The resources: Airbus Military

Company Background

Airbus Military was established in January 1999 to manage the European A400M military transport aircraft project. The company was re-structured under its current name, Airbus Military SL (Sociedad Limitada) prior to the contract signature in May 2003. Its shareholders today comprise AIRBUS, EADS, TAI of Turkey and FLABEL of Belgium.

The company has its origins as far back as 1983 when Aérospatiale, British Aerospace and Lockheed came together to form FIMA, the group originally responsible for studying the Future International Military Airlifter. In 1985 after the defence ministers of the Independent European Programme Group (IEPG) agreed to harmonise their national requirements in a joint study, the IEPG became FLAEG, the Future Large Aircraft Exploratory Group. Two years later, in 1987, Aeritalia (now Alenia) and CASA joined FIMA as the FLEAG drew up the Outline Staff Target. In 1989 Lockheed withdrew from the programme, FIMA was disbanded and the organisation was re-established as EUROFLAG.

With EUROFLAG set up as a limited liability company in Rome in 1991, the FLA programme progressed through pre-feasibility and feasibility studies in order to meet the European Staff Target (EST) issued by FLAEG. With this phase completed, EUROFLAG was dissolved in 1995 and the programme placed under the responsibility of the Airbus Military core team in Toulouse as the European Staff Requirement was finalised by the participating nations.

In 1996 the single-phase commercial approach was presented to the nations and the ESR was issued, followed by a Request For Proposals (RFP) from seven NATO nations. In January 1999 the FLA became the A400M with the establishment of Airbus Military Company S.A.S. , the organisation that presented the full technical and commercial proposal for the aircraft to the MoDs as a response to the RFP.

In December 1999 the nations decided in favour of the Airbus Military proposal and designated the A400M as their future large military transport. Successive announcements by the partner nations followed during the year 2000 as budgets were put in place, parliamentary procedures expedited and commitments to aircraft numbers announced.

It was agreed in June 2001 that OCCAR (Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en Matière d'Armement) would be the contracting body acting collectively for the nations in contract negotiations and in December of the same year a contract was signed between Airbus Military and OCCAR.