A consortium of Thales and Airbus Defense and Space is to supply digital geographic data on a range of scales to the French Ministry of Defense.

The data for the ministry's database will mainly be based on images taken by Pleiades satellites and will enhance the accuracy of maps.

"Thales is a trusted partner to the military and security industry," said Jean-Michel Lagarde, Thales' deputy general manager, Secure communications and Information Systems. "With GeoMaps, the consortium stands behind them, with support in theatres of operations, providing them with high added-value data to meet their varying operational constraints and conducting operations with intelligence systems.

"In an age of asymmetrical conflicts, being able to rely on highly precise geographical data gives them a real technical advantage on the ground."

The GeoMaps contract, which runs from this year until 2021, was issued by the French National Institute of Geographic and Forestry Information on behalf of the military's procurement agency. No monetary value for the award was disclosed.

The Thales-Airbus consortium dates back more than a decade and was founded to created TopoBase Defense, which GeoMaps now supersedes. TopoBase was a main element of a program called GEODE, a four-dimensional defense data program to integrate data on the nature and characteristics of possible theaters of operation.

The four areas of information: geographical, hydrographic, oceanographic and meteorological data.

In the future, the GeoMaps data will be managed by the GEODE 4D program and disseminated to all the defense systems and in all theatres of operations.

The consortium is to handle the mapping process -- from analyzing military staff needs through running quality control checks on the products supplied.