MUNICH: The military arm of European aerospace and defense group EADS will increase investment in the fast-growing markets of India, Brazil and the Middle East to make up for lagging growth in Europe.
"It’s not that business in the home markets is disappearing, it’s just not growing," Chief Executive Officer of EADS’ Cassidian unit, Stefan Zoller, said on Monday.
He said the group aimed to double sales from around €6 billion ($8.4 billion) by 2020, with 60 percent of sales coming from new markets by then.
India is looking to spend up to $50 billion over the next five years to modernize its armed forces, including $11 billion on fighter jets. Cassidian is bidding for the fighter award along with companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
In Europe, Cassidian faces competition to its unmanned spy plane project, Talarion, from a rival drone planned by Britain’s BAE Systems and Dassault Aviation of France.
Cassidian said it had asked Spain, France and Germany for €300 million in total for a prototype that would fly in 2013 or 2014, but financial commitments were not yet in place.
Zoller added that Turkey had offered to join the program, although this will need to be approved by the other three states.
Industry experts have warned that Europe needs to cooperate on building unmanned military aircraft or risk falling behind in their development.
BAE and Dassault were nudged into working together on their initiative after Britain and France signed a major defense cooperation pact in November.
