Paris 2011: Thales Says MoD Not Concerned about Watchkeeper
The $1.6 billion http://www.ainonline.com/airshow-convention-news/farnborough-air-show/single-publication-story/browse/0/article/watchkeeper-uavs-

The $1.6 billion Watchkeeper program for the British Army has made Thales the biggest UAV company in Europe, and in its UAV systems laboratory, also known as the Soul battlelab near Bordeaux, the company’s engineers are exploring the requirements for future ground control stations and mission systems.

Watchkeeper, on show here outside the Thales pavilion, is due to start operations in Afghanistan at the end of this year, said Jean-François Henrio, vice president, airborne mission systems, in the Soul lab earlier this month, and training is under way at Larkhill in the UK. But the task of UAVs is to provide information with varying degrees of detail to specific levels of command, and the French and other armies do not have the same command structure. So the lab is used to develop mission concepts and simulate their execution.