2022 was particularly important for MBDA Italia and for the entire European missile group and full of unprecedented economic results, as stated by Lorenzo Mariani, CEO of MBDA Italia and Executive Group Director Sales and Business Development MBDA, during the year-end meeting with the press at the company’s headquarters in Rome.
Immediately going into the details of these record results and the events that led to them, Mariani stated with great satisfaction that “2022 was certainly the year of the CAMM-ER”.
The main reference goes to the production program of the CAMM-ER (Common Anti-Air Modular Missile – Extended Range) surface-to-air missile system developed by MBDA Italia and which was awarded by the OCCAR agency last November 28, after it became part of the programs managed by the latter, in the name and on behalf of the Italian Defense Administration.
Thanks to this last contract, which was signed by Mariani himself and the director of OCCAR EA, Matteo Bisceglia, Italy will acquire the short-range/short range extended range air defense capability (SHORAD/Extended SHORAD) through the acquisition of a missile system, based on the CAMM-ER ammunition, in two variants: MAADS (Modular Advance Anti-Air System) for the Italian Air Force and Grifo for the Italian Army.
The CAMM-ER, as reported by the same name, differs from the CAMM system for an increased range, but with a significant commonality of elements with the progenitor, which on the basis of the industrial and governmental cooperation agreements, respectively between MBDA Italy and MBDA UK, and between the two countries, sees the Italian branch of the Group as responsible and design authority of the land missile systems (MAADS and Grifo) just mentioned, as well as co-design authority and manufacturer of the seeker of the CAMM-ER, to which is added the responsibility for the design and production of the launcher of the same ammunition and data exchange system with the missile (PDLT, Platform Data Link Terminal).
To these is added the development and design authority of the Albatros NG (New Generation) embarked surface-to-air missile system, based on the same CAMM-ER ammunition that has already registered the acquisition of the launch customer, in this case international.
All three solutions are intended to replace the Aspide family and provide a next-generation weapon system, capable of meeting the latest requirements expressed by land, air and naval Armed Forces.
“A contract that has seen a complicated gestation, but of great satisfaction”, specified the CEO. of MBDA Italia, because thanks to this last framework contract, the entire supply of ammunition for both the Army and the Air Force is established and planned, and therefore not only the initial supply, but also the subsequent lots to complete the same that should be covered in 2023 thanks to loans that Mariani himself has defined as “quite guaranteed”.
“This is a milestone, both because it is actually a contract that has been very hard-earned and because the Ministry of Defence and MBDA UK were starting to be a little too far away from us in terms of the progress of the programme and the related supply contracts for land and naval uses. In the UK, important investments have been made in the system and exports are being pushed a lot”, underlined Mariani, highlighting the important success achieved in Poland by MBDA UK.
Thanks to the signing of the contract with OCCAR, Italy and its industry have secured the national contribution to these important supplies, which, according to Mariani, will have important repercussions for the future because with the delivery of the first systems in a short time, the customer has expressed interest in much more important requirements in terms of supply, which will be pursued with great perseverance in 2023.
A situation that favors synergy and therefore the commonality of interests so that the CAMM family becomes a benchmark on the world market.
A very important aspect highlighted by Mariani concerns the sovereignty in terms of production of the CAMM-ER system, as the signed contract includes the creation of a final assembly line with integration of pyric parts in Italy, which according to the agreements signed by MBDA Italia with the Defense Industries Agency (AID) last July, will be built at the Military Plant of Noceto di Parma, alongside the one used for development and initial production activities at the Advanced Ammunition Interforce Center (CIMA) in Aulla.
At the Military Plant of Noceto di Parma, as announced on the occasion of the agreement, work will be carried out on the weapon systems commissioned by MBDA Italia, guaranteeing the European consortium the property of the Design and Manufacturing Authority.
The agreement signed at the Directorate General of the Defence Industries Agency provides, among other things, for infrastructural interventions at the same plant in 2023, aimed at carrying out the planned productions allowing the testing of the same by 2024.
“With the creation of this final line of integration, MBDA meets the calls of the Minister of Defense who has repeatedly supported the need to be more effective and have the ability to produce in Italy the systems that can serve the National Defense. MBDA has supported this request both for the CAMM-ER and in the future for the Aster family of surface-to-air missiles for which a discussion is still ongoing regarding the important contract to be signed in the first half of 2023”.
The year 2022 was very important for CAMM-ER not only domestic contracts but also for export and promotion of the same. “During the year we obtained the contract for the ammunition destined for the first Albatros NG naval missile system after we were awarded the contract in 2021 for the supply of the system by an Asian country whose identity we cannot disclose due to contractual restrictions.
In this context, the fact of having created the possibility of creating a final/piric assembly line allows us to satisfy in the shortest possible time also the requests coming from the export market, in a context in which export production, linked to the first customer of the Albatros NG system, is quite overlapping with the Italian one.
In the meantime, they will have to increase the capacity of other sites such as those of Fusaro in terms of production of seekers and radomes”. Thanks to the new final/piric assembly line in Italy, MBDA reduces the complexity and timing determined by the traffic of components between Italy and Great Britain, “with obvious advantages in terms of costs, delivery times and from the point of view of the complexity of customs procedures with non-EU countries that are relevant”.
Although the a.d. of MBDA Italy cannot identify the first customer of the Albatros NG system, it is known that it is Pakistan and in particular the four MILGEM type corvettes that the Turkish industry is building for the Islamabad Navy, two of which were built by the Turkish shipbuilding industry and two by the Pakistani one with a combat system supplied mainly by the Turkish and European industry.
“With the fact that the CAMM-ER system has been chosen by the Italian Army and Air Force, we are carrying out a strong promotion so that the Navy also chooses it making it become, in this way, an inter-force system. In this regard there are pros and cons but as usual I prefer to emphasize the first that are the logistics community, the fact that it is a missile that compared to the current Aster 15 has a cost both of maintenance but also of very reduced acquisition and is expected to have a much wider community of users, as well as being more easily installed on board.
It is however clear that the Aster 15 is already in service with the Navy, ensuring logistical commonality with the Aster family of missiles and the system is optimized for the neutralization of a wider range of targets. A topic (that of the replacement of the Aster 15 with the CAMM-ER) on which there is debate with France and I predict it will be very hot starting from 2023″. Without going into details on the economic results of MBDA and MBDA Italia for 2022, Mariani said that for the latter turnover, orders and revenues are in “a more than arithmetical progression compared to 2020 and 2021”. In this last year, Italian turnover had almost doubled compared to the previous year, and in 2022 the increase is “still impressive” according to his words, and orders follow a book-to-bill “very close to one billion”, as an order of magnitude.
Follow us on our Telegram channel