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New weapons giants are born

01 May 2004

Europe's military enterprises are scrambling, in ever new combinations, to take the pick of the new common weapons market that is coming into existence:

France's SNPE, Saab of Sweden and Finland's Patria set up a new European explosives and propellants company EURENCO in the beginning of this year with headquarters in Paris. The company claims to be the European leader in this field with an annual revenue of 100 million euro and 25% of the market. It has plants in Vitavuori (in Finland), Karlskoga in Sweden (Bofors), Belgium (PB Clermont) and France (Sorgues and Bergerac).

Rival European fighter aircraft manufactures Dassault Aviation and EADS have agreed in June to work together on two key unmanned aerial vehicle projects that could later lead to co-operation in building a successor to their Rafale and Eurofighter combat aircraft. The two companies will develop together an unmanned combat aerial vehicle and a reconnaissance drone. The French ministry of defence will invest heavily in the combination (225 million euro), which might later be transferred to the new European Armaments Agency. This is a radical shift in strategy for the family-owned Dassault that always has kept its distance from EADS.

A new European satellite company is to be formed by France's Alcatel Space and Italy's Alenia Spazio. The company will do about half of its business in the military sector. The new merger will become Europe's largest satellite company with a combined revenue of 2.15 billion euro. The biggest defence projects for the moment will be the French Syracuse 3 military communication satellite program, the Italian military satellite communications system Sicral, and an observation satellite for dual civil-military use. The companies also team up on Europe's future satellite navigation system Galileo.

Jane's Defence Weekly 19.5.04, 23 & 30.6.04 (JAC Lewis)