Teal Group Sees Global Missile & UAV Market Hitting $103.7 Bn
Teal Group analysts predict that an estimated 600,000 missiles valued at $103.7 billion are expected to be built throughout the world between 2006-2015. They released their forecast at Asian Aerospace 2006, in Singapore’s Changi Exhibition Centre.
Surface-air missiles (SAMs) still constitute the largest single missile market (48,194 missiles/ $24.3 billion/ 23.4%), followed by air-to-surface attack missiles headed in the other direction (41,610/ $16.3 billion/ 15.7%). They’ll be accompanied by the third-place category smart munitions, which have rocketed upward to a forecast of 273,635 guided bombs and 38,615 smart AT munitions ($13.8 billion/ 13.3%)…
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Surface-to-surface missiles, which includes ballistic missiles, land-launched cruise missiles, et. al., were in fifth place (6,206/ $9.8 billion/ 9.4%); followed by anti-armor missiles (140,759/ $10.9 billion/ 10.6%), air-to-air dogfighting missiles (41,470/ $9.6 billion/ 9.3%); and anti-ship missiles (5,050/ $6.4 billion/ 6.2%).
Finally, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which comprised only 5,382 forecasted units ($2.9 billion/ 2.5%) in 1997, now rank fourth with 17,976 projected units valued at $12.5 billion, or 12.l%.
We asked Teal why UAVs were part of this study, and author Steve Zaloga replied with some thoughts and comments:
“For a variety of reasons, Teal Group covers missiles, smart munitions, and UAVs (all types including target drones) in one of our monthly-updated surveys (World Missiles and UAV Briefing). The UAV industry is still very small, and the other option would be to lump it with Richard’s aircraft survey where it would be completely overshadowed.
In the event, the UAV numbers and smart munition numbers are disaggregated in the totals so that trends and market shares in the various segments remain fairly clear. Also, we do a separate worldwide UAV study every summer which looks at the emerging UAV market from other perspectives, notably with greater detail on future international requirements and on the UAV-related sensor market.”
Note that according to an earlier DID report, Forecast International has pegged the global UAV market in a similar range but slightly higher, at $13.6 billion by 2014.
With respect to the overall trends, Zaloga contends that the missile market has bottomed out and is heading up. Not because spending spigots are open again around the world, but precisely because they are not. As the release notes:
“In budget-strapped times, it is more cost effective to add a new generation of dogfight missiles to an older aircraft than to buy a new aircraft. Likewise, ships and many other weapons categories. Missiles offer to increase the combat capabilities of many weapons platforms without the need for the expense of replacing the system itself.”
True.
Zaloga says that they will “probably” break out our individual missile, UAV and smart munition market forecast data for all 156 individual missile, UAV and smart munition programs they cover at the Berlin Air Show on May 16, 2006.
