The Pan-European arms-making giant behind the Storm Shadow missiles used in Ukraine is struggling to adapt its complex operations to a freshly stockpiled order book, providing a wake-up call for Europe as it enters a new era of rearmament.
MBDA, a producer of complex Aster missiles, has enjoyed booming demand as countries seek to stock up their air defenses amid rising geopolitical tensions. The group has doubled its order book since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to €37 billion ($42 billion).
The company isn’t wasting time trying to fulfill that extensive backlog, projected to take up to seven years at current capacity. That starts with a €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) investment drive over the next four years.
The Financial Times reports that MBDA is also set to double the number of hours worked across the company in 2025 compared with 2020. It has also quadrupled the size of weekend shifts, from three people to 13. The group said in March that it planned to hire 2,600 people this year.
MBDA is attempting to grasp an opportunity left by the U.S. following the election of Donald Trump, who has encouraged Europe to be better prepared to fend for itself on the combat front. The continent has earmarked up to $840 billion to spend on a rearmament drive.
“This is a little bit a moment of truth for Europe,” MBDA CEO Éric Béranger said last month. “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.”
The biggest issue faced by MBDA in taking its chance, and one that will sound familiar to other European manufacturers, is adjusting to a market where demand is of the highest urgency, a point summarized by Béranger nearly three years ago.
“The immediate consequence for us [of Ukraine’s invasion by Russia] is that we are asked to do more, to work faster, to deliver at a higher pace and we are asked to do all of this now,” Béranger said in October 2022.
MBDA is a unique weapons maker owing to its ownership structure. The French-based manufacturer was formed in 2001 through a merger of the subsidiaries of Airbus, BAE, and Leonardo, combining French, British, and Italian military giants.
That cross-border structure, celebrated as an inspirational example of European military coordination, has created headaches, not least the shipping of its unfinished missiles back and forth through the French and Italian Alps. This can add months to the production process and only appears to be required to satisfy the sovereignty needs of France, the U.K., and Italy.
The FT reported comments from an anonymous source who relayed the fallout of Béranger’s warnings from 2022, namely that the Aster’s development was realized when high-quantity demand wasn’t envisioned.
The group has discussed overhauling production with its major shareholders. However, so far these have run into opposition. Upping production capabilities is expected to reduce frictions, while the company has made faster progress on its less complex missiles. Béranger, though, provided a graver warning about the state of Europe’s military might.
“We need to be much more industrial, so to speak, in order to face [the] challenges,” MBDA’s Béranger told the FT.
