By Pierre Tran
Paris – MBDA, a European missile maker, will double investment to €5 billion ($5.7 billion) in 2026 to 2030 to boost production, and expects to increase output some 40 percent this year, chief executive Eric Béranger told March 26 a press conference on 2025 financial results.
That increase in capital expenditure follows a previous plan to invest €2.4 billion in 2023-2028 in company plant in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and allies’ demand for missiles to ship to Kyiv, and build up national stocks.
France called for higher output and faster weapon delivery after the Moscow assault on Ukraine, putting pressure on MBDA to reshape its business, manufacturing short, medium and long range missiles, while developing new weapons, including laser “effectors.”
MBDA has doubled missile production since 2023, the chief executive said, with factories working three shifts to speed up production.
Béranger welcomed Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s announcement the day before of a planned launch of France Munitions, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) or “platform” backed by public and private finance.
The SPV company would order large numbers of weapons and store them, to maintain a “strategic stockpile.” The company would act as “wholesaler,” acting in anticipation of orders by France, allies, and export clients, the authorities said in a briefing note.
France Munitions could place orders for hundreds of Aster and Mistral missiles, with large volume leading to new production lines. The authorities could then buy ready-made weapons as need arose and budget allowed, without having to wait, say, the year and a half needed to build a Mica missile.
There has been previous consideration of arms procurement with leases linked to SPVs, with then defense minister Michèle Alliot-Marie rejecting that for the FREMM multimission frigate. Leases and SPVs were also considered to pay for the A400M transport plane as well as FREMM warship, when Jean-Yves Le Drian was defense minister in 2015. A commercial bank, Société Générale, considered such lease deals when the ministry looked for alternative financing to plug budgetary gaps. Such financial deals were not completed.
Lecornu also told the lower house National Assembly the government would earmark an extra €8.5 billion on “munitions” in a revised military budget bill to be set before parliament.
“We plan to invest an extra €8.5 billion in orders between 2026 and 2030, adding to the 16 billion in the military budget law voted in 2023,” he said.
“It is indispensable,” the prime minister said in a debate on the Middle East crisis.
The French “munitions” term covers weapons, such as the Aster SAMP/T ground based air defense, early warning, drones, anti-drone interception, and loitering weapons, the authorities said. The aim was to produce these weapons in bulk while keeping cost under control.
There would also be €300 million of funding for companies building for dual civil-military use, Lecornu said. The funds would allow relocating production lines for military capabilities, modernizing plant, and helping civil firms invest in defense innovation.
There was need for European cooperation in the defense industrial and technology base, he said. Lecornu was minister of the armed forces before moving to the prime minister’s Matignon office last September, appointed by President Emmanuel Macron.
The French prime minister was speaking as tension remained high between Israel and the U.S., and their foe, Iran. The website of BBC broadcaster carried March 30 a photo of a U.S. E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system plane half destroyed, at the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia. An Iranian Shahed drone had hit that AWACS plane, reported Fars, an Iranian news agency linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations were under way with Teheran, after ordering more American troops into the region, and threatening to hit Iranian electricity, oil, and desalination plants, as well as Kharg Island, where Iran has a critical oil terminal.
Parliamentarian Jean-Louis Thiériot recommended use of the SPV in his official report to government, “European Industrial Strategy for Defense,” published last October. The capital for the SPV would largely be raised on the bond market by public and private sector partners.
Mica Missiles Hit Low Cost Drones
French air force pilots flying out of the French airbase in the United Arab Emirate have fired more than 80 Mica missiles against Shahed drones, financial website La Tribune reported March 30. Those French missiles cost €600,000-€700,000 per unit, while Le Parisien daily reported the Iranian Shahed low-cost drones were worth $30,000-$50,000.
Lecornu said he would visit in the next few weeks with the armed forces minister, Catherine Vautrin, a factory which would produce thousands of drones each month. Details of the company were not given.
MBDA welcomed the France Munitions plan. It is “an excellent initiative, highly judicious and innovative, to manage the issue of the constitution of stock,” Béranger said.
The missile company drafted its €5 billion investment plan before the Israeli and U.S. February 28 attack on Iran, which raised the need for industrial “ramp up,” he said. There were studies to increase production capacity in the light of the Iran conflict.
There was “need to prepare for the future,” with the planned investment to take place in Europe, he said.
The chief executive declined to say whether there had been an increase in the 2025 profit margin, saying what “kept him awake” was increasing production and capabilities, which meant significantly increasing investment.
Asked about the UK, he said he was very careful to speak about Europe, rather than continental Europe or European Union.
“For me, geography matters,” he said. “The UK is part of Europe,”
Béranger said he had attended the Munich security conference and had been struck by a speech by British prime minister Keir Starmer, who said the UK was “part of the European challenge.”
EU Council President Antonio Costa said March 24 he was confident the European Union and the UK would reach agreement on Britain joining the EU Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defense fund, Reuters reported. The UK pulled out of an initial €150 billion SAFE funding round last year, daunted by the size of financial contribution requested by France and other EU members.
On Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz was at the Munich conference, where he spoke of his European vision, and he said, “Europe needs to take care of its own conventional defense,” Béranger said. “To this end, Germany has made a number of decisions to grow its military capabilities…” and Merz added, ‘we do not forget our history, and we will not do it alone.”
Germany would “be part of a global European initiative,” Béranger said.
Meanwhile, Berlin’s plan to launch a €10 billion project for an independent military satellite network with German contractors Airbus, OHB, and Rheinmetall, separate from the EU’s IRIS satellite project has raised concern over a costly duplication of European low Earth orbit (LEO) systems.
MBDA’s 40 percent increase in production this year would cover the “full spectrum,” with focus on air defense, including a doubling in output of the Aster missile, Béranger said.
The company reported 2025 sales of €5.8 billion, up from €4.9 billion in the previous year. Orders slipped to €13.2 billion from €13.8 billion, with the order book rising to €44.4 billion from €37 billion. Europe accounted for 70 percent of orders, reflecting a “ramp up” in European demand.
The company would recruit 2,800 staff this year, up from 2,700 in 2025. MBDA employs some 20,000 staff.
MBDA is held by Airbus (37.5 percent), BAE Systems (37.5 percent), and Leonardo (25 percent).
Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a short series examining how Europe’s defense industrial base is being reshaped by wartime demand, drone-era production models, and the emergence of kill‑web concepts in real operations. Subsequent pieces will look more closely at Ukraine’s Flamingo program and the rise of integrated missile‑drone enterprises, as well as how European primes are being pushed from exquisite platform manufacturing toward orchestrating distributed kill‑web ecosystems that can scale, adapt, and fight at the tempo the new battlespace demands.