Sara Muñoz |
Madrid, (EFE) , and wealth, by contributing around 1.4% of the national GDP.
On the occasion of the first anniversary of the “aggression”, the president of Tedae, Ricardo Martí Fluxá, receives EFE in his office in Madrid, among photographs and memories of his time in the diplomatic career, to take stock of the last year of this sector , which exports “practically 60% of what it produces” to the five continents.
Tedae is the acronym for the Spanish Association of Defense, Security, Aeronautics and Space Technology Companies, which represents and promotes the almost one hundred companies that make it up and the four strategic sectors it represents.
In 2020, a few days before the declaration of a state of alarm due to the pandemic, Martí Fluxá was elected president of this non-profit association, one more experience in a long professional career that has led him to be head of Protocol and Security Activities. the House of His Majesty the King and, later, the Secretary of State for Security (1996-2000).
Despite having made the leap into a private company -currently, he is the non-executive president of the real estate developer Neinor Homes after passing through other companies such as ITP-, he retains that fascination for foreign policy and international relations typical of a diplomat, a verve that shows from the first question.
Question: What has the war in Ukraine meant for the Defense industry?
Answer: A completely different perception of its importance. It has been sadly fundamental. We have realized that we need to be prepared in all aspects, especially if we want to preserve our way of life, our freedoms, our society and the way we have lived in recent years.
Specifically, he develops, the armed conflict that has been going on for twelve months some 4,000 kilometers from Spain “has led to an immediate perception of risk, even of the word danger”, since, until now, it seemed that these events “forgot Europe”.
But the situation “is a way of waking up from a very pleasant but false dream”, because the threat “is no longer in an African country or in distant Asia, but on our borders”.
An opportunity for industry consolidation
This “change in sensitivity” can also be seen in Spain, an “important” member of NATO whose government promised, at the last summit organized in Madrid, to increase spending on weapons to bring it to 2% of GDP in 2029.
For now, the military budget for 2023 amounts to 12,825 million euros, 25.8% more than the previous year, 1.2% of GDP.
All of this becomes an opportunity for this “backbone” industry, where remuneration can be “up to three times” the average salary for an activity in the service sector, and which aspires to enter “in a very important country” -that is not can reveal- after succeeding in South America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.
Her human talent and technical capabilities in systems, turbines and the naval field are valued, for example, all achieved “through the public-private effort, with aid, but also with many private shareholders who have risked their capital to achieve this high technology”, says Martí Fluxá.
But the industry also has some shortcomings, such as the size of its companies.
“We have splendid supply chains, but other countries have been working on the consolidation of three or four leading companies,” says the president of Tedae, who believes that Spain should have another “two or three” large companies beyond Indra. and Airbus.
All in all, he praises the “fundamental” role played by the “resilient” SMEs in the sector, which continue to “do very well” even after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Bet on innovation against guerrilla warfare
The great challenges of the future, such as decarbonization, are shared by practically all countries, admits Martí Fluxá.
To them is added the supply crisis, which has strained the production chains in the most technological sectors.
Even so, in this aspect, Spain -as far as its Defense industry is concerned- “is better situated because it had enough stock in many matters and we have known how to cover ourselves more”.
Returning to the European prism, he predicts that the return to a military strategy of guerrilla warfare like the one being seen between Russia and Ukraine, given the expectations of a hybrid conflict with “offline” actions, will not prevent the sector from continuing to invest in innovation and digitization.
“Demand is once again very intense in new forms of Defense, much more than in ‘tools’ such as those that appear in Ukraine,” he points out, but not before highlighting that these industries are dual, so their technologies -among them, many mobile applications – also have a civil use. Without going any further, to calculate the distance between Madrid and Ukraine in this interview, a well-known map server based on the GPS system, son of the Cold War and the space race, has been used between the two powers of that bipolar world.
