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April 20, 2018 | International, Aerospace

Inde: Airbus et Lockheed Martin au coude à coude pour vendre leurs avions de chasse

Airbus et Lockheed Martin tentent de s'implanter en Inde afin de décrocher des commandes d'avions. Objectif, bénéficier des 620 milliards de dollars investis dans la défense sur la période 2014-2022 par l'Inde pour renouveler son armée.

La décision de l'Inde de ne pas commander d'avions Rafale à Dassault en 2018, révélée par La Tribune, a enflammé la concurrence chez les principaux avionneurs. Deux géants font figure de favoris : Airbus, producteur de l'Eurofighter Typhoon, et le géant américain Lockheed Martin, qui construit le célèbre F-16, révèle le média économique américain Bloomberg. L'Inde a annoncé en 2014 vouloir investir 620 milliards de dollars en huit ans. Mais derrière ce marché faramineux pour les entreprises, les conditions sont drastiques.

New Delhi demande en effet à ce qu'au moins 30% de ses importations en matière de défense soient produites sur son sol. Un transfert de technologie réclamé par la classe politique indienne, qui serait à l'origine de l'annulation de la commande géante de Rafale français (100 à 200 appareils) selon La Tribune. Plusieurs entreprises ont, depuis, décidé de s'implanter sur le territoire indien, dans l'espoir de décrocher une commande. Airbus, qui n'a pas remporté de contrat militaire en Inde depuis plus de cinquante ans, comme le rappelle le média américain, forme notamment des fabricants de pièces pour ses avions commerciaux. Une manière de faire qui permet de s'adapter aux normes et règlements locaux, dont se sont inspirés les concurrents de l'avionneur européen, Lockheed Martin, Saab ou encore Boeing. Chacun a fait le choix de la production locale pour taper dans l'œil de Narendra Modi, le Premier ministre indien.

Du commercial au militaire. Limite à cette stratégie, la qualité de formation de la main d'œuvre indienne, cantonnée principalement aux postes de monteurs et ajusteurs. Airbus a compris la situation et a nommé, en 2016, l'homme public indien Ashish Saraf, au poste de chef de la production en Inde. Il s'agit de la seule compagnie étrangère à avoir un tel poste dans son organigramme. Un signal fort émis en direction du gouvernement indien. Airbus entend « adapter au domaine de la défense ce que la compagnie fait déjà pour l'espace commercial afin d'être plus performant, que ce soit pour les hélicoptères ou les avions militaires », a déclaré Pierre de Bausset, directeur d'Airbus Group en Inde, dans un discours prononcé à Hyderabad, ville du sud de l'Inde, en mars.

Face à ce positionnement stratégique, Lockheed Martin a contre-attaqué explique Bloomberg. Pour vendre 110 avions de combat F-16, une commande estimée à 15 milliards de dollars, il a promis de migrer la production de ce parc aérien en Inde en cas d'accord. Le pays deviendrait de fait l'un des plus gros producteurs d'avions de combat au monde.

https://www.lopinion.fr/edition/international/inde-airbus-lockheed-martin-coude-a-coude-vendre-leurs-avions-chasse-146872

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  • Global partners invest $314 million in Patriot Integrated Air and Missile Defense System

    February 26, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Global partners invest $314 million in Patriot Integrated Air and Missile Defense System

    Tewksbury, Mass., February 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company [NYSE: RTN] is enhancing the combat-proven Patriot(TM) Air and Missile Defense System under a $314 million task order for engineering services from the U.S. Army, awarded on January 30. The task order is funded by the 17 nations that rely on Patriot for integrated air and missile defense. This is the third of five annual, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity task order awards with a total contract ceiling of more than $2.3 billion. "These modernization efforts ensure Patriot continues to outpace the advancing and proliferating threat, and will be ready when needed," said Tom Laliberty, vice president of Integrated Air and Missile Defense at Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems business. "The 17-nation Patriot partnership shares the cost and reaps the benefit of continued investment in the system." Under the task order, Raytheon is providing comprehensive engineering services including systems, software and hardware development, integration and test services, configuration management and logistics support. Additionally, many of the project results will be incorporated into Patriot Post Deployment Build 8.1, a series of software and hardware capabilities, including: 1. New cutting edge methods to search, detect, track, discriminate, engage, and defeat a wide range of evolving threats including tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and military aircraft. 2. Integrating Warfighter Machine Interface into Patriot. WMI provides a total view of that battlespace, with 3-D visuals, easy-to-read status pages and search functions. As part of the contract, Raytheon is also: -- Enhancing the resilience of Patriot against evolving cyber threats -- Developing solutions that enhance readiness and reduce life cycle costs by making the system more reliable. -- Replacing obsolete parts of Patriot's communications system, enabling Patriot to reliably operate until the U.S. Army's new Integrated Air and Missile Defense command and control system comes on-line. Raytheon's Global Patriot Solutions is the most advanced, tactical air and missile defense system in the world, providing protection against a full range of advanced threats, including aircraft, tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. About Raytheon Raytheon Company, with 2019 sales of $29 billion and 70,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 98 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I(®) products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Follow us on Twitter. Note to Editors The 17 Patriot Nations are: -- United States of America -- The Netherlands -- Germany -- Japan -- Israel -- Kingdom of Saudi Arabia -- Kuwait -- Taiwan -- Greece -- Spain -- Republic of Korea -- United Arab Emirates -- Qatar -- Romania -- Sweden -- Poland -- The Kingdom of Bahrain Media Contact Mike Nachshen +1.520.269.5697 idspr@raytheon.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-partners-invest-314-million-in-patriot-integrated-air-and-missile-defense-system-301010687.html SOURCE Raytheon Company

