[Foreign language]. Good morning, everyone. How are you today? Good? Good. It feels good to be in this place. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for being here today. It's a first of a kind. Well, actually not completely. It's the fourth Airbus Summit, but it's the first on defense. We started a few years ago after COVID and facing the challenges of climate change, thinking that Airbus had more to give than products and technical solutions. We could also provide a place for discussion, for exchanging ideas, views, trying to better understand how to build the future. Well, there's not just climate change around us. There's also a deep change in the security environment. Here again, we feel like there's something we want to bring to society, to the debate that goes beyond our product solutions that we will be speaking about later.
In Europe, it's no more than 75 years of peace. None of us in this room, I guess, has ever faced a situation of war that the generations before us saw in Europe. For 75 years, we've grabbed the fruits, the dividends of peace. Defense budgets have gone down. We focused on other priorities, thinking that we would have peace forever. We've put our security mostly in the hands of NATO, relying a lot on the United States, that was spending by far more, still spending by far more money for defense and security than we do. Things are changing. We find ourselves with wars at the borders of Europe. We see that we should not, we cannot take security for granted.
It's another change that is coming around us, where we think there's a need to better understand where we start from, what we have in our hands, what we are capable of, because we have to take security and defense, we have to take ownership for security and defense. We don't start from nowhere. Actually, when we look at the situation pre-Ukraine, I would call it like this, before the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the E.U. was spending five times less to procure defense equipment than the U.S. Around 60% of what E.U. countries were buying in terms of defense equipment was procured from outside of Europe, from non-European contractors. When you look at what the E.U. was buying to E.U. companies, compared to what the U.S. was buying from U.S. companies, it's less than 10%.
E.U. was buying less than 10% to E.U. companies than the U.S. is buying to U.S. companies. We start from a point where we actually do rely on the U.S., but today, U.S. is telling us, "Well, you have to take ownership of your own security. We might have other priorities in the U.S., and it's time for you to spend the money to develop the technologies that you need to defend yourself, to have a better balance in NATO spending and NATO responsibilities." It's not just theory, because we see that the aggression of the Russian Armed Forces to Ukraine, the conflicts in the Middle East, other forms of conflicts around the world, are challenging us on our capability to defend ourselves. We don't start from nowhere, as I said earlier. Actually, Airbus is the largest E.U. defense company. That's not what we are known for.
Airbus is known for commercial aircraft, for helicopters, for satellites, for a lot of systems, but mostly from the civil side. Actually, 80% of our turnover is in commercial and civil. Only 20% is in defense. 20% makes Airbus the largest E.U. defense company. We have developed ways of being strong in technologies in defense, because there's something we do really well, is to synergize civil and defense, civil and military. We call it duality. We develop dual technologies, dual platforms, dual systems, and for instance, if I take the H160M, the military version of the 160, it's the same platform for civil and military. It's been designed for that. These are techniques that you use when you're small in defense. When you have very large defense contracts, you don't need to do this. It's more complex.
Therefore, it's not something that the U.S. has done at scale. The U.S. companies in defense are mostly defense companies. They are specialized. That's not the point we start from. Today, we are happy to be here today. We're happy to share what we see, to listen, to debate, to be challenged. The reason we are doing this is because we have to accelerate. We are at a time where new technologies, like cyber, like AI, like connectivity, and on more traditional technologies like propulsion, and a lot of techniques are changing very fast.
Going to digital and high power computing AI enables an acceleration of the technologies. We are at a time of change in the environment around us. We are at a time of change in the way we have to take ownership of our own security, and we are at a time of change when it comes to technologies. There's a lot of change at the same time. The purpose of this first Airbus Defence Summit is to gather a lot of people from different horizon, is to make sure we better understand what we are capable of. In this time where we have to take ownership of our security, we have to remain humble. We should not overestimate what we are capable of, but we should not underestimate either.
Actually, there's a lot that we have in our hands, but it's important to be aware to know what we have. There's only one way of doing this. It's to come together, discuss, present, debate, and also see products. That's why we've decided to do it here, to have a sample of the system and the products that are being developed at Airbus. A lot of them are not known by the public because, again, what people know about Airbus is mostly about what they see in the air on the commercial side. I think there's something very special and very unique to the situation we're in. It's the need to come together. Actually, as I said earlier, we start from a level of spend that is much smaller than what other major players around the world are spending.
I mentioned the U.S., we have also in mind other big blocks like China, like Russia, like India, which have a very different scale. If we want to be efficient together, we have to make sure we don't spend the money in a fragmented way. We are developing and we need to develop systems that are very expensive, very sophisticated, that will be produced in small numbers, hopefully, as long as we are in peace, and therefore scale matters. To get scale in Europe, we have to come together. Actually, we're in a place where we need to spend more money in Europe. That's been made clear by a lot of governments. Since the Ukraine conflict has started, we see a very strong acceleration in terms of defense budgets and the quantity of money that is spent by different countries of Europe.
That's a good starting point, but this money must be used wisely and not in a very fragmented way, not giving scale. We need to come together. Actually, in Europe today, we are at a point where alone we go fast, but it's only by being together that we can go further. That's the agenda of today. Thank you for your presence today. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Guillaume. Big vision usually spark questions. Therefore, I would like to start with one of the questions which were raised already in advance. You were mentioning the word speed. Let's be real, Airbus is a big global player and not a lean startup, and that's why I'm wondering, or let's take the example of the Bird of Prey. It took us nine months, which could be in the Silicon Valley an eternity. Why should a young engineer rather join Airbus instead of a fast-moving company?
Well, Airbus is a fast-moving company. We're indeed 165,000 employees. That's a very large corporation. We are today the world leader in commercial aviation. We are the world leader in helicopters. We are European leaders in space, in other technologies, and we are not in this position by being slow and resting on our laurels. Maybe one other dimension of what we are doing is that we are constantly collaborating. Collaborating inside Airbus. We are a European joint venture by nature, but we are also cooperating beyond the borders of the company. 80% of what we deliver is actually something we have procured, and we have either procured from other large corporations, especially when we are buying engines, for instance, but also from a lot of small and medium-sized players. We are constantly cooperating and working with companies of different size. That's what we need for innovation.
I would not oppose startups and small companies with large corporations. I think we really need each other. We have also in our organizations, on our sites, different ways of operating. When you are in a production environment, you need to be super strict on what you're doing. You need high level of quality. It's a lot about rhythm and indeed, what matters is what we deliver, the quality, the safety of what we deliver, but we're also developing new products. In product development, it's innovation, it's labs. We have small entities that have a certain degree of freedom to be able to develop products and system at high speed. One of the challenges for us is that we are working on some products who have a rather long lead time.
It takes five, six, seven years to develop a new platform for a plane or a helicopter. We're also in cyber. And in cyber, it's day by day. It's very fast. We have to try to manage those different things. I would not encourage a young engineer to either work in a startup or in a large group, but maybe try both.
Start in a startup. It can be very fast, very agile. You can move into a larger group where you have a lot of means. You're part of a team that builds something that is a large scale, that gives a lot of meaning to what you're doing. Actually, you can be in one side or the other and collaborate with each other. We are at a time where, again, it's by working together that we will have the right speed and the right scale.
It's about the collaboration of both.
It's a lot about collaboration.
Phase. We're going to see incredible tech today. The moral question also still remains. Why contributing to defense and building also weapon systems, if we are honest to ourselves, is the ultimate contribution to freedom, Europe, and democracy?
Yeah, I think it's always important to give sense to what we're doing. We don't develop defense systems to go at war. We develop defense system to create the security environment we need for peace and prosperity. That's always been the paradox of war. If you want peace, prepare war, the famous saying. That's really the spirit in which we are working. That's the spirit in which Europe is acting together, with a dimension of doing good for humanity and protecting the assets and the people of the countries of Europe. That's the purpose of NATO, in which most of the countries we are operating in are today. The purpose, the meaning of what we are doing here, is to really equip ourselves to be in a position to have the safety, the security, to own our own prosperity, and to be able to defend ourselves.
In this world, you have to be strong if you want to be safe.
Okay, thank you. Let's open the discussion to our audiences. No script, no PR. You can raise your hand, and then we're going to provide you with a mic. Beyond that, we also have got an event app where you can raise your questions, and then afterwards we will rate them and have a look and going to continue with them. I see one over there.
Hi there. Benedikt Fuest with German newspaper, Die Welt. Last year, I heard from Airbus executives that the window of opportunity for FCAS is closing as engineers are not used any longer, manufacturing windows are closing. You're talking about the spirit in Europe. How do you keep that spirit alive in terms of FCAS?
Collaboration is not a walk in the park. It is at the very heart of Airbus. We have experience over the decades, the challenges of working together. We strongly believe in the need of a European Future Combat Air System. It's more than a plane, where we have today the difficulties with our partner, to call a spade a spade. We continue to believe there's the need for a Future Combat Air System for protecting Europe from the space and the skies in a connected environment, because that's today's technologies. We are at a difficult juncture when it comes to going from phase I-B to the next stages, and we are currently at a point where governments are working together to find a way forward. At Airbus, we'll continue to support a collaboration in Europe for those systems. That's very clear.
