War in Iran and Ukraine: “more essential than ever”, the French missile maker MBDA will increase its production by 40% in 2026

“A race against time”. The French missile manufacturer MBDA will continue its “phenomenal pace” to meet the weapons needs raised by the simultaneous conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, according to the words of its CEO Éric Béranger during his annual press conference at the end of the week.

After having doubled in two years the production of missiles used in Ukraine and the Gulf, the European MBDA – owned by the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, the British BAE Systems and the Italian Leonardo – plans to accelerate further in 2026, with an increase of 40%.

Multi-million euro missiles against low-cost drones

MBDA notably manufactures the Mica air-to-air missiles which are used in the Gulf to intercept Iranian Shahed drones, with an abysmal cost gap, a situation that is untenable in the long term and melts missile stocks.

These drones “can cost 30,000 to 40,000 dollars, against which we use millions of dollars missiles like French Mica. We have a ratio of 1 to 100 between attack and defense,” Pascal Fabre, managing partner of the international consulting firm AlixPartners, explains to AFP.

“We must also keep in mind that when a Mica destroys a Shahed, it will avoid the destruction of equipment which is itself extremely expensive and save human lives”, justified Éric Béranger who boasts of being “more essential than ever” while recognizing that it was necessary to “find more economical solutions”.

MBDA launched initiatives in 2025 such as Crossbow, a long-range strike munition designed to generate mass at a controlled cost in order to “force opposing air defenses to reveal themselves and saturate them”.

The French missile maker is also at the origin of air-to-ground missiles like the Storm Shadow, air defense missiles like the Aster (both are widely used in Ukraine), as well as Exocet anti-ship missiles and the airborne nuclear component.

MBDA, which employs 19,000 employees mainly in France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, achieved a turnover of 5.8 billion euros in 2025.