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  • Opinion: How New ‘Predators’ Are Reshaping Aerospace Landscape

    March 16, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Opinion: How New ‘Predators’ Are Reshaping Aerospace Landscape

    By Antoine Gelain Behind the big aerospace and defense (A&D) primes like Boeing and Airbus and the “Super Tier-1s” such as United Technologies (UTC) and GE, a very different type of company is shaping the global A&D industrial landscape in a way that may be even more impactful than high-profile UTC-Raytheon-type mergers. Companies such as Teledyne, TransDigm and Heico are the spearheads of a breed of A&D players dedicated to “components and subsystems,” with explicit and perfectly executed “horizontal” external growth strategies. Their track records are impressive: These three companies—with combined revenues of more than $10 billion—have collectively made close to 200 acquisitions and delivered more than 20% average annual growth rate in either profitability or share value over the last 20 years. Thanks to such returns and skyrocketing market valuations, they are able to outbid most other contenders when going after an acquisition target by leveraging the so-called “accretive effect.” This effect boosts the acquiring company's earnings per share, as long as the price paid for the target as a ratio of the enterprise value (EV) over its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) is lower than that of the acquiring firm. As it happens, the current EV/EBITDA ratio of the three above-mentioned companies stands at more than 18 (see graph). By comparison, most other A&D companies have an EV/EBITDA ratio in the 9-13 range. Such “buying power” is enhanced by operational synergies (for instance, in corporate overheads, sales and marketing), which immediately boost the profitability of the acquired company and can therefore be factored in the offer price. This gives them an additional edge against pure financial investors like private equity (PE) funds, which have historically been strong buyers of such component and subsystem businesses. Two recent deals in Europe (one still ongoing) illustrate this new balance of power. The first concerns Souriau-Sunbank, a $360 million-revenue specialist in interconnection technology for harsh environments. After being owned successively by two PE funds and bought by Esterline (now TransDigm) in 2011, it was again put up for sale last year. While expectations were that a PE fund would grab it, another industrial buyer, Eaton Corp., won the contest, paying the hefty price of $920 million (an EV/EBITDA multiple of 12). The second deal relates to a French company called Photonis, a world leader in night-vision technology for defense and space applications, for which Teledyne is apparently bidding—and offering a price 30% higher than the highest PE bid! These deals highlight the limits of the traditional private equity model (too short-term and too short-sighted) and why the “new predators”—all publicly listed companies—are in a much better position to continue to thrive. In fact, by combining “private equity-like growth in value with liquidity of a public market,” as TransDigm puts it, they are not only beating PE players at their own game, but they are also capturing a significant share of the A&D capital market by offering investors an attractive alternative to the traditional vertically integrated groups such as UTC, Thales or Safran. These groups are typically too busy focusing on large systems and equipment to realize that they would actually benefit from articulating a proper “component and subsystem” strategy. They would benefit not only because their portfolios are still full of such businesses, but also because their long-term competitiveness largely depends on their ability to nurture a strong network of strategic suppliers, in terms of both criticality for their own systems and national sovereignty. As it happens, Photonis seems to be such a strategic supplier, since the current French government just announced it would veto the Teledyne deal, hoping to give other French or European companies or investors time to make a competitive offer for the business. But because PE funds, at least in Europe, are somewhat faint-hearted when it comes to ambitious sector-specific “horizontal” portfolio strategies, and because Europe has no industrial player able to compete with the likes of Teledyne, the outcome of the process is still highly uncertain. In any case, Teledyne, Heico, Transdigm and similar companies are surreptitiously reshaping the A&D industrial landscape by buying technological nuggets and component businesses left and right, on both sides of the Atlantic. In the process, they are boosting their shareholders' returns and changing the balance of power with both traditional private equity investors and large vertically integrated A&D groups. As the saying goes: One man's meat is another man's poison. https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/manufacturing-supply-chain/opinion-how-new-predators-are-reshaping-aerospace-landscape

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