(Bloomberg) -- European defense and space companies need consolidation to better compete with major global powers, the head of planemaker Airbus SE said, echoing longstanding calls to pool resources more effectively.
“There is room to find more ways of cooperating in Europe to create scale,” Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury told reporters at an aviation summit in Washington. “That’s really something I believe in.”
Europe’s aerospace and defense leaders have long called for consolidation to funnel resources on expensive projects like warplanes. Airbus itself, cobbled together decades ago from manufacturers in several countries, is a primary example of how it can work.
The company took years to overtake Boeing Co. as the world’s largest planemaker and now has become the dominant leader. Yet efforts to duplicate the model in space and defense have fallen flat amid infighting by companies and governments.
The failure to settle on a plan has slowed Europe’s progress. In space, US firms like SpaceX are disrupting competition for rocket launches, while Europe has competing programs for next-generation fighter jets.
“We need scale in Europe, on defense, on space as well, if we’re going to compete with the big players in the US,” Faury said. “There is room to find more ways of cooperating in Europe to create scale.”
Airbus is part of the Future Combat Air System consortium working on a new fighter-jet system that’s anchored by Germany, France and Spain. A separate program called Tempest is under way led by Italy’s Leonardo SpA and the UK’s BAE Systems Plc.
Faury launched a review of Airbus’s space unit in July after it racked up $1 billion in losses in the first half. At the event organized by the US Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, he said he’s speaking with potential partners to address what he called a “difficult situation,” declining to elaborate further.
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