a digital transformation aimed at making routine tasks simpler for users, by offering them new online services accessible from desktop computers and mobile devices: equipment orders, tracking of benefits, annual leave and transfer requests, administrative forms, etc. In this context, the mission of the "Defence Platform" project of the General Directorate for Digital and Information Systems (DGNUM) is to support the Ministry's departments in defining the needs of its users, and in identifying, developing and pooling new technical resources to enable the implementation of new digital services, in a shared and controlled manner. This project will also support the development of the Socle Numérique de Défense (Digital Defence Base), whose piloting has been entrusted to the French Armament General Directorate (DGA) and the DIRISI.

Following the "Defence Platform" call for tenders issued by the Joint Department of Infrastructure Networks and Information Systems (DIRISI), Thales was chosen to support the modernisation of the software development platforms. Under the agreement, Thales will deploy its “Athena software factory”, which is entirely based on open-source components from the software development environments set up by the Group’s engineering department for its own in-house needs. The solution applies DevSecOps methods to support design and continuous integration for fast and secure software development. Thales will also provide its expertise in cloud environments, data protection technologies and secure communications. Finally, the Ministry for the Armed Forces will benefit from Thales’s experience in agile project management, with Thales software developers working as part of integrated Ministry teams when appropriate.

This project will thus support the design and rapid production release of new cloud-ready digital services, capable of running in the Ministry’s future cloud environments, with guaranteed levels of security and trust for the Ministry and its users.