Thrust Roxel: after the merger of the bulk of Europe's tactical missiles activities into MBDA, it became somewhat obvious that a similar walk to the altar would sooner or later take place with those concerned with the tail end of the weapons, in this instance Celerg and the Rocket Motors Division of Royal Ordnance. (What's Up).

The exchange of rings, which took place in mid-February 2003, has metamorphosed into what could simply be described as a perfect fifty-fifty marriage. Indeed, there hardly was any overlap in the technologies developed on both sides of the Channel, and by putting together their assets both companies actually broaden the range of propulsion systems they can offer.

Celerg, itself a son of Aerospatiale (now MBDA, of course) and Societe Nationale des Poudres et Explosifs Energetic Materials, specialised in cast composite propellant, extruded double-base propellant and ramjet propulsion.

Royal Ordance's Rocket Motors Division, for its part, concentrated on cast double-base propellants. The "hardly saw any overlap" term used above takes all its significance here, since Celerg indeed had a small cast double-base propulsion production facility in Angouleme. This will be closed by next year and its activities transferred to Summerfield in England.

The new set-up now strategically positions the 800-employee strong Roxel and its consolidated turnover of approximately 150 million [euro] in third position worldwide behind ARC and ATK in the United States. By way of comparison, western Europe's other players are Bayern Chemic in Germany (53 million [euro]), Nammo-Raufoss in Norway (15 million [euro]), Fiat Avio (12 million [euro]) and Snecma SPS (8 million [euro]).

Roxel has thus acquired 60 per cent of the west European market and reached an enviable critical mass. So now what happens? Knowing that the American market is a veritable no-entry zone, this situation would normally leave the export market as the sole area in which to expand. But there again, most European exporters here already are those very missile manufacturers to which Roxel is a supplier, suggesting that growth on this continent depends on how business can be shifted, to use a euphemism. Quite apart from gains that can be achieved through synergy, the answer appears to lie in higher technology levels, which only larger critical masses can afford. For example, Roxel is currently working on scramjets, pulse detonation motors and, very importantly, on solid-propellant rocket motor thrust modulation (whereby the output is indeed 'throttleable'). These soon-to-market developments, combined with thrust vectoring (as used on both the Aster and the Mica missiles), can provide extremely useful advantages in terms of manoeuvrability and structural stress. Other company fortes include current research on stealthy and insensitive propellants. It will be interesting to watch to which extent such advanced propulsion technologies may cause a cross-Allantic switch in customer missile choice in the future.