The fighter that is at the core of the difficulties today, there are different way forwards, I would let it to governments to reflect and decide what they want to do. They are the ones paying industry to develop the systems. We are beyond the plane. We have the so-called Combat Cloud. The connected environment in which we want this to be developed. We want objects, drones, helicopters, planes to collaborate. That's something we are very focused on that will need to continue anyway. I am optimistic for the FCAS as a system. At Airbus, we continue to collaborate to work with different countries. We have a difficulty on one of the pillars. It's not the easiest one. When we look at previous experiences, and in particular in the U.S., taking the best example, which is the F-35, at the end, it's not just one plane.
Actually today, the F-35 is three different planes. I think there's different ways of reaching the same objectives. This program was started before Ukraine, was started in peace time under a number of assumptions which are no longer valid today. I think it's better to face the difficulties and the realities of what will come in the next decade for FCAS now, rather than correct it later when we've gone a long way forward. It's probably a necessary pain at this level to face those difficulties and then move forward. Again, I think the important message I want to pass is we believe this is by collaboration that we will have the right scale to have a competitive Future Combat Air System. We remain committed to it.
I think there's another one.
Yes. Good morning. Down here. Andreas Krog from Danish media, Altinget. You talked about that European countries have been buying American, but isn't the problem because of that European defense industry have neglected to develop, for example, a five-generation fighter jet? What you can show us today is a fourth generation fighter jet developed in the '90s. You have neglected to give us the products on the shelf that we needed.
Thanks for the challenge. I take it with pleasure. Well, in commercial, we develop our own products. We specify, we self-invest, and we bring products to the market. In the field of defense, the rule of the game are not the same. You develop products for governments on their spec. They decide the amount of money they want to allocate, to whom they contract, and they decide by when they do this. Actually, what you are saying is, well, Europe has not developed enough at the right time to be at par with the U.S. on a number of large-scale systems. Indeed, a fifth-generation fighter, I mentioned the F-35 before, is something that requires hundreds of billions of EUR or USD to reach the objective. This money has indeed not been committed to in Europe so far, so we don't have a fifth-generation fighter.
Actually, we have three aircraft of the previous generation. We have been fragmented in the way we have developed products. Two of them are pure national products. One is the Eurofighter, the third one that we are contributing to. We are participating in the Eurofighter. The Eurofighter is a rather good blueprint of an example of collaboration, as it is a collaboration between the U.K., Germany, Spain, and Italy. We are not starting from nowhere, but we've not put the quantity of money, of resources, equivalent to what the U.S. has done, and this is currently being changed.
What I strongly would like to advocate for is that we don't go for three, four, five different type of systems in Europe where we still have less resources than in the U.S., that we make sure we focus our effort, and we can have the scale that is required to be at the right level of technology at the right time. That's the ambition of the FCAS that we were discussing before. That's the ambition of a number of projects around us. At Airbus, we think our contribution is by putting companies' capabilities together, by creating the collaboration on what I call the supply side, meaning the industrial consolidation to be at that scale by definition, by nature. That's what we've done in commercial aviation. 50 years ago, Germany, France, Spain, U.K. brought their assets together to create a company at scale.
Today, we are world leaders in commercial aviation. That's also what we have in helicopters. With Airbus Helicopters, we are the world leader because we have created the scale by combining the capabilities. We've done this in missiles with MBDA, and we're trying to achieve the same in space by creating a larger company in Europe under the code name Bromo with our competitors, Leonardo and Thales. We are trying to create that scale to be able to get to the point where we will have the most modern products, including in areas where a lot of money has to be committed by governments. Again, to come back to your question and my starting point, in defense, we work under contracts. We develop products and system under a specification.
We cannot go to market without the approval of the countries, because these are defense systems to go to war, and it's not a free market.
Thank you. I think we had one here at the front row. The question, right?
Plenty of questions.
There's the mic.
Hi, I'm Tina Kiensko from Danish newspaper Politiken. You have said that we need to stand together and it's important to make big scale in order to defend ourselves. At the same time, you're saying that now with the FCAS project, it's up to the governments to decide. The situation right now is that it's actually not a government issue, as I understand. It's an industrial issue. It's an industrial conflict. Doesn't this exactly show why it's unrealistic to create a common European cross-border project?
No. I think it's the opposite. FCAS is more than one pillar. It's seven pillars. Actually, we don't speak a lot about the other pillars because they're working well. All the attention is on the fighter jets because this is the place where we have difficulties. The difficulties are, in my view, coming from two main sources. One is that the project was launched before Ukraine, at a time where we were ready to make a lot of compromise, we being the armed forces, to get to a product at a minimum cost. Now that we are in a scenario of potential conflict, real conflict of war, the specifications become more important. Armed forces really want to get to the point where they will face an enemy, and they want their systems to really reach the objective.
It's less easy to make compromises between different type of needs. The second one is indeed that the industrial companies don't work in the same way. They don't have the same DNA when it comes to development of systems, and we've seen in phase I-A and I-B that there is a lot of difficulties to reach those compromises, to make those offsets with different type of governance and leadership models in the companies. That gives, in my view, a lot of support to the idea that we need to align as well industrial interest, and that's what we've been doing at Airbus. At Airbus, we are a joint venture where interests are aligned inside the company. It's much easier to develop a multinational program when you have one company serving these different needs.
That's what we've been doing with space recently, trying to put the industrial assets together to make sure that for large constellations, that would be European constellations or military programs, we would be able to come with a solution developed by one company. Then we manage the complexity and the difficult arbitrations, the difficult trade-offs that we have to make inside one company where interests are aligned. We need also industry at scale if we want to serve large European programs, or we need to make sure that the collaboration is made between companies that are compatible in terms of governance and ways of working. That can happen as well. At Airbus, we have collaborations with Leonardo and BAE Systems in the Eurofighter, which is in the room, and it's working. Not all companies are capable of cooperating with each other. That's the difficulty we're facing today.
Two challenges. One is change of nature of the program with different security environments, and also the fact that we need companies that are capable of collaborating and working together with similar ways of working.
Okay, thank you. I'm looking at the time, and the last 30 minutes are on, and we also have got the questions online. No. Okay, we're going to continue with one last question, if you're fine with that. Here in the front row. Yeah, I think somebody's coming.
Oh, it's the press asking questions.
Yeah, I was also looking for the young.
Yeah, maybe we can-
Okay, we take over there. Yeah. Your turn.
Thank you so much. I'm Jairo Tiscar. I'm part of the Youth Atlantic Treaty Association in Spain, and I wanted to ask you about the youth people here. You have a lot of Airbus employees, other people that we work in defense, or we want to work in defense. How do you see the new generations? Are we up to the challenge to get delivery faster? What are your main takeaways, or what do you ask for the new generations, and what also you can see that we can provide to Airbus and to defense in Europe? Thank you so much.
Well, maybe I'll answer in this way. Speaking to, you said young generations, people that go for their first job or second job. I think what is important in our lives at work is to work for something we really believe in, is to wake up every morning and go with energy at work, engage in something you believe in, serve a bigger cause. I think defense and security is a bigger cause. There's a lot of reason to come and work in companies that are working for the general and common interest in defense. What is challenging when you are starting your first job, your second job, is to know what you want to do, what you might have a passion for.
I would recommend to explore, to try, to test things, discover what you like, what you don't like, and then when you find something that really motivates you, energizes you, then go for it, and go fully for it. At Airbus, we're trying to be open on what we're doing. We have plenty of different activities and different type of jobs. We are in traditional technologies that have enabled us to the product you see here, but we're also very big in software, in digital, in cyber, in AI now, and we need this combination of skills, of competencies. We need to merge them and to combine them. We are excited by seeing the new generation coming. They have a lot of different skills.
It's not always easy to make people of different generations, different countries, different backgrounds work together, but that's what we do at Airbus, and honestly, it's very exciting. I can only encourage you to try at Airbus. Explore, come work with us, either inside Airbus or, as I mentioned earlier, with some of our partners and other companies. The ecosystem, the performance of the ecosystem is very important. Thank you for your question.
Okay. I think we reached already the end.
You're also the time manager.
I am everything.
Okay.
I think we reached the end. Thank you very much, Guillaume, for all of the insight.
Thank you.
Also I'd like to rehearse the thanks.
Thank you for being here again. Thank you.
To understand how all of these concepts are put into action, it's my pleasure to welcome two leaders responsible for exactly that task. Please welcome the CEO of Airbus Helicopters, Matthieu Louvot. Please welcome the CEO of Airbus Defence and Space, Mike Schoellhorn. Last but not least, Aurélie Hunet, my co-moderator.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Andreas, for the introduction. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. You don't need much introduction, so I think we should just start right in, go into the questions, if you don't mind. I just wanted to pick up on what Guillaume Faury was just talking about now, and I think one of the ways we can sum it all up is saying that there is obviously a need for greater European sovereignty. In this video that we just watched, we saw a lot of those capabilities that we will manufacture with our partners and hope to sell. You are responsible for delivering that sovereignty. Can you tell us a little bit, we're here in Marseille in what is usually a production site. Can you tell us a little bit about how you deliver on the day-to-day that sovereignty?
