July 15 (Reuters) – European missile maker MBDA said on Wednesday it had appointed Jean-Brice Dumont, Airbus’s head of military aircraft programmes, as chief executive to replace Eric Beranger from November 1.
The leadership change comes as Europe’s largest missile maker ramps up production to meet surging demand driven by the war in Ukraine and a wider rearmament push across the continent.
MBDA is jointly owned by Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo.
Dumont has led the Air Power business at Airbus Defence and Space since January 2024, having previously headed Military Air System, where he oversaw programmes including the A400M transport aircraft, Eurofighter combat jet and Eurodrone.
Before that, he served as Airbus’s executive vice president for engineering, and spent six years as executive vice president for engineering and chief technical officer at Airbus Helicopters.
A licensed French Army aviation pilot, Dumont started his career at France’s DGA defence procurement agency in 1996, working on the Tiger and Super Puma helicopter programmes. He is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique and ISAE-SUPAERO.
Beranger has led MBDA since 2019.
(Reporting by Hugo Lhomedet and Zakarya Meliani in Gdansk. Editing by Mark Potter)