Proactive Investors - Airbus Group (EPA:AIR) is cutting up to 2,500 jobs in its defence and space business due to tough competition and "rapid changes in warfare".
The French aircraft maker said it planned to axe around 7% of the division’s workforce by the middle of 2026.
First-half results from the company in the summer showed net profit fell by 46%, in part due to a €989 million writedown of the space unit.
Mike Schoellhorn, chief executive of Airbus Defence and Space, said recent years have seen the sector "impacted by a fast-changing and very challenging business context with disrupted supply chains, rapid changes in warfare and increasing cost pressure due to budgetary constraints".
Restructuring of the division started last year has "started bearing fruit", he said, but the next step is designed to "adjust to an increasingly difficult space market".
The French aviation giant has begun informing worker representatives today, the AFP newswire said, with the division employing 35,000 people.
Airbus Defence and Space is a world leader for telecommunications satellites, also making helicopters, drones, solar panels for satellites and space vehicles, modules for the European Space Agency's planned moon landing, among other products.