A new Goliath 100% made in Europe to revive a lagging space sector? This is the bet of the French Thales, the Italian Leonardo and the European Airbus, who have decided to join forces to create a new sovereign player in this ultra-strategic field. Under the code name “Bromo”, the three giants are preparing to inject 8 billion euros to try to steal market share from the Americans and the Chinese who, between them, represent 90% of space launches in the world. A major challenge for previously competing players.
“We have proven, with Airbus, that it is possible to join forces to create a European juggernaut”explains the world leader in civil aviation to Tangwall Campagin. By associating its Defense and Space branch with Thales and Leonardo, Airbus is making its numerous industrial sites and its large workforce available to Bromo. According to our information, 11,000 of the 25,000 employees of the future space project will come directly from the Airbus group.
Satellites, communication systems, ground radars, space launchers, Bromo promises to revitalize a struggling European space industry. “With Starlink, Elon Musk dynamited the space business by sending tens of thousands of satellites into space. On the other hand, Europe offered a host of small competing companies, incapable of offering an offer on an industrial scale.explains an internal source at the Bromo project. Faced with the American billionaire’s offensive, Europe has lost nearly 50% of its satellite market share. A clear decline, accentuated by low public investment. Where the countries of the European Union spend on average 15 billion euros per year on space, the United States puts quadruple that on the table each year. “And the Americans have perfectly known how to get the public and private sectors to cooperate. Starlink, for example, received nearly $10 billion in funding from NASA.continues this same source.
“We are full of talent and know-how, we now have to be more offensive”
If the United States, closely followed by China, largely dominates the sector, Europe has not yet left the history of the conquest of space. In 2023, Galileo, the European competitor to GPS, became fully operational. Last March, the Ariane 6 rocket successfully carried out its first commercial mission. “We are full of talent and know-how, we now have to be more offensive”agrees an executive from the National Office for Aerospace Studies and Research (Onera), the main French research center in this field.
The Bromo project will continue to invest in research, but the bulk of the effort will first consist of capturing market share, primarily targeting the satellite telecommunications sector, which is worth nearly $100 billion today and is expected to double by 2030. “Twenty percent of Bromo’s activities will be dedicated to telecommunications”assures Thales to Tangwall Campagin. To do this, the European conglomerate will rely on the Alenia Space (Thales) branch, a French defense gem which already has forty years of experience in satellite design. Its flagship product, the Spacebus Neo, is renowned as one of the best in the world. “With Bromo, we will be able to create synergies worth several hundred million euros and anticipate offensives from major competitors, the Americans of course, but also the Chinese or the Indians,” explains Thales.
Possible friction
Scheduled for 2027, the formalization of the Bromo project still has a way to go, starting with obtaining the green light from the European Commission. By joining forces, Airbus, Thales and Leonardo risk establishing a monopoly, the bane of European economic regulations and a potential boon for a competing project. The German OHB, excluded from the alliance, could claim its share of the pie…
Another sensitive subject is governance. The story of Airbus illustrates how the nationality of managers can become a major source of political friction between European countries. And if the distribution of capital – 35% for Airbus, 32.5% each for Thales and Leonardo – seems egalitarian, some are worried about potential future conflicts. “The plane of the future Scaf (air combat system of the future, co-piloted with Germany, Editor’s note) showed that Europeans sometimes have difficulty getting alongexplains a source at the Ministry of the Armed Forces. Within Bromo, there are defense and sovereignty issues. If we can’t find an agreement with the Germans, who says we’ll get there with the Italians? » Answer in two years.