Should I start?
Start first.
Well, we see in this hangar, the H160M. I think it's a good example of all what Guillaume has mentioned about the way we deliver sovereignty. It's a dual platform. There is a lot of expectations for the industry to invest, ahead of getting specifications and budgets from the governments. When you do dual platforms, it's what we do. It's not something new. It's something Airbus and Airbus Helicopters has been doing for 20 years or even more. We develop platforms that are made both for the civil and the military market. On day one, we take in mind both the needs of our civil customers that will do, I don't know, medical missions, that will do VIP missions, and the military customers, which can do navy missions, army missions, air force missions.
We develop the platform, and then we come to a military version where we get some development budgets from the governments and what's happening in the case of this aircraft with France, where we develop versions of this aircraft both from army, navy, and air force. It's a blend of funding from the governments, from the industry, and it allows us to be reactive and also to make an aircraft which is consistent. You don't need too many versions. It remains affordable, it remains very competitive because it must be competitive on the civil market. I think it's the model we want to promote and that has proven extremely successful in the helicopter world.
Mike, we're in your country. Tell us.
Yeah.
In your country. I mean country.
Let's say-
ADS, I don't know, this is your home. Tell us about what you're doing here now.
Yes. We're in the place where we make military aircraft. We're in my country, we're in my Europe, I would say. Maybe starting with the latter, as usual, Guillaume has already covered a lot of ground in terms of answering the questions. I think what we try to do every day with our people is to give the best that we possibly can to our armed forces that we serve. We do that by largely European projects. We have a few specialized military projects and programs like the Eurofighter, still the most successful European fighter program to date. We're not making as much fanfare as others, but it is still the case. We do what was also covered before. We do dual use platforms which don't fit in today, like an MRTT or like AEW&C aircraft builds based on commercial airliner models.
We try to find synergies across Europe to give the best means possible to our armed forces. The other thing that we do is, and that's very much relevant today, is we partner, we create ecosystems. We work together with other companies, that can be even competitors at times in certain programs. It can be startups, it can be all kinds of other companies. This is what I think Europe can be the best at when we make it work, and where sometimes, as we see in Brussels or as we see in other places, and sometimes we struggle as well, this is not always easy to bring together all these different viewpoints, all these different companies. I think if there's any one company in Europe that can do it's us.
You were mentioning the European part of it, but let me ask the tricky question. Can we really say that European collaborations are successful, looking at the beginning of the NH90 as well as the A400M, which was not an easy story?
Well, I think the two programs, I'll let Matthieu speak to helicopters, but I think in my view, the two, having been an ex-helicopter pilot, so I can talk a little bit about helicopters, I think both are actually very successful programs. The only problem is it took too long to make them successful. There's a big lessons learned in that. I think what we need to continue to do is collect the needs of armed forces in Europe. Probably what we need to do better going forward is not make it too complicated, not allow for too many variants, not allow for all the different requirements that people can almost create like a wish list.
that were both projected onto the A400 and the NH90. We made them work. Again, it took too long. I think we have plenty of examples where European programs are very successful and, yeah, sometimes also difficult.
Well, at first, I think the NH90 is a resounding success. We sold 500 of the aircraft. For those who don't know what the NH90 is, it's the first helicopter in the world which has fly-by-wire, which means it's driven by computers, not directly by the pilot. It allows, for instance, to fly nap-of-the-earth, extremely close to the ground, and remain undetected by the radars, remain very survivable, which is exactly what Europe needs in helicopters nowadays. It was the right platform. It is an extremely performing platform. Yes, it was difficult to develop, but purely national programs, when they're ambitious, they're also difficult to develop. You don't make a very sophisticated program without some difficulties in finalizing it. It's true for cooperation programs. It's true for national programs.
Now what we have is the best helicopter in the world, for instance, to hunt submarines. No helicopter does it better. I think European cooperation, in the case of NH90, for me, is an absolute success.
Talking about European corporation, we just heard there obviously a lot of questions about FCAS and Mike, I'm sorry, but to bring it up myself.
No.
Is there something else that you can tell us? Can you update us as well a little bit today? We just had updates already three times, this is in the past half hour, but maybe you can also say something yourself on the program. We're used to in Airbus, to work Franco and Germans together. We have Spaniards, we have 1 million nationalities, but it's not that easy, let's say, really, to do it on a European level.
Well, as usually I could say my boss gave a perfect answer and I could keep it very short. As you're asking me as well, FCAS is more than the fighter jet. FCAS is a system of systems approach, and most pillars are working very well. I think that's something that cannot be repeated often enough because it's easily forgotten with all the quarrels around the next-gen fighter. It's an example of how certain difficulties that were probably not seen early enough in 2017 when the program was started, are actually now becoming bigger problems than people would've expected.
One is the operational needs that have all been brought together and try to project into one fighter design, which turns out is quite of a compromise that is currently less and less acceptable, because the air forces of today actually think we might have to use the product. I don't think that was the state of mind in 2017. It was, of course, we want the next plane. We want to catch up. We want to make the jump from the fourth to the sixth generation. We talked about the missing of Europe, the missing out of the fifth generation. Now we have quite distinct needs that come from different air forces that I think is one of the lessons learned off the A400. Don't project all of this into one aircraft. At least it's not so easy.
It sounds always great to say it's just one aircraft and we maximize the volume, but if it's actually at closer sight, not one aircraft, but like the F-35, it's three aircraft. The Americans have also come to the same conclusion, "We're never going to do this again.
Yeah.
It's just pressing too much into one pseudo design. The second part is the DNA of how we understand what European cooperation is and how we think this should be done and how a program of such kind should be led. As we know, another company looks at it very differently. That's been said before. Nothing has changed on this. We're now seeing what the countries that at the end of the day will give us the task and the order to produce and to develop something, what they come up with. I continue to think there will be a collaborative solution also for the fighter in Europe.
I guess we forget also that building a platform, whichever it is, takes time and a lot of money, and it's highly sophisticated for a project. I wonder, I think like Guillaume Faury was saying earlier, there's been a lot of commitments to increase budgets and there is a lot of money that's been going at least, into the U.S. instead of Europe in the past years. When we look at what we already produce, what we already have, like we were saying, we make based on demands and based on contracts. I'm wondering, do we have the contracts? Is that how we work still? Should that be how we work to wait until also our customers ask?
Okay. Well, I think it's both. The defense model, and I think it was explained before, is still very much you have a very dedicated set of customers. You don't produce just because you think there's a market and you are free to produce something for the market, because that's not how it goes in defense. Defense is a very specific model and you cannot just export to anybody you choose as a company. You need your customers to really tell you in your home countries, if you will, to say, "We want this product." Especially when it's about very sophisticated products. We can pick any startup or any company on the planet to design a next-gen fighter jet will take more than a few years. Now, there's the other products that are coming very fast, affordable mass drones, everything else.
More and more also in space where everything is more commercialized these days. That's the area where we need to also pre-invest. We need to make a dedicated selection of where do we want to pre-invest our own money to then have an offering early enough because otherwise we would be too late. Where is it, A, too expensive and too risky for a company to just say, "You know what? Let's design a 6th-generation fighter aircraft. Hopefully somebody buys it." Probably my board would kick me out if I came up with that proposal. That's the two different models that we need to be able to play.
I think at the end of the day, whether the company self-funds the investment or pre-funds the development or gets development money from the governments, in Defense, the taxpayer ends up paying it because the taxpayer is the ultimate buyer. Even if the company pre-invests, it will need to recover its investment plus a significant risk premium, at the end of the day when it sells the aircraft. The first way to make Defense programs affordable is to split the bill among Europeans. Europe cannot afford developing too many next-gen fighters or too many helicopters. If we take the next generation helicopter for Europe, let's say it's a EUR 5 billion ticket of development. If one country does it, 50 million taxpayers, it's EUR 100 per taxpayer. If it bought by all the Europeans, 500 million taxpayers, it's EUR 10 per taxpayer, much more affordable.
It's really important to continue to do cooperation programs. Europe can just not afford in the current environment to duplicate, triplicate, quadruple its development budgets on each defense system. It's why we work with our competitor, Leonardo. We successfully made together the NH90, and we're willing to work together on a next generation rotorcraft for Europe with some European Union budgets. We have gone together, for instance, for the studies for the next gen of the block two of the NH90, which is the mid-life upgrade of the NH90. We might develop together a next-gen helicopter, in the same way because we think, and it's shared with Leonardo, that cooperation is the way to go for the next generation rotorcraft in Europe.
