Europe’s MBDA missile supply chain is under acute raw materials pressure as the continent’s largest missile manufacturer executes the most aggressive production ramp-up in its history — a 40% output increase in 2026 alone, backed by a €5 billion investment programme running to 2030.
MBDA reported €5.8 billion in revenue for 2025, with €13.2 billion in new orders pushing its total order backlog to €44.4 billion. To meet that pipeline, the company has already doubled missile production between 2023 and end-2025 and is hiring 2,800 additional staff in 2026. Every euro of the €5 billion will be spent on European soil, across facilities in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK.
The scale of that commitment has made one question unavoidable for procurement specialists and defence planners: where do the raw materials come from?
The MBDA Missile Supply Chain: What It Requires
MBDA works with approximately 2,000 external suppliers. Its missiles — including the Aster air-defence family, Storm Shadow cruise missile, Meteor air-to-air missile, and Mistral short-range system — are each dense assemblages of precision electronics, high-stress structural components, and advanced propulsion chemistry.
Scaling output by 40% in a single year requires a proportional increase in the raw materials feeding that assembly. MBDA has already spent €1 billion pre-emptively stockpiling components and raw material stocks ahead of formal state contracts — a deliberate departure from traditional defence procurement practice designed to eliminate supply chain bottlenecks at the point of surge demand.
The critical minerals embedded in that stockpile span several categories, each carrying its own geopolitical exposure.
Gallium and Germanium: The Seeker Problem
The high-frequency radar seekers in Aster and Meteor missiles rely on gallium nitride (GaN) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors, which enable guidance systems to operate at the power densities and signal precision required for supersonic interception.
China controls over 80% of global gallium production and imposed export licensing controls on both gallium and germanium in August 2023, tightening them further in 2024. Those controls remain in effect and have materially constrained Western defence electronics supply chains. Gallium and germanium price data is tracked on rare-earth-mining.com; procurement teams monitoring availability should treat both benchmarks as leading indicators of seeker component cost.
Rare Earth Magnets: Steering at Speed
Flight control actuators in missiles such as Storm Shadow depend on samarium-cobalt (SmCo) and neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) permanent magnets to deliver the mechanical response needed at supersonic velocities and extreme temperatures. SmCo magnets are favoured in missile applications specifically because of their thermal stability above 150°C — a condition that NdFeB magnets cannot reliably meet without performance degradation.
China controls the dominant share of global rare earth processing capacity for both magnet types. Western rearmament programmes — not just MBDA’s, but those of Raytheon, MBDA’s co-development partners, and national stockpile programmes — are all competing for the same constrained non-Chinese magnet supply.
Tungsten and Cobalt: Structures and Superalloys
Warhead penetrators and certain missile structural components require tungsten for its density and hardness. China accounts for approximately 80% of global tungsten mine output and has demonstrated willingness to use export controls on strategic metals as a policy instrument — as seen with the December 2024 restrictions that affected tungsten alongside antimony and other technology metals. Current tungsten price benchmarks reflect the supply tightness created by those controls.
Cobalt feeds into the superalloy components used in missile propulsion systems, as well as into SmCo magnets. The Democratic Republic of Congo supplies over 70% of global mined cobalt, with Chinese firms controlling the dominant share of DRC production and downstream refining. MBDA’s supply chain exposure here overlaps with the broader battery and aerospace sectors competing for the same material. The cobalt price has been volatile through 2025–26 as oversupply from DRC output competed with longer-run demand signals from both the battery and defence sectors.
Titanium, Niobium, and Propulsion Chemistry
Missile airframes require titanium alloys for their combination of high strength, low weight, and resistance to atmospheric friction. European defence manufacturers moved rapidly to reduce Russian titanium dependency following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but global supply remains concentrated and the market for aerospace-grade titanium is supply-constrained.
Rocket propulsion systems rely on hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) binders combined with mineral additives including boron and niobium. Niobium supply is heavily concentrated in Brazil — a fact that has acquired renewed significance given current US-Brazil tensions over critical mineral deal frameworks.
MBDA’s Strategic Response: Friend-Shoring and the EU CRMA
MBDA’s decision to spend €5 billion entirely on European soil is not incidental. It aligns directly with EU and NATO frameworks prioritising defence supply chain resilience, including the NATO list of 12 defence-critical raw materials and the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, which sets domestic processing targets for strategic minerals.
The company is actively pushing to source materials from European mines or allied nations — Australia, Canada, and the US — rather than adversarial supply lines. That strategy mirrors the broader Western industrial policy shift described in CMN’s analysis of the EU critical minerals strategy.
Whether the pace of that friend-shoring is fast enough to keep up with MBDA’s production curve is the open question. The China export controls on gallium, germanium, tungsten, and antimony imposed since 2023 have already demonstrated that Beijing is willing to weaponise mineral access. A 40% missile production ramp into that environment is, by definition, a supply chain stress test.
What Procurement Teams Should Watch
For defence procurement specialists and supply chain managers, the MBDA expansion creates both direct and second-order pressure. Direct: MBDA’s pre-emptive €1 billion stockpiling has already tightened spot availability of some seeker and magnet components in the European defence electronics market. Second-order: every other European defence programme scaling simultaneously — from Rheinmetall’s artillery ramp to Leonardo’s radar expansion — is drawing on the same mineral inputs.
The technology metals most exposed to China export control risk include gallium, germanium, tungsten, and antimony — all of which feed directly into MBDA’s production chain. Monitoring price and availability signals for these metals is now a front-line task for anyone operating in European defence supply chains.
What critical minerals does the MBDA missile supply chain depend on?
MBDA’s missile production relies on gallium and germanium for radar seekers, rare earth elements for guidance magnets, tungsten for warhead components, cobalt for superalloys and SmCo magnets, and titanium for airframes. Each of these materials carries significant China supply chain exposure.
Why did MBDA spend €1 billion stockpiling raw materials in advance?
MBDA pre-emptively stockpiled €1 billion of components and raw materials before formal state contracts were in place — a departure from traditional defence procurement — to eliminate supply chain bottlenecks during its production surge. The company cited the need to avoid delays on high-demand systems including Aster, Storm Shadow, and Meteor.
How does China’s export control policy affect MBDA’s supply chain?
China controls the dominant share of global production for gallium, germanium, rare earth processing, and tungsten — all critical to missile manufacturing. Beijing imposed export licensing controls on gallium and germanium in 2023 and tightened restrictions on tungsten in late 2024, directly constraining Western defence electronics supply chains.
What is MBDA’s €5 billion investment programme?
MBDA has committed €5 billion in investment across 2026–2030, spent entirely on European soil, covering factory expansions, new machinery, and infrastructure upgrades across France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK. The programme is funded by record 2025 financial results: €5.8 billion in revenue and €13.2 billion in new orders.
How much is MBDA increasing missile production in 2026?
MBDA is targeting a 40% increase in missile output in 2026, following a doubling of production between 2023 and end-2025. Aster missile output is set to double, with annual production targeting more than 300 units by 2028. Mistral production is already running at four times its 2022 level.
