PARIS — MBDA, Europe’s largest missile maker, boosted production and deliveries by 33% in 2024, as demand from European governments for air defense and battlefield munitions lifted orders to a record.
The maker of Aster air-defense interceptors, the SCALP-EG/Storm Shadow cruise missile and Exocet anti-ship weapon expects missile production to double this year from the 2023 level, Chief Executive Officer Éric Béranger said at a press conference here on Monday.
MBDA orders have surged since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with European countries spending billions to strengthen their air defenses as well as help Ukraine. The company may stand to gain further over concerns whether the U.S. is a reliable supplier of weapons for Europe, as President Donald Trump threatens to withhold NATO security guarantees, increasingly aligns with Russia and talks of annexing Canada and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.
“This is a little bit a moment of truth for Europe,” Béranger said. “We have all the technological capabilities that we need, we have the brains, which means that it is really a matter of what we want to do in Europe, what position we want to reach. This is the reason why the moment is absolutely historic.”
MBDA is the only Western company besides American firms capable of producing “the full range of complex weapons,” Béranger said. The company makes short, medium and long-range air-defense missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles and anti-tank munitions, and is developing a hypersonic interceptor.
The company is a pan-European joint venture between Airbus, the U.K.’s BAE Systems and Italy’s Leonardo, and is based in a suburb southwest of Paris. Local units in the U.K., France, Germany and Italy allow governments there to shield some national defense interests from the group.
MBDA’s orders jumped to a record €13.8 billion (US$15 billion) last year from €9.9 billion in 2023, and compared to €5.1 billion in 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine. Meanwhile, sales rose to €4.9 billion from €4.5 billion a year earlier. The order backlog end-December reached €37 billion, the highest ever, from €28 billion at the end of 2023.
The war in Ukraine and attacks by Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea since 2023 have raised the profile of MBDA products, several of which now carry the “combat proven” tag.
Béranger mentioned the downing of a Sukhoi fighter jet by Ukraine using a French-Italian SAMP/T system with Aster missiles, and Ukraine’s use of SCALP/Storm Shadow. French and British warships have used Aster to down anti-ship ballistic missiles in the Red Sea, and the CEO said the Italian Navy has 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 in a very reliable way,” Béranger said.
Denmark last week shortlisted SAMP/T for a planned purchase of air defense systems, in competition with the U.S. Patriot system, to cover the high end of the threat spectrum. For the lower end, MBDA’s VL MICA system is facing off with Kongsberg’s NASAMS, the IRIS-T SLM from Diehl Defense, and the U.S. IFPC.
France, Italy and the U.K. last week confirmed an order for an additional 218 Aster missiles, including the Aster 30 B1 variant for the three countries’ navies and French and Italian SAMP/T systems, and the shorter-range Aster 15 for the French Navy. That follows a French-Italian order in December 2022 for 700 Aster missiles.
Béranger said with regards to buying European or non-European, the priority should be to keep the design authority in-house. That’s what allowed MBDA to adapt Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles to Ukrainian Sukhoi aircraft within only a few weeks, he explained.
“It was absolutely not foreseen for this, but because we did have the design authority in Europe, we had the knowledge, and we had the authority to decide how to do it,” Béranger said.
The CEO declined to say which MBDA products are subject to U.S. export regulations or contain U.S.-sourced components, but said “every time our customers want us to be desensitized, we can do that, and we are doing that.” The company worked in 2019 to rid SCALP of parts subject to the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulation, after the U.S. blocked the sale of the cruise missile to Egypt in 2018.
The company is set to invest €2.4 billion through to 2029 to accelerate production, and targets 2,600 new hires this year. That’s after recruiting 2,500 people in 2024, increasing the workforce to more than 18,000 employees.
“The world has changed, meaning that basically MBDA needs to industrialize more itself in order to deliver higher pace and higher volumes,” Béranger said. “This is happening in all our sites.”
The company is pre-assembling some missile parts and subsystems before receiving orders to be ready to deliver a number of missiles “very quickly” if asked to do so.
MBDA is “very, very much ahead” of schedule on plans to raise Aster production by 50% in 2026 compared with 2022, according to Béranger. He said the company reached a target to quadruple monthly output of the Mistral short-range air defense missile already in 2024, rather than this year.
“We are ahead of time on each of those targets that I mentioned last year, and this is true for a number of capabilities,” the MBDA CEO said, saying that also applies to the Akeron anti-tank missile, CAMM air-defense missile and Enforcer infantry weapon.
MBDA is working with startups to develop drones and loitering munitions, and is talking to some industries including automotive about potential mass production, should the need arise. “This is really a domain where we are teaming, because MBDA is not a drone manufacturer.”
Béranger said laser weapons are coming, but will complement rather than replace missiles. “It will be an interesting complement, because indeed, firing a laser of course is not very expensive. Building a laser is expensive, but firing a laser can be pretty cheap.”
The U.K., France, Germany and Italy are working on separate laser-weapon projects, and MBDA is involved in all four countries, Béranger said. Making laser weapons truly effective will still require a lot of work and resources, and the CEO said he expects countries to start cooperating at some point, and MBDA is positioned for that.
The company is working on two missiles as part of the Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon program as successors for both SCALP/Storm Shadow and Exocet. For now, the timetables for the high-speed maneuverable RJ10 missile and the stealth subsonic TP15 are consistent, with the missiles expected in the early 2030s, according to Béranger.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
