On Thursday February 15th, 20 24 Airbus presented 2023 results

• 735 Airbus Commercial aircraft delivered
• Revenues € 65.4 billion;
• EBIT (reported) € 4.6 billion
• Planning about 800 airplane deliveries in 2024. (This shows how long and difficult it is to come back to pre-Covid aircraft delivery levels: 800 in 2018 and 863 in 2019).
Several Airbus Defence and Space activities are bringing negative contributions in 2023: € 0.6 billion charges resulting from the update of Estimates at Completion of certain Space programmes (Onesat mainly) and € -41 million related to the A400M programme.

Let’s have a look to the multiple challenges Airbus Defence and Space has to solve in the coming years.

OneSat is the generic brand name for a series of satellites built by Airbus Defence and Space / Space Systems for satellite communications services in Ka band from geostationary orbit.
This program has to deal with 2 main issues: First, OneSat development has been launched when not having previously developed the required technologies to be embodied. This is cause for delays and additional costs. Also, the geostationary satellites services to be provided by OneSat are facing unplanned severe competition from the new ones obtained with numerous LEO (Low earth Orbit) satellites being put into service by many agile start-ups and some new big players.

As for Airbus Defence and Space / Military Air Systems, it is currently in charge of A400M program.

The particularity of the A400M is that it can be classified as both strategic (as a heavy transporter, for long distances) and tactical (capable of landing on runways in poor condition or unprepared terrain).
The negative impact of this mission mix on a single airplane, the program launch without all required technologies being available, political interference between the partners to allocate workshare, all this led to delays, cost overruns, an overweight airplane, reliability issues which are still existing today with the engines, leading to poor sales. This explains why A400M whose entry in service was in 2013 is still bringing negative contribution in 2023, ten years later.

Airbus Defence and Space / Military Air Systems is also working on Eurodrone, a €7.1 billion industrial project by a consortium of France, Germany, Italy and Spain and their major giants; Airbus Defence and Space, Dassault Aviation and Leonardo. The first deliveries of the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) are expected in 2029, 15 years after the project was launched.

Each country has a different use of the drone in mind: France wants a weapon to be used in the Sahel in Africa, while Germany aims at surveillance of its own territory.
Germany also, for safety reasons, imposed a twin-engine solution that will make the drone heavier and more expensive to produce, to maintain and to sell as competitors are mostly single engine.
If definition unchanged (a delayed preliminary design review for the Eurodrone project will be conducted later this year), it will remain to be seen if the Eurodrone in the end will fly as Europe’s preferred UAV, or remain in the arsenal of a few. Time will tell.

The third Airbus Defence and Space program line is “Connected services” which comprises Cybersecurity. Competition is fierce with Thalès which bought Cybersecurity Imperva company at the end of 2023 for $3.6 billion. Airbus is currently in talks to buy BDS (Big Data and cyberSecurity) to ATOS for $1.6-$2.0 billion.

Being able to master satellite technologies, military airplanes and drones, big data and cybersecurity (all Airbus Defence and Space activities) is key for having a significant contribution on the civil “connected aircraft” as well as for the FCAS (Future Combat Air System), a 6th generation fighter assisted with drones and fully connected to other surrounding friend airplanes/ drones, ground and satellites. These are the multiple challenges Airbus Defence and Space has to solve to bring positive contributions to Airbus Group results. Nadia Didelot for AeroMorning