They need multiple batteries of SAMs though.
Some extracts from the statements of Éric Béranger, CEO of the MBDA missile company:
On the Aster, we are in the process of increasing our production rates by 50% compared to 2022. And we are going to drastically reduce production times.
Has this speaking out changed anything in your factories?
We are working with the ministry's services to speed up. Initially, 200 Aster were ordered at the beginning of 2023 with first deliveries planned for the end of 2025; now, we are working to be able to provide them by the end of 2024. And for 2025, we are going to try to provide them with much more than planned, that is to say around six times more than what was contractually planned!
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How do you plan to improve your returns?
To begin with, we must already make the best use of everything we have. Our factories have moved to three shifts wherever it is useful. We also stock. Today, we have around 80 tonnes of special steel, while in a year, we consume around four or five. As far as titanium is concerned, we have enough to make 3,000 missiles including Aster. To give you an idea, as of January 1, 2022, MBDA had inventories which represented approximately 500 million euros. Today, it’s a billion.
Are other changes on the agenda at MBDA?
To produce more, we must increase our industrial capacity. This is what we are doing with an investment plan for our factories, over the next five years, of approximately one billion euros for France and 2.4 billion euros for the group. Concretely, for example, we have doubled the surface area of the site where we carry out the final assembly of missiles, in the Center region, and we are in the process of replacing our electronics factory (which manufactures the brains of our missiles) with a new installation. brand new.
We are also investing in industrial resources, namely the purchase of machines, since there is a need to produce all the mechanical parts of the missiles. Over the next two years, we ordered around twenty of them and we even rented some for the Aster missiles, due to the urgency.
We are also in the process of injecting 35 million euros dedicated directly to the assembly line of this missile. Finally, we recruited some 2,600 people across the entire group last year. For France, this represents approximately 1,000 people, and we will do the same thing in 2024. From these recruitments, we have already opened fifty positions dedicated to Aster.
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The Aster missile is sometimes compared to its American counterpart, the Patriot. What makes them different?
Its autoguidance is very precise and it has exceptional maneuverability when it approaches the target thanks to a system called the Pif (force inertial pilot). When he approaches the target, he is able to move very quickly with very strong lateral acceleration, to get closer to it and to destroy it. Thanks to the combination of its precision and this capacity, it is very effective and has nothing to envy of American systems.
With your feats of arms in the Red Sea, the future looks promising. Do you hope for the missile to have the same trajectory as the Rafale internationally? We remember that the fighter plane took more than fifteen years before being exported...
I am convinced that there will be very strong demand. I already think that if we had more Aster missiles available today, we would sell a lot more. And unfortunately, many countries will seek to protect themselves due to evolving geostrategic tensions. Everyone sees the exceptional capabilities of this missile. When we have reached higher production rates, we will serve those who come first.
