Europe's top rocket manufacturer MBDA increases by 33% in the middle of record orders

Paris – MBDA, Europe's largest rocket manufacturer, increased production and deliveries in 2024 by 33%, since the demand for European governments after air defense and ammunition of the battlefield has lifted orders to a record.

The manufacturer of Aster Air Defense Interceptors, which Scalp-EG/Storm Shadow Cruise Missile and Exocet Anti-Ship weapon expect to double the 2023 level this year, said Chief Executive Officer Éric Béranger at a press conference here on Monday.

MBDA commands have increased since the invasion of Ukraine in Russia in 2022. The European countries spend billions to strengthen their air defense and help Ukraine. The company can also point out concerns whether the United States is a reliable provider of weapons for Europe, since President Donald Trump hold back NATO security guarantees, increasingly match Russia and discussions about Canada and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

“This is a bit of a moment of truth for Europe,” said Béranger. “We have all the technological skills we need, we have brain, which means that it is really a question of what we want to do in Europe, which position we want to achieve.

MBDA is the only western company, except American companies that are able to produce “the entire range of complex weapons”, said Béranger. The company produces short, medium and long-term air defense rockets, cruise rockets, anti-ship rockets and tank defense ammunition and develops a hyperschall interceptor.

The company is a Pan-European joint venture between Airbus, the British BAE systems and Italy Leonardo and is based in a suburb of Paris. Local units in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy enable governments to protect some national defense interests of the group.

MBDA orders rose from € 9.9 billion last year in 2023 to € 13.8 billion (15 billion US dollars) and in 2021 compared to € 5.1 billion before Russia entered Ukraine. In the meantime, sales of € 4.5 billion increased to 4.9 billion euros in the previous year. The Order Backlog at the end of December reached € 37 billion, the highest ever, of € 28 billion in late 2023.

The war in Ukraine and the attacks by Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea since 2023 have increased the profile of MBDA products, some of which now have the “struggle” day.

Béranger mentioned the palpation of a Sukhoi combat jet by Ukraine using a French-Italian samp/t system with aster rockets and the use of scalp/storm shadow in Ukraine. French and British warships used Aster to access ballistic anti-ship rockets in the Red Sea, and the CEO said that the Italian navy also used the interceptor there.

“In 2024 you may have seen that the MBDA products were used in a number of theaters and were used very reliably,” said Béranger.

Denmark in the last week in the closer choice samp/t for A planned purchase of air defense systems in competition with the US patriot system to cover the upper end of the threat spectacle. For the lower end, the VL Mica system from MBDA with the Nasams of Kongsberg, the Iris-T SLM from Diehl Defense and the US IFPC is pending.

France, Italy and Great Britain last week confirmed an order For a further 218 Aster missiles, including the Aster 30 B1 variant for the three countries Marine and French and Italian Samp/T-Systems as well as the shorter Aster 15 for the French Navy. This is followed by a French-Italian order in December 2022 for 700 Aster rockets.

Béranger said with regard to the purchase of European or non -European purchase, the priority should be to keep the design authority in -house. The allowed MBDA within a few weeks that MBDA adapts storm shadow and scalp rockets to the Ukrainian Sukhoi aircraft, he explained.

“It was absolutely not foreseen, but because we had the design authority in Europe, we had the knowledge and we had the authority to decide how to do it,” said Béranger.

The CEO refused to say which MBDA products are subject to US export regulations or contain components of the United States. The company worked in 2019 to free the scalp of the parts that were subject to the US international traffic in arms regulation after the USA blocked the sale of the 2018 cruise rocket to Egypt.

The company will invest 2.4 billion euros by 2029 to accelerate production and is aimed at 2,600 new employees this year. This is after the recruitment of 2,500 people in 2024, which increases the workforce to more than 18,000 employees.

“The world has changed, which means that MBDA basically has to develop more industries for itself in order to deliver a higher speed and higher volumes,” said Béranger. “This happens on all of our websites.”

The company is prepared for some rocket parts and subsystems before it receives orders to be ready to deliver a number of rockets “very quickly” if this is requested.

According to Béranger, MBDA is “very, much ahead” for the plans to increase aster production in 2026 compared to 2022.

“With each of these goals that I mentioned last year, we are ahead, and this applies to a number of skills,” said the MBDA CEO.

MBDA works with startups to develop drones and direct ammunition, and talks to some industries, including automobiles, about the potential mass production if there is a need. “This is really a domain in which we merging because MBDA is not a drone manufacturer.”

Béranger said that laser weapons are coming, but more complement than rockets. “It will be an interesting addition, because in fact it is not very expensive to fire a laser.

Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy are working on separate laser weapons projects, and MBDA is involved in all four countries, said Béranger. If laser weapons are really effective, a lot of work and resources are still required, and the CEO expects the countries to cooperate at some point, and MBDA is positioned for this.

The company works as part of the future cruise/anti-hip weapon program on two rockets as a successor to scalp/storm shadow and exocet. The schedules for the high-speed maneuvering of the RJ10 rocket and the Stealth-Subsonic TP15 are currently consistent, which, according to Béranger, expects in the early 2030s.