Airbus armaments chief: Must become more resilient

Created: 06/21/2022, 13:34

Michael Schöllhorn is head of the Airbus armaments division.

© Matthias Balk/dpa

The ILA Air Show is more focused on the military than it used to be.

Large-capacity transporters, stealth jets and space technology are important topics.

The Airbus armaments chief explains his plans.

According to Airbus, bottlenecks in the global supply chains are increasingly affecting aircraft manufacturers.

The armaments chief of the European aviation group, Michael Schöllhorn, advocates increased efforts by the industry to arm itself for this.

"The disability is noticeable," said Schöllhorn, who is also President of the Federal Association of the German Aerospace Industry (BDLI), the German Press Agency before the International Aerospace Exhibition (ILA) beginning on Wednesday.

Airbus sees good prospects there for its wide-body transporter Beluga and is also presenting its Eurofighter fighter jet, among other things.

problems in the supply chain

"Even before the Ukraine crisis, the chip crisis only affected aviation in individual areas, but not in the same way as the automotive industry," said Schöllhorn.

In the meantime, it is also affecting the large suppliers to the aviation industry who build larger electronic assemblies.

“It is now a kind of shortage management.

If the supply chain doesn't work at several points, there will quickly be a ripple effect and the work processes have to be reorganized along the lines of: what can I build next now," said the head of Airbus Defense & Space.

In response, Airbus is looking for new suppliers, for example by developing other sources of titanium.

"I'm confident about that.

Already with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 we started to build up a certain inventory.

In the short and medium term we are thus secured.

The chip crisis is more difficult.

But that's our turn too."

The general aim is to become more resistant to disruptive factors.

"That is the lesson from both Covid and the Ukraine crisis," said Schöllhorn.

“There are certainly other geopolitical issues in the world that Europe needs to keep a very close eye on, such as the situation around Taiwan.

In this respect, there are efforts everywhere to redomesticate more.”

Expand business with large-capacity vans

The aircraft manufacturer wants to expand business with large-capacity transporters for the military and civilian applications.

“With the loss of the Antonov fleet, there has now been a vacuum in the wide-body transport aircraft space.

We want to prove ourselves in this market with the Beluga,” he said.

“We have to bring our satellites to Kourou in Latin America under certain conditions.

We've often done that with the Antonov.

At the moment, the Antonov is no longer flying,” he said, referring to the Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer, which has been the target of Russian attacks.

For the armed forces in Europe, there is also the question of how to get equipment from A to B.

Schöllhorn: "And of course the Beluga also plays a role in the considerations."

However, the Beluga machines are smaller than the Antonov, which can also transport significantly more payload.

The Antonov An-225 - the world's largest aircraft - was destroyed in the Russian attack on Ukraine in February.

It could still be seen at the exhibition at the last edition of the ILA 2018.

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The future of flight and space travel

Around 550 exhibitors will present their solutions for the future of aviation and space travel in Schönefeld from Wednesday to Sunday.

In addition to less pollutant emissions in air traffic, the military part is particularly in focus because of the Ukraine war.

The industry is keeping an eye on Germany's planned additional military spending of 100 billion euros.

However, Schöllhorn dampened expectations of rosy times for the aviation industry as a result of the investment package.

"If you subtract all the immediate needs from personal equipment to ammunition and so on, that's almost 40 billion, including VAT.

The rest then goes essentially - with a few minor deviations - to the major projects that we've been talking about for years," said Schöllhorn.

In principle, competencies were retained.

Airbus is happy to be able to deliver the Eurofighter to the Luftwaffe in a configuration for electronic combat - that is, for jamming, suppressing and attacking enemy air defense positions.

"For us, this is ultimately a natural continuation of what we once brought to the Tornado ECR with other partners," he said.

The first version with attachment technology should be ready for use by 2028.

Schöllhorn: "And then we will propose that in a second stage with the so-called Eurofighter LTE, i.e. with the next upgrade of the Eurofighter, we bring electronic combat capability into the software architecture and thus reach the next stage." dpa