I guess that is one of the lessons we're seeing from the past few years, with the war in Ukraine, that cooperation is definitely a key aspect of that. I guess another key aspect of what we're seeing in Ukraine is how important it is to have every platform working together and the use of a Combat Cloud, which I'm going to need a definition of what that is because we hear about it a lot also in the FCAS context, and I'm not sure everybody really understands it, myself included. I was wondering when we look in the future, this integration of all the platforms together, is that something that we can apply to the legacy platforms, what we've already built? Or is it something that can only come with the newer projects that we're developing now?
You want to define the Combat Cloud, Mike?
Okay.
Explain, please. One sentence.
Maybe there's a more technical definition for the geeks here. At the end of the day, it is a technical stack that goes from infrastructure all the way up to apps that connects physical assets.
The non-geek?
If I were to explain it a bit more in popular terms, I would say it's sort of a central nervous system of assets that have to be able to collaborate and to fight together. That's just the simple definition of it. You can go into much more detail, I think this is what it is. With most of us having an idea of what cloud is, I think Combat Cloud is not such a bad word to understand it. To your question in terms of is that by design or is that sort of tucked on later? It depends. For new products, it is an essential requirement to be connectable, and to have the means to do so. In every new design that's clearly built in by design and from the get-go.
If we look at the Eurofighter, of course, the Eurofighter has certain levels of communication, like a Link 16, that's not fit for the job fully in terms of a true Combat Cloud. We are working on ways to bolt that on and to enable existing platforms as well, because the Combat Cloud is not only for new stuff. It will have to connect everything that flies today, whether it's a helicopter, a drone, or a manned or unmanned fighter jet.
If I had to define the need for connectivity is before all was done by the same platform. You were identifying where the target was, navigating towards it, designating it, firing on it. These functions can be split.
Like in "Top Gun," when we see them.
Yeah. Now these functions can be split. One drone can find where the target is, another one can acquire it, I don't know, with a laser beam, and a third platform fire a weapon on it. All these functions which were coordinated inside the aircraft by the pilot and by the system of the aircraft now are spread among all these platforms. Information has to circulate in a very safe way, not be jammable and not be spoofable. You must have the IT system to absorb all this mass of information and make it manageable by a crew in a helicopter. Sometimes it's just two people. That has a lot to do on piloting the aircraft at the same time, by the way. It's happening already.
This aircraft, so the H160M, has several dozen antennas to manage satcom, to manage all kinds of communications, and it will have a very sophisticated mission system, capable to absorb all this information and make it manageable by a small crew. It's definitely something which has to be done at Airbus scale between the aircraft, the A400Ms, the MRTTs, the helicopters, and to connect, of course, with other platforms, with the ground, with the tanks, with the troops on the ground, with the air defense. It's absolutely necessary, and it's why Airbus is a platform company, will remain a platform company. Platforms are crucial. It has to become as well a software company, to make all these communication systems work.
Thank you. You were mentioning the collaboration of the Combat Cloud, the teaming, the different platforms which are connecting with each other. Some other would say the times are over. It's rather a matter of autonomous flight.
Why are we going for crewed/uncrewed solutions instead of for targeting the bigger or long-term picture of autonomous flight?
The two are very complementary.
Drones can think that what manned aircraft cannot do, the Flexrotor here flies 14 hours. It's a small thing, 25 kg. You keep it in flight 14 hours. You cannot have a crew sitting in a helicopter flying 14 hours. Drones do things that a crewed aircraft will not do, but crewed aircraft do things that drones will not do. I think it will be a long time when you carry 10 troops in a helicopter, that you will put them in this aircraft without a pilot. We need both, and we need to make both team together. It's why we developed, for instance, a Crewed-Uncrewed Teaming, so we call it, in a very short time last year, seven months, to team up this Flexrotor, this drone that we have with the H225, the Caracal.
We have made a demo in Singapore, and that will be the future. Drones and manned aircraft will work together. We will have different missions. Sometimes it's true, some drones will replace aircraft, but when a drone is so big, for instance, that it carries a lot of weaponry and it's a four-tonne aircraft, this is an unmanned helicopter. It's not really a drone anymore. All the competencies we have developed to make such large platforms safe and going far away, in a very controlled manner, this is an expertise that Airbus Helicopters has, which is unique and which is needed to make four-tonne drones as well as four-tonne helicopters.
Mike, what's your perspective, seeing the Valkyrie right over there?
Yeah
Talking about crewed/uncrewed.
In so many words, yes, a lot of the future will be unmanned, uncrewed, will be autonomous, but not everything. Maybe in 100 year, everything will be autonomous. I think there's an element of timing. Currently, as we see, and we know that from simulations that we do, that we know Americans do, and other sophisticated countries do, we have an advantage of 4 to 1 if we have a Crewed-Uncrewed Teaming versus a simple, well, a simple, an only uncrewed approach. There's an operational advantage still. Why is that? There's many reasons why that is, but we have to think of battle as being something extremely complex and fast-paced and agile and unpredictable. Let's be honest with ourselves. I worked for some time, when I was doing my journey of finding the right company over time and trying things, I worked in automotive-
Automotive
in automated driving. We're still struggling today in automotive to have what is called Level 5 automated driving.
It's a very benign environment if you compare it to a war situation because you get a red stoplight and you can trust it's a red stoplight. In a war situation, somebody spoofs you, somebody does something, the red stoplight is not necessarily red. Maybe it's green, maybe it's amber.
That's the kind of situations where the human intelligence is still, at least as we speak, superior in terms of understanding that something is not quite right.
The other thing is you're going to have in a battle, bubbles of non-connectivity where you don't have access, where your drones don't have the full access to all the intelligence that they need, and they're based on their edge intelligence might not be capable enough. You have a command fighter with a pilot sitting in that command fighter, of course, using all the unmanned assets, but that combination is what makes it stronger, and that's what we're working on. In the future, and to bridge into that world that will be more and more unmanned, you can design aircraft as being optionally piloted.
A fighter jet can be designed to say, you can fit a pilot in. That of course makes it more complex, makes it more expensive, but you can have that basic principle design and leave the pilot out.
If we go more and more into unmanned, I guess maybe a yes or no answer, do you think at some point the robots will be able to do it themselves, everything, or will there always be a human somewhere? Will we be having armies of robots?
I think for ethical reasons, especially when it's about firing weapons, doing this type of life or death decisions, we never think the human should be in the loop. At the end, it's our customers in defense who also have the final say. I don't think you'll have purely robots all along the kill chain, exclusively without a single human in it.
I don't want to speak about other continents, but I would say as a European company that fights to preserve European values and European way of life, when it's a decision over life and death, I think as long as we can protect it, we should have a human on the loop, at least. Maybe not always in the loop, but on the loop. Making that ultimate decision in terms of do I exert lethal force or not?
It's an ethical dimension that I think doesn't mean that we have to give up on the capability and on the effect. That's what we're trying to do. Others might see it differently. I've talked to people in conferences that said, "Well, it's like high-speed trading. You need to automate everything because then they're much faster." I think it's a bit of a clash of cultures also. If we want to stay true to our culture, this is what we have to try and fight for.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Okay, we'll see what the world tells us in 100 years then.
Yeah.
So far, we did not touch one topic, the space area. We know we're facing competition from the U.S., companies like SpaceX, which are-
Fast-moving companies, we would say. Can a company like Airbus compete with them? Is our internal bureaucracy our biggest competitor?
A bigger competitor than the startups?
Well, first of all, I could probably answer by SpaceX is not necessarily a startup anymore.
Sure.
That's the journey that all successful startups go at some point in time. They will grow, and then they will have to also deal with more rules, more bureaucracy, if you will. To your question, can Airbus compete? Absolutely. Many people don't know that when we built the OneWeb constellation, our satellites were in space before Starlink. A few months only, but we were in space before. Absolutely we can be fast. Absolutely we can anticipate all these new developments. The problem at the time was that none of the countries that we talked to in Europe had any interest in this and said, "Who needs this constellation? Why would you need 600 satellites? Doesn't make a lot of sense." We went to the U.S. and built it there, and have had quite some success there. That's the European problem.
We have not been able and bold enough to scale as SpaceX is. I don't think it's a question of the bureaucracy or people not being capable of doing it. When we look at the Bird of Prey there, that you can all take a look at, that was developed in lightning speed by our teams. I don't think any startup could've done it better. Actually, we're working with a startup on this, and they are slower than we are, so we're waiting for these guys to catch up with us. The short answer is yes, we can, but we need to want it. We need to create the space for our people to do it. On the other hand, we need to balance, as a big company, how much risk do we take in certain things.
When it's about production, we need to absolutely preserve quality and safety. It's a bit of you need to have a multimodal approach to things. Sometimes you need to be super fast, sometimes you need to be super diligent, and that's not always easy. We're learning.
In terms of risks as well, you're talking about a business risk, and obviously the competition, but there's also a risk to our satellites in space. I guess we forget that, or at least I forget, that without a satellite it will be so difficult to connect to the internet, connect to your apps on the phone, just navigate on your GPS app. How do we protect those? Do we do anything on that at all?
