Airbus Defence Summit 2026 - Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury opening remarks

Good morning. Good morning everyone. How are you today? Good? It feels good to be in this place. Welcome everyone. Thank you for being here today. It's a first of a kind. Actually not completely. It's the fourth Airbus summit. But it's the first on defense. We started few years ago after COVID and facing the challenges of climate change. Thinking that Airbus had more to give than products and technical solutions. But 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. And 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 now more than 75 years of peace. And none of us in this room, I guess, has ever faced a situation of war that the generations before us saw in Europe. And for 75 years, we've grabbed the fruits, the dividends of peace. Defense budgets have gone down. And 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 and still spending by far more money for defense and security than we do. And then things are changing. We find ourselves with wars at the borders of Europe. And we see that we should not we cannot take security for granted. So 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're 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 EU was spending five times less to procure defense equipment than the US. And around 60% of what EU countries were buying in terms of defense equipment was procured from outside of Europe, from non-European contractors. So when you look at what the EU was buying to EU companies compared to what the US was buying from US companies, it's less than 10%. EU was buying less than 10% to EU companies than the US is buying to US companies. So, we start from a point where we actually do rely on the US. But today, US is telling us, 'Well, you have to take ownership of your own security. We might have other priorities in the US. 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. And it's not just theory. As 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 EU defense company. But 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. Because actually 80% of our turnover is in commercial and civil. Only 20% is in defense. But 20% makes Airbus the largest EU defense company. And we have developed ways of being strong in technologies in defense. What is 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 US has done at scale. The US companies in defense are mostly defense companies. They're specialized. That's not the point we start from. So, today we're happy to be here today. We're happy to share what we see, to listen, to debate, to be challenged. And 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. So, 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 Defense Summit is to gather a lot of people from different horizon. Is to make sure we better understand what we're capable of. 'Cause 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. And actually, there's a lot that we have in our hands, but it's important to be aware, to know what we have. And there's only one way of doing this. Is 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 US, but we have also in mind other big blocks like China, like Russia, like India, which have a very different scale. And if we want to be efficient together, we have to make sure we don't spend the money in a fragmented way. Because we're 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. And to get scale in Europe, we have to come together. So 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. And 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. So 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. And that's the agenda of today. Thank you for your presence today. Thank you.

Well, Airbus is a fast-moving company. We are indeed 165,000 employees. That's a very large corporation, but 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. So, we are constantly cooperating and working with companies of different size and that's what we need for innovation. So, I would not oppose startups and small companies with large corporations. I think we really need each other. And we are also in our organizations, you know, 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, so 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. And 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 5, 6, 7 years to develop a new platform for a plane or a helicopter. But we're also in cyber. And in cyber it's day by day, it's very fast. So, we have to try to manage those different things and 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. Then 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. And actually you can be in one side or the other and collaborate with each other. So, we are at a time where again it's by working together that we will have the right speed and the right scale. So, it's about the collaboration of both.

Yeah, I think it's always important to give sense to what we're doing. And 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. And that's always been the paradox of war. If you want peace, prepare war, the famous saying. And 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're operating in are today. And the purpose, the meaning of what we're 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. And in this world, you have to be strong if you want to be safe.

Well, collaboration is not a walk in the park. And it has the very heart of Airbus. So, we have experience over the decades the challenges of working together. We strongly believe in the need of a European future combat air system. By the way, 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 1B 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 ways forward and I would let it to governments to reflect and decide what they want to do. They're the ones paying industry to develop the systems. And we are beyond the plane. We have the so-called combat cloud. So, 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 we need to continue anyway. So, 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 US, 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. So, I think there's different ways of reaching the same objectives. But, this program was started before Ukraine. Was started in peacetime under a number of assumptions which are no longer valid today, and 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. So, it's probably a necessary pain at this level to face those difficulties and then move forward. But 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.

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 rules of the game are not the same. You develop products for governance 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. So, actually, what you are saying is well, Europe has not developed enough at the right time to be at par with the US on a number of large-scale systems. And indeed, the fifth-generation fighter, I mentioned the F-35 before, is something that requires hundreds of billions of euros or dollars to reach the objective. This money has indeed not been committed in Europe so far, so we don't have a fifth-generation fighter. But actually, we have three aircraft of the previous generation. So, 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, and the Eurofighter is a rather good blueprint of an example of collaboration, as it is a collaboration between the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy. So, we are not starting from nowhere, but we've not put the quantity of money, of resources equivalent to what the US has done, and this is currently being changed. But 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 US, that we make sure we focus our efforts, 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, UK 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 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. So we're 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. But again to come back to your question and my starting point in defense we work under contract. We develop products and system under a specification and we cannot go to market without the approval of the countries because these are defense systems to go to war and it's not free market. Thank you.

No, I think it's the opposite. So, FCAS is more than one pillar. It's seven pillars. And actually we don't speak a lot about the other pillars because they're working well. So, all the attention is on the fighter jet 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 the 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. So, there's maybe less 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 1A and 1B 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. So, 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 and 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. So, 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 System in the Eurofighter, which is in the room, and it's working. But, not all companies are capable of cooperating with each other. That's the difficulty we're facing today. So, two challenges. One is change of nature of the program with a different security environment and also the fact that we need companies that are capable of collaborating and working together with similar ways of working. Okay, thank you.

Well, maybe I'll answer in this way. Speaking to you said young generation, so people that go for their first job or second job and 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. So I believe 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. So 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 products you see here, but we are 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. So, 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. So, 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.