PARIS — Airbus is considering raising production of its A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft in response to “very high” demand from existing clients and potential new buyers, the company said at the Paris Air Show on Tuesday.
“With the signals we’re getting from the customers, we are studying a rate increase of the MRTT,” said Jean-Brice Dumont, head of air power at Airbus, in a press conference here. “When I say study, it’s more than studying.”
Airbus currently produces between four and five A330 MRTT aircraft a year, and “we would have to significantly increase it,” Dumont said. “The demand signal on the tankers is very high.”
Europe faces critical capability shortfalls in air-to-air refueling, according to the European Defence Agency. Airbus had delivered 36 A330 MRTT aircraft to European customers by the end of April, with another six on order, compared to the United States operating a tanker fleet of more than 400 aircraft.
Dumont estimates there may be a market for an additional ten to 20 of the planes in Europe, with further demand in the rest of the world, he told Defense News. The executive said the MRTT market is hard to gauge as “it’s quite dynamic,” with demand “coming and coming.”
Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark earlier this month signed a letter of intent to participate in NATO’s European MRTT fleet. Denmark already in March indicated plans to join the European tanker pool, including the potential purchase of two MRTT aircraft, saying its participation would cost an estimated 7.4 billion Danish kroner ($1.1 billion) over 2025-2033.
Airbus is seeing interest from countries that want to participate in the European pool as well as existing individual customers that want to grow their fleet in the current security context, and also potential new clients, according to Dumont. “A bit of everything,” he said.
The U.K. is the biggest European operator of the A330 MRTT with 14 planes, while France operates 12 aircraft with another three on order. Six European countries including the Netherlands and Germany have pooled their tanker needs in the NATO multi-nation fleet, which operates nine aircraft with one more on order.
“There is a foreseeable increase of the pool, I think many countries are realizing, with a number of fighters or other aircraft they have that can be refueled, that they have a need for fast deployment,” Dumont said. “So the pool is an answer.”
International operators include Singapore, South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Airbus says the A330 MRTT has a market share of more than 90% in air-to-air refueling aircraft outside the United States.
Airbus faces a number of thresholds to ramp up tanker production that would entail investments to align tools and resolve industrial bottlenecks, Dumont said in the press conference. The executive said those thresholds might be at six aircraft a year and eight a year. “And then we can go much higher, but that’s another story.”
One question is whether Airbus has the hangars to accommodate higher output or would need to build new hangers or add production locations beyond the current ones. Dumont said. The company converts A330 aircraft assembled in France into tankers at its site in Getafe, south of Madrid.
Dumont said the company is close to signing the launch customer for the MRTT+, a new version based on the A330neo, with more fuel-efficient engines and an improved wing. The first MRTT+ is in production, with a target of delivering the plane by the end of 2028, he said.
Airbus also presented new capabilities for its A400M transport aircraft, including an increase of the payload by 3 metric tons to 40 tons and the capability to function as a drone “mothership” or an electronic-warfare platform for stand-off jamming.
“We are testing dropping drones from an A400M, we are then controlling a drone from an A400M,” Dumont said. “There is a question of mass saturation. How could the A400M play a role in saturation, in dropping a number of small vehicles as close as possible to the hostile contested area?”
The A400M could also act as communications hub for Europe’s planned sixth-generation Future Combat Air System, according to Airbus. The transport aircraft is already certified to be configured as a tanker, including for fighters such as the Eurofighter or Rafale.
France and Spain agreed to advance delivery of four and three ordered A400M aircraft, respectively, Airbus said. Phasing of the deliveries by customer countries was leading to a lower production rate than what Airbus considered sustainable, which is eight A400Ms aircraft per year, Dumont said.
“What we have agreed with them is a mechanism that enables to fill these eight production slots with either a local aircraft or an export aircraft, and a sort of a swap mechanism when export comes,” Dumont said. The production plan for the A400M is filled with eight aircraft a year until early 2029, the executive said.
“We could increase, but I think we prefer having a stable production system,” Dumont said. With the first half of 2029 four years away, “when we see the world as it is, I wouldn’t panic with something four years from now.”
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
