Last May 5th 2025, CEO Eric Béranger and Executive Group Director Programmes and France Managing Director Stéphane Reb welcomed Emmanuel Chiva, Director of DGA (Direction Générale de l’Armement) in Bourges Aéroport. This visit was the opportunity for the DGA to see the many investments made by MBDA, in establishing inventories of raw materials, components, and spare parts to meet the challenges of the war economy, and also the Group’s growing business.
Like our other sites in Europe, there is a profound transformation taking place in Bourges, from creating new buildings, to improving manufacturing processes. These efforts made by MBDA reinforce even more our autonomy and resilience in this particular uncertain geopolitical context.
By visiting Bourges, the DGA was able to see concretely what MBDA is doing to ramp up production, in order to meet the growth in demand and the need for greater acceleration on delivering decisive capabilities to our armed forces. For example, at Bourges Aéroport, more than 70 million euros have been invested in the short term, which has seen 25 new machines installed so far.
This example of investment is key to reinforce our programmes, like ASTER - missile creating by the cooperation between France and Italy, and successfully used on the battlefield in Ukraine and the red Sea – or METEOR – spearhead of the European cooperation between six countries, offering an unparalled superiority in the field of Air Combat.
The transformation of our sites is the result of the exceptional collective mobilisation and commitment of MBDA’s teams. Strategic stock-building and European cooperation are essential, while geopolitical uncertainties deepen. MBDA model is hence more relevant than ever to meet the defence needs of European states, with sovereign solutions.