Well, as you say, modern life is not thinkable anymore without space. Whether it's navigating in traffic, whether it's banking applications, whether it's weather forecast, you name it. Many people don't even know where all space is sort of built in already. It's critical infrastructure and needs to be protected, as we're seeing. We have witnessed anti-satellite missiles from China and Russia. We have witnessed, for those of you that know a little bit about space, that certain Russian satellites have been very closely observing geostationary satellites from the West and have a capability of interfering with their operation. Yes, we need to protect our assets in space, and there's different ways to do it.
You can, for one, harden the satellites themselves to make them less vulnerable to jamming, to certain ways of attacking, but you're probably going to need something that I would call bodyguard satellites or bodyguard vehicles that are around the infrastructure and help protect it. I will not speak about this in great detail, but definitely European countries are acting in that direction to have also a capability to protect our infrastructure ourselves.
Okay. Super interesting.
It is.
Isn't it?
Sounds like it.
Let's take a step back because I'm conscious of the time that's running out, and we want to be able to take a few questions from the audience. I guess a question to you both would be, if you saw one capability that we are currently, or not we, but Europeans are currently looking for outside of Europe and that we need to develop in Europe, to develop at Airbus, and that we can do it, let's say by the end of the decade, because we hear so much intelligence telling us that's when Russia most likely would be able to attack European and NATO countries. If there would be one thing that you think we have to have in-house, what would it be, Matthieu?
Well, I would say in helicopters, we're lucky enough to think that Europe has all the capability to develop the helicopter it needs. What I think is important is for everybody to remind that we still need the helicopters. At the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, some of them got shot, Russian helicopters. Flying mid-altitude, straight line, middle of the day, anybody could have thought they would be shot flying that way. Since then, they have been used much more. It's much less in the press, but we have done many, many operations on both sides extremely efficiently, because they fly low, they are difficult to detect, and they have been adapted to new missions. Helicopters are extremely versatile, and you can never guess what we will do next.
They have been proven these recent years and months to be extremely efficient at shooting drones, at protecting populations against Shahed, both in Ukraine, but as well in the Middle East very recently, where Tiger were engaged. I think helicopters will be extremely important in many missions for Europe going forward to defend itself. It has the industry it needs. It's very integrated, by the way. There is no such thing as a German or a French helicopter anymore. All helicopters in Airbus Helicopters are European. Their tail comes from Spain, their main fuselage from Germany, their blades and their gearboxes from France. They are European helicopters, and there is the capability we need to protect Europe. What we need, honestly, is the orders. They came.
Spain and Germany in particular, but France as well with the HIL, all our main home countries took major decisions to invest, and it's great. Now we would like, of course, the rest of Europe to follow suit, but it's happening.
Do you want only one?
Mike, what do you think?
I'll give you more.
Okay, I'll give you two.
Yeah. Okay. Wow.
Be short.
I take three.
Okay.
Obviously we talked about the lack of a fifth-generation fighter jet that Europe did not develop because no country wanted to have one until they decided to buy American ones. I want to have a sixth-generation European fighter jet, at least one.
That's one thing. The second thing I want, where we have the basic skills, but we don't have the scale, as Matthieu also indicated, which means the orders, that is a LEO satellite constellation that is fit for military purposes. Ideally one, or at least one federated constellation across Europe, that can consist of different parts, but at least they need to be interoperable. The third one is something that air power and what we do can contribute to, but we're not the only ones. That is deep strike capabilities. We're having the discussions around Tomahawks and the U.S. not contributing as they had planned a year ago or two to contribute that capability to Europe because it's actually a massively needed way to deter what Russia has as an aggressive potential. That's what the Europeans need to build up.
We'll take that. Thank you. I gave you three. Shall we move on to questions?
I think this is not planned right now. We can take it. I think there's a misunderstanding. We take it then during the breaks. I think you might stay here. We're going to continue with the questions. To a 20-year-old engineer, why should they choose to work for Airbus instead of a climate NGO or another corporate? Why joining Airbus? Well, I take myself as an example. I took quite long to detect that actually.
It's the best thing to join Airbus. I tried some other things before. I was a military pilot. I worked in the automotive industry. I worked in other industries. I think what is really appealing about Airbus is it's the part of Europe that works. It really is something that is extremely purpose-driven.
in terms of enabling people to connect. If you look at commercial aircraft, it gives our armed forces the means that they need to protect us and protect our children and hope that this continent will remain the place that we love. It combines everything that I think is great. Technical prowess, European spirit, a big company that can do lots of things, where you have lots of opportunities to go into different parts of the company. If you want to, you can always leave again. It's a no regret move.
I would say it's the European DNA. It's really a truly European company. The international outreach, Airbus Helicopters, we are based in 30 countries with companies in Brazil, in the U.S., in Australia and Japan, as well as our European presence. You can work at different scales. It was mentioned a few times, it's a big company. Yes, it's a big company, we have organized in such a way in certain areas, really to act as a startup and to be reactive. Mike does that in some software or AI areas. We do that in the drone area. We have organized ourselves to have teams which are a bit isolated from the main company processes, to have the autonomy, to be reactive, to be efficient, to have small budgets also, not big ones. We have to be creative, the same way startups have to be.
It has proven to be very effective. You can find a bit all what you can find both in startups and in big companies in Airbus. It's what we try to do.
Okay, I think I got the sign. You see how flexible Airbus is and agile.
Always.
You can ask one or two questions. Let's take the chance. The microphones will go on. I think over there.
Hi.
Hi.
My name is Mathieu Carbasse. I'm a journalist from the Canadian newspaper, Le Devoir. The Canadian government recently announced a lot of massive investment in the defense industry. Airbus has already a large footprint in Canada, how does Airbus can increase its presence in Canada in this defense sector?
Sure.
How to go further?
Well-
Thank you.
As you say, first thing, when you ask questions, perhaps please stand up next time because we are level and we don't always see you. Now I see you. Yeah. Just Airbus has a huge presence already in Canada. Canada has taken an orientation, I think strategically and rightfully so, to get closer to Europe. It's a great opportunity for Airbus to do more in the country that we want to seize, and we have a very solid dialogue and intense dialogue with the Canadian government about it. Well, for those who don't know, we make one of the commercial aircraft of Airbus, the A220 in Canada, in a vast facility not far from Montreal. We also have a strong presence in helicopters for a very long time, in Ontario, in Toronto area.
First, we already have a large footprint in Canada, and we have a large sourcing in Canada. For instance, on the 175, which is one of our helicopters, we use Canadian engines from Pratt & Whitney Canada. We use, by the way, also the landing gear of the same aircraft are from Héroux-Devtek, another Canadian company. We also have a certain number of good Canadian suppliers that we work with a lot, CAE, for instance, in the simulation domain. Canada will have needs in the next years, needs to replace very large helicopter fleets, for instance. We think we have the perfect platform to do it. I think further, Canada should also be part of cooperation programs, this type of European cooperation programs that we do. We'll do the next generation rotorcraft program, helicopter program for Europe.
It would be great if Canada could be part of the adventure. I think at least we would be extremely interested to have a discussion with Canada. There is the skills, there is the industry in Canada, and, well, we also have strategic questions in the long run. We saw it for titanium, for strategic materials. Canada is a vast country with vast natural resources. In terms of strategic resilience of our supply chain, I think it's also a country which could become much more important to Airbus in that angle as well. Yes, we have plenty to do in Canada and wish to develop a lot in Canada.
Not much to add. As you probably know, but maybe not everybody knows, Airbus Defence and Space is quite active already in Canada with the fixed wing SAR, a C295 version, and with the MRTT. That's only a start. I think now we have to bootstrap a closer cooperation in terms of joining maybe European programs, building an industrial footprint in Canada, and we have all the means. We have a nucleus with the A220 production. I think there's a lot of willingness on both sides.
Cool. I think we had one question here at the front row.
Hello. Thank you for the invitation. I'm Karl Mattias Sepp from the Estonian Atlantic Treaty Association, but also President of YATA Estonia, so the youth side of it. I feel like the question about so many of these E.U. capabilities are not actually so much in question. We know that we have the brains, we know that we have the power, we have all of these things. Sometimes I feel that we are lacking confidence or just this aura as it's like to be called nowadays. It's that the European capabilities and this fanfare that if in the end, all of the taxpayers or regular people are footing the bill for all of this research and development and all of this procurement, then regular people are not necessarily getting that.
We are not seeing that it doesn't really matter for the regular person, whether we are buying them off the shelf from the U.S. or whether we're buying and investing into research and development with Airbus, for example. Do you see that that is an issue? I feel like that can also solve that if we have a lot of confidence in our own products, in our own companies, in our own existence, in a nutshell, that that also answers sometimes the questions of why should we join Airbus as a worker, as an investor, as whatever. Do you see that that fanfare could be higher and that accessibility could be a bit more?
