IAV 2026: Thales developing threat prioritisation as part of DigitalCrew

Image of Thales' DigitalCrew interface showing target classification. (Thales)

Thales is developing its DigitalCrew software package to offer second-order effects and threat prioritisation, Stewart MacPherson, head of Digital Strategy at Thales, told Janes on 21 January at Defence iQ's International Armoured Vehicles (IAV) 2026 conference in Farnborough, UK.

“We're using the human-machine teaming group from Thales Research [and Technology] to understand – how do we reduce the cognitive burden?” MacPherson said. Thales' human-machine teaming group, part of its Research and Technology wing, is working with the UK Ministry of Defence's (MoD's) Armoured Trials and Development Unit (ATDU) on the upgrade.

“We're evaluating cognitive response under pressure, under cognitive loads, to see where we can use these algorithms to try and reduce the burden,” MacPherson said, adding that “it's difficult to say how much you are reducing the burden by and that's where we want to give an objective answer”.

The future upgrade for DigitalCrew will include what he called “the machine as the consumer”. “Our next generation of sensors will incorporate machine feeds,” MacPherson said, adding that the algorithm will run on a machine video feed, which will draw data from the human feed.

The Thales team is also working directly with the British Army's operators of armoured vehicles to understand their decision-making process when it comes to engaging with a target in a live scenario. “We don't want to just give them an image with boxes in it, because that will just overwhelm them,” MacPherson said.

During a video demonstration of the DigitalCrew interface at IAV 2026, Janes