The new company would head 3 operational entities: With the merger of GEC's defence business Marconi Electronic Systems and British Aerospace in 1999, the resulting BAE Systems acquired Marconi's 49.9% share in TMS.
BAE, through an options agreement, forced Thomson-CSF (now called Thales) to purchase its stake in 2001.
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.
TUS Ltd. has two main sites, Cheadle Heath near Stockport, Greater Manchester and Templecombe in Somerset.
The Cheadle Heath site was set up in 1977 as an overspill of the Ferranti Military Systems Division based at Wythenshawe.
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.
Ferranti eventually went bankrupt (again) in 1993, however the small, idiosyncratic Sonar Systems Group had become a successful standalone business.
The Marine Systems Division was established in 1961 at Uppark Drive Ilford but originated in a specialist underwater unit formed by the Plessey Company in 1948.
The sites at Ilford carried out manufacturing and support of the older sonars, such as Type 195, and the Mark 44 torpedo.
Plessey took over a company called Ameeco Hydrospace in the 1970s which specialised in building towed arrays.
In addition there have been sites in Bath (due to the then-proximity to MoD offices in and around the city, now entirely moved to DESG MoD Abbey Wood) for Prime Contract Management and a Joint Plessey Ferranti Office at Portland to support the Admiralty Research Establishment, but both are now closed.
It was involved in Sonar 2076, and for a period provided acoustic calibration services for naval vessels.