Probably, yes. I think we're on a journey. If you look where we come from, a few years ago, it was just not very popular to talk about Defence in Europe. Nobody wanted to hear about it. It was sometimes, say, between pornography and tobacco. Meanwhile, it's been recognized, but more on a maybe intellectual basis, but not so much at an emotional basis yet. Yes, that's why we're doing such events. That's why we're talking to you, and I give the question back to you. What can you do for us to also help us transport these emotions and a higher purpose behind it? Yes, we can probably beat the drum a bit more, but in the end, we're also going to stay a bit more European, and we're not going to have the loudest mouths on the planet. We leave that to others.
If we can advocate and advertise our successes more, it's not for a lack of capability, it's not for a lack of willingness. Sometimes it has been for a lack of being able to invest the money into it, to think big, to be bold, to take the risk. Yeah, that's a bit where all of us Europeans can actually accelerate a bit.
When you create truly integrated companies, you build world champions. The first commercial aerospace OEM today is Airbus. It's bigger, and I would say in many ways better than Boeing. It's the same in helicopters. The first helicopter maker in the world is Airbus as well. It's true, it's more efficient when it's integrated in the same company. All these cooperation programs, when you're in the same company, it makes everything significantly easier. I think it's what, Mike, you want to do in space. Hopefully with the same results. Indeed, Europe can have world champions. It's feasible. It needs to be integrated, it worked many, many times. By the way, as for why buy European rather than American, jobs at least should be a simple reason to do it, in my view.
Okay, we've got two minutes left, and I think we can make it. One last question.
Thank you very much.
Hi.
Hello, my name is Alexander. I'm with Young European Leadership Foundation, my question is, how do you want to uphold a company's speed and agility while partnering with more European companies who might have different visions for the military platforms? How do you solve the political problems regarding what part of the weapon is built in what country?
That's actually two questions. I think she said only one.
Even more challenged.
Okay. Let me give it my shot. How do we want to keep the agility or develop the agility, I think was the first one. I think we have that. You can take a look at, I repeat again, some of our projects that we do where speed is of the essence. We actually develop that speed, and we are where we want to be in terms of that. When it's very sophisticated systems, there is just not a way yet to cut corners because in the end, the result is such that you need the time, and you need to do the things right. The other element that we have added a lot in recent years is collaborating to just identify where are others better than we are. We don't have to do everything, even though we do a lot of things.
That was a learning process for engineers as well to say, "No, it's not going to be us." We're going to be teaming with, let's say, Quantum Systems or with some other companies that already have a product, that are running fast in this environment, that maybe have a lower price point than we have. That's one way to do it, then be more the architect that organizes the ecosystem. That's a big part of the answer to the first one, the second one, what's going to be produced where? I think it depends on the program.
What I find a bit pitiful is that with all the increases of budgets in the European countries, all these budgets are national, and there's currently a trend to become more national again because it's politicians that decide, and they want to see the tax money returned to their own country, which we understand, but if we exaggerate too much in that direction, there's a risk of further fragmentation in Europe, and that's something that we stand for the opposite of it. Say like, yes, we're going to be the best Germans in Germany, the best French in France, the best Spaniards in Spain, but we're also going to have the European aspect of it.
Just my two cents on the second part of your question on where we produce. First, in Airbus, we produce everywhere in Europe, not just in our home countries. By the way, our home countries include the U.K., in that respect, it's the former European Union. We also, if I just take helicopters, we have a production facility in Hungary, we have one in Romania, we have a research center in Poland. The group has common services in Portugal. We are present in many European countries, not just our home countries. I think it's a necessity. At the end of the day, of course, we need to have a presence all across, a footprint all across Europe because all European governments must feel there is something in it for them, it's the case. It's really the case.
We should not try to do it on every single individual program and platform. I can give an example also related to helicopters. There were two major orders of helicopters in the recent years on the Ministry of Interior side, security side. There was the Federal Police in Germany, which bought the H225, which is a fantastic aircraft, but it's true, most of its footprint is in France. At the same time, the French Ministry of Interior bought a lot of H145s, which are also great aircraft, with a footprint majority in Germany. If you take each program individually, they are not exactly balanced. If you take the whole thing, at the end of the day, you get a very balanced deal where both countries have both great aircraft and a lot of jobs in their facilities.
I think we reached the end of the session. A big thank you to the three of you.
Thank you.
For the insights into the operations room, and also to my co-moderator, Aurélie.
Thank you, Andreas. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you.
Thanks.
We will kick off the last session with a short, I would say, mini keynote by Benedikt Gieger. Benedikt Gieger is part of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community. He will share with us some reflections on responsibility, civic engagement, as well as the role of younger generation within that. Benedikt, the stage is yours.
Thank you very much. Also a very warm welcome from my side. Thanks for inviting me and for having me. I would like to start with a short quote of the U.S. civil rights activist, Malcolm X. He once said, "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today." We meet at a decisive moment for Europe. I think we hear this very often, and in my exchanges today with many people, at least three times. What does this mean for us as the younger generation? In short, our generation still has many decades to live, and therefore, we all should have a special interest in preserving the core values of our joint European continent: democracy, freedom, solidarity, and human dignity.
The World Economic Forum's Youth Pulse 2026 also highlighted that now more generations are alive at the same time as never before in history. So security is a joint effort for all of the generations. We, from the Global Shapers Community, are the youth organization of the World Economic Forum. Next to the Munich Security Conference this year, it is already the second time that we work together with Airbus this year. In conversations and exchanges with young people under 35 across Europe and Ukraine, one message become especially clear. Security is no longer about borders. It's about protecting the foundations of open societies. It's about resilient democracies, secure energy systems, trusted information, and technological sovereignty. Last but not least, it's about the ability to live freely under the rule of law.
One young voice that we interviewed said that Europe's great strength remains its values, but values alone do not defend themselves. They require institutions, organizations, capabilities, and citizens willing to uphold them. That brings us to deterrence. For previous generations, I have to say that deterrence was often measured in tanks, aircraft, missiles, and troop numbers. Those elements remain, of course, essential, and they build the foundation. Today, many young people see credible deterrence wider and deeper. Credible deterrence means military readiness, it means cyber resilience, it means secure supply chains, it means industrial capacity, and it means democratic legitimacy because society that trust themselves are harder to intimidate. At the same time, many young people feel that Europe must take greater responsibility for its own security and resilience. To be very honest, we hear this also very often from our friends from the U.S. nowadays.
I can promise you, under us young people, there is also lots of optimism. Young people were inspired, especially about European solidarity with Ukraine, and saw proof that European values can become concrete actions. They saw that unity is possible when the moment demands it. In the end, in very general matters, I can say with full confidence, the young generation cares deeply about security. We also need to be included in the discussions across politics, society, and also the economy. We hear this also very often, especially yesterday evening. Many young people, I have to say, are still feel that they are too little influence on decisions related to peace and security matters. This summit, and especially the following panel that lies ahead, is a very great example, and I hope that we keep this momentum for everything that lies ahead.
Thank you so much, and I look forward to the following discussion.
Thank you, Benedikt. It's time for the end. I'm pleased that we are closing the program with a special panel. The panel is called The Future of Deterrence, which is becoming more and more important during the last years to question what does deterrence mean actually for us? On purpose, this should not be a technical discussion. It's rather something that we want to discuss openly the why, in the sense of what are we actually protecting? Who is carrying the responsibility? What does deterrence mean for us and also the younger generation? The panel will be moderated by Alex Alfières, defense analyst and journalist. His work is regularly published in journals like "The Wall Street Journal," as well as "Foreign Policy," and also other international media outlets. Alex, I will hand over to you. Please join.
Thank you. Okay, good afternoon, everybody. The topic of this panel is deterrence and intergenerational responsibility. As previously mentioned, we are not going to rehearse the debates of old and go through the usual aspects of deterrence that are very military-centric, that focus on strategy, policy, posture. Sorry to all those nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence nerds in the room. Instead, what we're going to do is focus on the social compact, the role of the deterrence enterprise and defense in ensuring that society, the generations, the custodians of the countries, the communities, and the nations we inhabit are looked after for future generations, as well as for the emerging generation. To that end, we have assembled an absolutely stellar panel. We have Lily Dufur, who's a buyer at Safran, a civil reservist with the 14th Airborne Logistics Regiment, and the chapter chair of Les Jeunes IHEDN in Occitanie.
We've got Vassilis Theodosopoulos, the senior manager for defense and security at ASD Europe, the continent's most influential aerospace security and defense lobby group. We have María Ángeles Martí Martínez. She leads the tanker transport and mission programs at Airbus Defence and Space. Lastly, we have Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke, who is a frontline operator who has worked as a combat medic and evacuation coordinator in Ukraine and has reported from the battlefront. Okay, let's get straight into this. Two concepts that we're addressing here, deterrence, which is fundamentally coercive, normally comprises two separate variants, deterrence by punishment and deterrence by denial. The intergenerational aspect of this, the social compact, the responsibility we have to community, country, and society. Lily, I'll come to you first. There's some concerning data that's been going around regarding youth engagement in the defense and the deterrence enterprise.
