Project Bromo: An Escape Hatch, Not a Fortress – Critique on the project to merge Airbus, Thales and Leonardo

It is becoming pretty clear that Project Bromo is more about protecting corporate shareholders than anything else.

> In its breakdown, CFDT Airbus Defence & Space identified “bidding wars” between Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia Space as leading directly to excessive risk-taking and organizational failures that plagued programs like OneSat.

In other words they’re joining forces so they can raise prices and avoid competing against each other. This is bad for Europe as it increases the costs on European governments.

> Project Bromo is a shared lifeboat, allowing Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo to pool their high-risk space business and spread the financial exposure that has become too heavy for any one of them to bear alone while still providing the value that shareholders demand. At the same time, the new company will have removed all major competition, allowing the three companies to enhance their overall influence on the European space sector.

As I’ve said previously this is about creating an unregulated monopoly that serves the government as sole customer, just like ULA was in the US.

> Yet, as this analysis shows, the project’s foundations seem less about sover*ign steel and more about shareholder dividends.

> That is undoubtedly the most cynical read, but to bastardize Samuel Johnson, it seems “sovereignty” is being wielded as the last refuge of the corporate scoundrel. The Starlink boogeyman was a convenient fiction. The tri-party strategic retreat appears to be a financial reality.

Edit: Edited quote to censor a word to bypass dumb filter.