been a major center of Thales' naval activities as well as those of its predecessor entities since the 1960s. The site has not stopped evolving since 1963. Opened as part of the Breton electronics plan in order to develop a local industry centered around airborne systems and underwater combat systems to compensate for the difficulties encountered in agriculture, it had since then the mission of producing military electronic equipment, including the first radar exclusively dedicated to maritime patrol, which left the workshops in 1965. Today, Thales' site in Brest is essentially dedicated to research and development. With some 1,000 engineers out of the 1,600 employees as of 2013, the four main areas of activities are mine warfare, submarine warfare, electronic warfare, and airborne maritime patrol and surveillance. These include the development of minecountermeasures sonar, sonar buoys data processing and dipping sonars for submarine detection. Aubagne TUS Ltd. (United Kingdom) TUS Ltd. has two main sites, Cheadle Heath near Stockport, Greater Manchester and Templecombe in Somerset. The company had a turnover of around £85 million with a total of 853 staff in 2006. Cheadle Heath The Cheadle Heath site was set up in 1977 as an overspill of the Ferranti Military Systems Division based at Wythenshawe. It comprised groups covering training simulators, communication systems and a small Underwater Systems Group which was engaged in the development of displays and computer interfaces for sonars equipment. The main parts of these sonars were developed by the Plessey Marine Research Unit at Templecombe, Somerset. The sonar work at the Cheadle Heath site expanded into digital signal processing, algorithm development, display generation, simulation, LCD and TV displays, mass storage, computer interfaces and highways. Takeovers of other companies brought new expertise in sonar arrays. The Sonar Systems Group increased in size and successfully bid against Plessey for parts of sonar 2054. Other parts of the Ferranti empire started to crumble, aided by the merger with International Signal (James Guerin) in 1987 to form Ferranti International. Ferranti eventually went bankrupt (again) in 1993, however the small, idiosyncratic Sonar Systems Group had become a successful standalone business. A Joint Venture Company was formed between the Ferranti liquidators (49.9%) and Thomson-CSF (50.1%) to form Ferranti Thomson Sonar Systems. The Ferranti share was bought out by GEC-Marconi to become Thomson Marconi Sonar Systems. FTSS had outstations at Weymouth for aquaculture sonar and other special systems. This is now closed along