The data is pretty stark, and it's not that reassuring. You've chosen to forge a career in the defense industry. Based on your experiences, can you identify the potential factors, the specific factors that are being highlighted in this data that are leading young people to feel disconnected from the defense and the deterrence enterprise?
Yeah. I think that there is some kind of a polarization in our generation. There are people that are really disconnected from defense industry, and there are other young people like me who are basically very connected and more than older generations. The first category I think, I'm going to talk about France because this is what I know. Since France abolished the national service, and that was mandatory before, young people are getting very far from their armies. They don't know it. They have a lot of biases. I think that these are the main factors that disconnect.
What is the source of those biases? Obviously Europe is not a monolith. There are 27 countries in the E.U., multiple countries that comprise the continent. Different strategic environments, different sentiments. France is an outlier in this case, is it not? In other countries in Europe, you are seeing greater disaffection. What are those biases? What are they rooted in?
Well, I think that the army and all these defense companies have been quite taboo for decades, in France particularly. I think that these, and maybe social medias, have brought an image of the army and soldiers and this kind of stuff that is not real at all. Like, for example, for women, I never had any issue with being a woman in the army as reservist.
Right.
All of these biases are quite not real.
Right
when you dig a little.
They don't tell the full picture, and again, the truth might be a little bit more complex than we might give it credit for.
Yeah.
Let's move on to the topic of vital interests. What we see consistently in strategic concepts at NATO, what we see in defense doctrines and all the rest of it, is this concept of vital interests. Who gets to define those vital interests, I think, is really important, as defense strategies, defense policies are built around them. Vassilis, I'd love to get your take on this. What is your perspective of vital interests? Which vital interests are we actually defending right now, and where do people fit into those vital interests?
When we talk about vital interests, we're essentially talking about the viability of our political community, of our society, of our state, right? This entails physical security, this entails political autonomy, and this entails, let's say, the capacity to maintain our social order and economic prosperity. These things, of course, you can break it further down. We're talking about, let's say, territorial integrity of the state, about the lives and health of the citizens. You can talk about food and energy security. You can talk about the climate sustainability and so on, right? There's many things under this umbrella of vital interests. The problem, quote unquote, is that reasonable people, especially across different generations, can, let's say, disagree about the priority of those interests, about where the threat comes from, about what is the best way to address it, and the trade-offs involved.
Right.
Every society needs to come to some sort of agreement, right? To reach some consensus, basically. In democratic societies, we have the political process. This is where we reach compromises and we define those interests. Like the social contract or social compact, our vital interests are politically constructed, and they are constantly renegotiated via elections, via public debates, via institutions, via generational change.
Just on that issue, because one of the things that's really important is the idea of continuity.
If we talk about the social compact of vital interests, then we're assuming that there's some consistency in the things we value as a society, yet we continually look to things that maybe extend beyond how we communicate with each other, how we interact with each other, how we relate to each other as communities. How important is that? You talk about disagreements being a critical component of a healthy polity. Is it important to maintain that sense of disagreement in a healthy, constructive fashion, or are we losing our ability to do that a little bit?
No, it's essential, right? We live in a democracy. You cannot manufacture consent, right? We're not in Moscow or something. We have to have debate, of course. The debate, of course, has to be civil, it has to be grounded in realities, and has to be on the basis of, let's say, knowledge and facts. We have to have the debate, because it is only then that you can have legitimacy, right? Through the debate, through a democratic process. Which is not only election, there's many, many different avenues where you can have this debate. It is essential because, at the end of the day, because we spoke about deterrence, right? What is deterrence? Deterrence means that a society is willing to bear the costs and make sacrifices to defend what it perceives as its vital interests.
If we don't have a debate, if, let's say, the vital interest feels manufactured or out of, let's say, it's not in agreement with, for example, the new generation, the next generations, then societal cohesion will break down.
Yeah.
When societal cohesion breaks down, then your adversaries start thinking they don't have the political will and the cohesion to fight.
Of course.
Deterrence crumbles. Debate leads to legitimacy, which leads to credibility, which leads to deterrence, basically.
You said something very interesting there about will and being able to cohere, coalesce behind this notion of will. Nation-states, polities, societies are measured based on their sense of resolve, which is essentially analogous with will. This brings us toward the topic of resilience. Now, Ignatius, you have a very interesting story. You have spent time in Ukraine. You have seen how civil society there has changed from pre-war to post-war, or rather actively engaged in conflict, fighting for survival. Can you tell us a little bit about the role of resilience in having an enduring society, a society that has the right values, the right interests, but is also willing to fight and defend them?
Thank you for the question. I think one thing that is really important to note is this concept of Ukrainian resilience doesn't exactly do justice to the Ukrainian struggle and the fights they face. If we see someone who is drowning and we see that that person is saving themselves, we say, "Oh, he was so resilient, he managed to do it," when in fact, maybe we should have helped him more. It's very easy to hide behind this heroic structure of Ukraine and Ukraine's defenders as being so strong and resilient, which really masks a picture of an incredibly painful struggle and fight, and countless lives lost, both on the front lines and far behind. I would be very careful with overemphasizing this concept of resilience.
Of course, we like to think of Ukraine as this hero story, but every hero story, especially one as such, has a very painful element to it, which sometimes we mask by this word resilience.
I think you're pointing something out that's quite right, that it's easy to resort to certain terms, and they're catch-all terms. We do have to be specific with the language that we use. Let me broaden it out a little bit in that regard. What are the lessons that civil societies all across Europe, at the moment, can draw from what Ukrainians have been going through? Again, based on what you've witnessed on the ground, but also generally speaking with regards to the society itself, how it's endured as a result of these hardships, what can we learn from Ukrainian civil society?
I think primarily in Europe, there seems to be an issue where we have adopted here a dual mentality. On the one hand, we are in a war, and on the other hand, we are in peace. It's not possible to coexist in those two scenarios at the same time. We have to make a decision as Europeans, where are we in this struggle? This piecemeal supply of aid to Ukraine, where the Ukrainian requests for first tanks, then planes, then missiles are eventually granted at the massive cost of life.
Those people would have been alive if those decisions were taken sooner. I think it's important and imperative for people in Europe to make up their minds and realize that no one else is coming to help us. It is down to us. It's not down to NATO, it's not down to America, it's not down to the powers that be. It's down to us as individuals and as human beings to defend our values and what we think is right.
We do have values that co-align, don't we? I mean, the Western liberal-led international order is predicated on certain values. There are certain things that we all believe are, in and of themselves, meritorious, that they're worth defending for. We're going to get back to what you intimated with regards to deterrence failure and the cost of deterrence failure. I want to pivot slightly now to you, María.
I want to see if we can find a role for values in attempting to inspire the next generation and to harness the defense sector's innovative edge, innovative ethos. If we look throughout history, the defense sector has been responsible for modern AI, for Silicon Valley, quantum computing, and all the rest of it. Now, you see these technological innovations, the fruits of these innovations, on a daily basis. Can you tell us a little bit about that message that Airbus and industry can offer to younger generations in order to inspire participation?
Airbus is at the innovation edge, and I think this defense summit is a good mirror for that. When we talk about Generation Z, and this is a generation we are referring in this panel, it goes from 1997 to 2012. That means my son, I have two children, one of them is Generation Z. I can engage in this question with conversations that I have at home on why this company and this sector can engage them. I think when I live through the lives that they have lived in those 16 years that he has, it's a generation that went through a pandemic, through COVID. It's a generation that has been deeply concerned about the global warming and the legacy that we are giving them and their future.
It's a generation that is seeing crises like the one in Ukraine popping up, but it's still far. It's not a generation that has lived a war themselves, or is a first generation after the war, or two generations after the war that you lived much closer what Defense means. I think there is a concern. Defense means weapons, battles, it's death, and it's not that. Defense, I think Jean-Louis said very clearly this morning, the best for keeping peace in a nation is to have the best prevention for war, the best war battle behind. This is what the industry is doing. It's trying to get a deterrence where peace can ensure in all nations. Again, when I look to this generation, I ask, "What is the purpose?
What is creating a pinch in their stomach in why they are in life? What we are offering, I think, is a great purpose. We are having the big footprint in what is autonomy in Europe.
You need to know that if you go to the U.S., 100% of the defense assets can build and manufacture with U.S. components. In Europe, we have an 80% of dependency from outside of the market. If we want real autonomy, if we want real peace, sovereignty, we don't want to be triggered by stagnant forces and politics, we need to be more sovereign in our own autonomy. This also triggers economical independence. It also triggers, for this generation, high-quality, skilled jobs where innovation is at a stage where we can create, and develop new technologies that can improve our assets in Europe, but also it will spread outside of the borders of the defense industry towards other industries.
Of course,
a big vision to fulfill on their side.
Yes.
