French equipment maker Safran said its Equipment & Defense division generated 10.5 billion euros in the first nine months of 2026, up 22.5 percent, including 15.7 percent in the third quarter. The division covers both civil and military work, including optronics, positioning, navigation and timing, drones and remotely operated munitions. Alongside civil aviation maintenance, Safran said it is benefiting from a buoyant international defence market that accounts for 80 percent of its order book.
Original-equipment sales, about 60 percent of the total, rose 16.2 percent. Safran said the increase was driven mainly by defence work on the AASM Hammer guided bomb, optronics, inertial navigation systems and missile seekers, and that this reflected growing demand from export customers. Chief executive Olivier Andriès said the defence activities are supported by a strong market and that the group is raising production capacity for the growth ahead.
Defence, covering propulsion and equipment, was nearly 18 percent of group revenue in 2025, or 5.6 billion euros out of 31.5 billion. Safran expects a sharp rise in 2026, with Safran Electronics & Defense targeting about 5 billion euros this year. Defence propulsion is also set to grow as Rafale engine M88 output is due to double between 2025 and 2029, and as helicopter turbines rise for the NH90, Tigre, H225M, H145M and AW101, AW109 and AW189K, feeding later maintenance work.
Higher defence budgets worldwide have lifted demand for electronic equipment, missile propulsion, sensors and AASM Hammer smart munitions. Safran has already invested 850 million euros in its production base over 2022–2026 and plans about 1 billion euros for seven new plants or capacity extensions between 2025 and 2028.
Safran, Europe’s leading producer of missile engines, has tripled that output between 2022 and 2026 and aims for a sevenfold increase from 2022 to 2030. It supplies engines for the Franco-British Scalp/Storm Shadow cruise missile and the Exocet MM-40 Block 3C, both from MBDA, as well as Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile, Saab’s RBS-15 and Kratos target drones BQM-167 and BQM-177. Andriès said the group has invested on the order of 100 million euros in a plant in southern France.
AASM output is due to be six times higher over 2022–2026 after the production cycle was halved in two years. Annual capacity is expected to reach up to 2,000 bombs from 2027, compared with 200 a year in 2022, more than 1,000 in 2025 and about 1,400 in 2026. France is still ordering AASM weapons worth 210 million euros in 2026 and plans orders of 117 million euros in 2027. Safran recently invested 120 million euros to expand its Montluçon site in the Allier. Over the same 2022–2026 period, missile-seeker output rose sixfold and production of the Geonix inertial navigation unit sevenfold.
In June, the French defence procurement agency selected the Safran–MBDA team to design the Thundart unitary rocket launcher, with a range of 150 kilometres. The programme is to deliver 26 launchers and 300 munitions by 2030, against 13 launchers in the original military programming law, and is valued at a little more than 370 million euros. Beyond France, the two companies are looking to a much larger export market shaped by international tensions.
Andriès estimated that defence revenue will double between 2025 and 2030, growth of about 20 percent a year, and said investment is required to support it. He linked that path to higher rates on the M88, helicopters and missile propulsion, and to faster defence electronics. Among the new projects, Safran has decided to build a plant in Germany for optronics and navigation, without giving further detail. In Texas it will double turbojet capacity for missiles, including the Naval Strike Missile, with a new TR40 assembly line planned for 2028. Andriès said demand for that engine family has quadrupled in recent years.