MBDA
From Scramble - The Aviation Magazine
Contents |
History
MBDA is a missile developer and manufacturer. It was formed by a merger of Aérospatiale-Matra Missiles (of EADS), Matra BAe Dynamics and Alenia Difesa (a Finmeccanica subsidiary) in December 2001. MBDA has three major aeronautical and defence shareholders - BAE Systems (37.5%), EADS (37.5%) and Finmeccanica (25%). The company employs over 10,000 employees in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany.
Subsidiaries
Roxel
Roxel is Europe's largest tactical missile propulsion group, owned equally by SNPE Matériaux Energétiques and MBDA. Roxel is an Anglo-French Company formed in February 2003 by the merging of CELERG of France and Royal Ordnance Rocket Motors of the UK. Roxel, is the largest supplier of propulsion systems for tactical weapons in Europe and the third largest in the world. Roxel is jointly owned and controlled by its two parent companies, MBDA and SNPE, France’s leading supplier of energetic materials, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. The company produces the propulsion system for key European missile programmes such as the Aster family of anti-missile missiles as well as supplying rocket motors for MBDA’s Asraam air-to-air missile, Aérospatiale Exocet anti-ship weapon, Vertical Launch Seawolf naval point defence system and Rapier/Jernas air defence system.
Bayern-Chemie
Bayern-Chemieis an acknowledged worldwide technological leader in the area of air breathing solid propellant ram rockets. With more than 15 European customers, Bayern-Chemie has comprehensive competence for solid rocket propulsion. The company's business activities cover the design, development and manufacture of a large number of missile propulsion systems, including the throttleable duckted rocket propulsion system currently developed for METEOR BVRAAM missile. The most important programmes currently under development include METEOR and various studies for double-pulse and gelled propellant propulsion systems. ALARM, BLACKCAP for Seawolf and VT1, as well as gas generators for INGA (submarine rescue system) and Sidewinder are currently in production. Main customers are MBDA and the German Federal Office of Defence Technology and Procurement (BWB).
Matra Electronique
The electronic production centre of excellence for MBDA, works in total synergy with technical and technological resources within the group and has strong links with the EADS group. Our expertise comes from our core business: embedded electronics for defence systems. At present, our customer also come from other business fields such as commercial military aeronautics, medical devices and oil and gas research and drilling, which have in common stringent requirements and very long life cycles.
LFK-Lenkflugkörpersysteme
In June 2005, LFK, a unit of EADS, agreed to be merged into MBDA. On March 1, 2006, LFK became MBDA Deutschland.
