Airbus Seeks Pan-European Drone Pact to Challenge Taranis

Airbus Group NV (AIR) said it favors a pan-European deal on military drones after an Anglo-French agreement from which it’s excluded received government backing and the U.K.’s Taranis model began testing stealth technology.

A bilateral approach to developing a combat drone that could succeed aircraft such as the Eurofighter ignores both the capabilities of other countries and the success of more inclusive aerospace programs, Domingo Urena-Raso, who heads Airbus’s military-aircraft operations, said in an interview.

“It won’t be enough,” Urena-Raso said at the Farnborough Air Show, arguing that Spain, Germany and Italy should be allowed to join the U.K.-France pact. “If this is considered strategic we know how to do it: we should take successful programs like Airbus and gather the political will to succeed.”

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