I think there is a bigger space for the generations in Airbus.
Yes. That's, of course, going beyond the capability specs and things like that, like you said, really instituting a sense of value and purpose and meaning into the defense enterprise for the emerging generation. We're very conscious of time, as well, and it seems to be running out pretty rapidly. We're going to take questions from the floor now, but before we do that, please do give a round of applause for this panel. We've got a roving mic.
Hi there, Ryan here from Ryan Strategic Advisory. Just a question for you, María, based on something you mentioned. Given the shifting priorities of young people surrounding their vision of defense, how has Airbus changed their long-term strategy in terms of appealing more to the European youth, and then also in terms of the hiring process?
The hiring.
As in attracting young talent.
Well, Airbus has been a top employer, at least in Spain for the last five consecutive years. I think that says a lot. Young people, again, I can echo this because I have young children in this generation, I think they are eager for safety for the future. They are eager to stretch their capabilities, their talent. I think they are eager also to contribute to society and the future. Airbus' purpose is to pioneer in outer space for a safer, sustainable world. I think that purpose echoes very well again with the young generations. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but okay.
Any other questions from the floor?
I do. Okay, hi. Xavier Tytelman from France. I have a little question. We've talked about deterrence, but we didn't use the word nuclear deterrence. I'm talking maybe to you about Ukraine. You lost your nuclear deterrence, and this is one of the main reasons.
That Russian were able to attack Ukraine. What are we supposed to do now to have a real deterrence if we don't accept to switch back to nuclear?
Thank you for the question. It's very pertinent because as we sit here today in Lithuania, there are air raid sirens, and children are hiding in basements, in shelters. The government of Lithuania was today evacuated. What more do we need? Which more signals do we need from Russia to understand that it is an existential threat to our survival? I think the best way how we can counter this is by being united and by trying to explain within the European family, because we have such a lack of alignment of interests, let's say, from Sweden to Italy to Portugal. It spans so far. Maybe we can find points where we can connect with the values which Ukrainians are fighting for right now.
I think if we put these values first and arm the people who are fighting for right now, we won't have to be talking about nuclear potential further on. Thank you.
Any other questions from the floor? Gentleman over there.
Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. It's Alvaro Martinez from Airbus Defence and Space. I have a question for the board, maybe for you, María. You mentioned that currently in Europe, we have an 80% of dependency from external markets that we use for things that we produce. With what percentage would you feel safer having internal dependency only? How long do you think, with a change in the mindset of these upcoming generations, we will be able to achieve this number?
If you asked me for a dream, I would say 100%, because 100% will give us full autonomy. For the younger generations, can they achieve 100%? Well, it's 34 years working. Why not? What I strongly believe, and I see trainees joining Airbus, the young people that are joining us are extremely high skilled. Many of them have already international exposure, some of them even to other industries. They are eager to contribute and to create, and that is the hunger we need to develop equipment, systems, and to get this autonomy that Europe is trying to achieve. I think now we have a great opportunity with budgets that are coming from different nations, where we are getting opportunities to really launch research and development projects to get these innovations on board. I do not have one question on if we are capable of achieving it.
I just hope the reactivity of the nations and the reactivity of the industry continues with that hunger that I mentioned before to really create this autonomy that I think it will make us to feel we can be more at peace in the future. Yep. Thank you.
Any other questions from the floor? Yep, the lady in the third row.
Thank you so much. I'm curious to hear, we mentioned, or you guys mentioned, a lot of times debates, whether it's peace and fighting or how can we have these. I'm kind of wondering, who do you think holds the responsibility to have more debates on these topics, also between generations, and why are they not happening right now?
Why are we not actually having these discussions about the generational relevance of deterrence? What's stifling the conversation? Vassilis, would you like to go first?
I'll have a stab at it. I think the responsibility is clearly with the people, with the political system, right? This is the main avenue. I don't think there's a lot of, let's say, 16 or 18-year-olds that are, let's say, in control of media channels, of party politics, of the led institutions, right? First of all, it is the responsibility of the people or the generations that are already in place to bring the younger generations in, not only to discuss, to talk to them, to deal them in general. This is, let's say, the responsibility of who is already established. As to why we do not have it, I think it's basically because there's no good reason not to have it.
You can argue, and I've heard it before, right, that a generation that is, let's say, 15, 16, 17, 18, what do they know about politics? What do they know about industry or industrial policy? What do they know about how the world works, right? In some cases, it is true that you may not, at the younger ages, you do not know everything there is to know. The same applies to 19, 18, 20, 21, 25, and so on. You grow learning. I think this is a key. We have to do it. We have to explain, right? You have a lot of, and I will finish with this, we have a lot of discussions, vital interest, deterrence. We should do this, we should do that.
A constant problem is basically that we do not explain, especially to young generations that are not formally part of the decision-making process and the political system, why? Why do we do certain things? Why do I need to help Ukraine? Why do I need to fight? Why am I taxed? Why I'm doing this policy, that policy, and so on? We have to explain better. If we explain correctly and in simple terms, I think every generation should be able to participate in this. Again, I'm not sure if it's a full answer to what you would like to hear, but-
If I may add something.
Yeah.
I think that what I see is also that young generations are really interested in knowing more about defense, in knowing more about their armies. We see that a lot in France because there are so many people who want to involve in the army by the reserve, for example. There are so many candidates that they can't absorb everything, so they have to choose. These topics are really meaningful for our generation, of what I see, for a part of it at least. I think that it's very hopeful because it means that you can have a debate, and it means that you can also have motivated young people who want to have a role in their future by involving in some way in deterrence companies like here or wherever.
May I touch on that?
Of course.
It's excellent to have debates and conversation, but sometimes what we need more is action. My friend, he came from a European country to Ukraine when he was 18 years old to join the military there. My other friend was 22. Young people who didn't want to talk about things, they wanted to do things. It's great to have a conversation, but while people are dying during this conversation, is that really what needs to take place? The answer's for you to decide for yourself.
I think if I may chime in as well. As somebody that does spend a lot of time in academia, there is a reluctance to break out of certain orthodoxies in terms of theory, for example. There's a focus on deterrence as a subset of nuclear deterrence theory, and then you have all the different variations that are born from that. We never really take deterrence outside of those rigid contexts, and I think that's the first thing that really needs to be done in order for deterrence to sort of transcend the whole academic policy and strategy nexus. Any other questions from the floor? Now's your chance. I guess if that's it, that is the end of the panel. I just want to ask one final question, and it's a quick-fire question to every panelist here, and I need you to keep it brief if possible.
What are we actually defending and why? If I may start with you, Ignatius.
Our liberties, freedom, democracy, and peace, and the ability for children to sleep in their beds at night rather than in a bomb shelter.
María?
I cannot say it better. I think autonomy, sovereignty, It all goes to peace, freedom, and to ensure further the next generations to have a safe life and a great future.
I would also add maybe our history, our culture, our values, and also our European model, like a federal democratic model that is unique in the world. I would say that.
Absolutely.
It's great to be the last one to answer this because there's nothing left that has not been covered. I will agree with everyone who has spoken before. I just want to add that it is really important. Because in many cases, we say what we are fighting for, what we are supposed to defend, but the actual policies or the decisions seem very disconnected. I come back to this point. We have to make clear how the thing that we say we are defending, how does that link with the decision that is being made? Sometimes there are several logical steps in between, and they are left unexplained. We can say, "Yes, it's for our lives, it's for this, for that." When you have a country at war like Ukraine, it is very clear.
You are fighting for the lives and the health and the safety of the people that you love, basically, and your freedom to exist and to have your identity and your political system and so on. In our societies, we're happily still in peace mode, basically, and hopefully we will stay like that. We have to help people form the logical link.
Greater transparency, right?
Yeah. Give meaning beyond. It's not only transparency, just explain things.
Perfect. Do we have time for one more question?
Yes, you do.
By all means.
Thank you very much. My name is Masha. I'm French Ukrainian. This morning, our CEO, Guillaume Faury, said that hopefully there is no one here who's been to a front line. We have several people who's been to a front line, and for me, this debate was a little bit abstract up till now. As we still have a little bit of time, I would like to ask Ignatius if you can share some personal experiences of what you've seen and what you lived in Ukraine. Thank you.
Thank you. Well, I didn't come to Ukraine to serve in the military. I came as a humanitarian actor, as a volunteer. Gradually through my journey, as I did more and more, I felt the courage and the power to take the next step. If there's a message in there for everyone here, young people or not so young, it's to start doing something. Step by step by step, you feel the power to take the next one, and then the next one. Unfortunately, yesterday, two children who were killed by Russia last Friday were buried, and you really don't want to see two little graves in your country. Thank you.
Apparently, there's more time for Q&A. Who else wants to step forward and ask another question? Okay. Last chance. No other questions?
Successful deterrence.
Successful deterrence. There you go. That's what it looks like in practice. All right. Please give a round of applause to the panelists.
Thank you, Alex. A huge thank you to the panelists.