Thousands of Airbus jobs at risk over MoD contract
Airbus has privately told the Ministry of Defence that a failure to secure a contract to build the next generation of Skynet 6 satellites could threaten £10bn worth of potential exports.
The company is currently trying to secure work from the Japanese government and various Middle Eastern countries.
However, this business relies on Airbus's status as a trusted British partner and executives fear that a snub from London would sink the deals.
That would in turn cause serious problems for the company's UK space division, multiple people briefed on the situation said.
Without the extra work, the future of the company's flagship satellite facilities in Stevenage and Portsmouth – which employ a combined 3,000 people – would be put at risk.
They are seen as the jewels in crown of the UK space industry, with Sir Keir Starmer taking German chancellor Friedrich Merz on a tour of the Stevenage site during a visit on Thursday.
But at present, the UK division only has enough work to sustain it until the end of this decade.
Ben Bridges, chairman of Airbus Defence and Space UK, has also previously warned that Britain's sovereign ability to design and make satellites is critical to its status as a global 'space power'.
On Friday, a spokesman for Airbus declined to comment.
The MoD is expected to put the latest Skynet contract out to tender as soon as next week, with Airbus and US defence giant Lockheed Martin the only two companies in the running. Airbus has built all of Britain's Skynet satellites to date.
The bus-sized devices orbit the Earth from more than 22,000 miles away and provide vital, secure communications used to keep troops connected with bases back in Britain, coordinate missile strikes or transmit targeting data.
Airbus is facing a challenge from Lockheed, which has offered to set up a UK satellite manufacturing base. Ministry of Defence insiders say the American giant is also offering advanced capabilities that are not available from Airbus satellites.
The decision is gaining urgency as Airbus lobbies for clarity on its future workload.
Made in America?
At the same time, a debate is raging across Europe over how much to invest in US-made military equipment in future amid concerns about Donald Trump's commitment to the Continent.
President Trump has called on Europe to step up and pay for its own security, a push that led to Nato members recently agreeing to increase defence spending to 5pc of GDP by 2035.
On Friday, James Cartlidge, Conservative shadow defence secretary, warned that preserving Britain's ability to design and make satellites was essential because of the growing role space was playing in conflicts.
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Tom, 17, said: "I get the feeling you have to be quite tech savvy to protect your kids online. You have to go into the settings and work out each one. It should be the default. It needs to be straight away, day one." Matthew, 15, said: "I think because everybody is online all the time and there's no real moderation to what people can say or what can be shared, it can really affect people's lives because it's always there. "As soon as I wake up, I check my phone and until I go to bed. The only time I take a break is when I eat or am talking to someone." Some of the teenagers had spent 12 or even up to 16 hours a day online. Nathan, 15, said: "When, for example, a 13-year-old is on their phone 'til midnight, you can't sleep, your body can't function properly and your mind is all over the place." But there was scepticism about what could be done. Charlotte, 17, said: "If your parents sets a restriction on Instagram and say, 'right, you're coming off it now' - there's TikTok, there is Pinterest, there is Facebook, there's Snapchat, there so many different other ones, you can go on, and it just builds up and builds and builds up, and you end up sat there for the entire evening just on social media. I think we need harsher controls." Several of the pupils who met Mr Kyle detailed being contacted by adult strangers, either on social media apps or online gaming, in ways which made them feel uncomfortable. How could the ban actually work? The tech already exists to make a ban like this a reality. On Friday, rules will start being enforced in the UK that will mean sites hosting harmful adult content will need to properly check the ages of their users. There are a number of ways companies could do that, including credit card checks, ID checks and AI facial age estimation. It is likely these are the same systems that would be used to keep teenagers off social media during certain hours, as suggested by Peter Kyle to Sky News. It's how Australia is looking into enforcing its total ban of under-16s on social media later this year - but the process isn't without controversy. Concerns around privacy are frequently raised as internet users worry about big tech companies storing even more of their personal data. There are also questions about just how effective these age verification processes could actually be. Tech like AI facial estimation can reliably age-check users - but teenagers may quickly work out how to circumvent the system using plugins and settings that could be a mystery to all but the savviest parents. At the moment, a lot of age-checking AI systems are trained to spot the difference between an adult and a child, and can do that to a high degree of accuracy. But while telling the visual difference between a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old is much harder, AI learns fast. Officials working on the UK's age verification scheme have suggested AI will soon be able to accurately verify the ages of under-18s, making a ban like this much more realistic. Mr Kyle said: "It is madness, it is total madness, and many of the apps or the companies have taken action to restrict contacts that adults - particularly strangers - have with children, but we need to go further and I accept that. "At the moment, I think the balance is tipped slightly in the wrong direction. Parents don't feel they have the skills, the tools or the ability to really have a grip on the childhood experience online, how much time, what they're seeing, they don't feel that kids are protected from unhealthy activity or content when they are online." The tech secretary is in the process of implementing the 2023 Online Safety Act, passed by the previous government. From this Friday, all platforms must introduce stronger protections for children online, including a legal requirement for all pornography sites accessed in the UK to have effective age verification in place - such as facial age estimation or ID checks. Mr Kyle added: "I don't just want the base level set where kids aren't being criminally exploited and damaged, that shouldn't be the height of our aspirations. The height of our aspirations should be a healthy experience." Labour MP Lola McEvoy, who organised the focus group, said: "I knew things were bad online for children and young people but their testimony revealed the extent of explicit, disturbing and toxic content that is now the norm. "Their articulation of the changes they wanted to see was excellent and they've done our town and their generation proud." Tiktok, Pinterest, Meta and Snapchat were contacted for comment, but none provided an on the record statement. The companies have accounts for under-16s with parental controls and some set reminders for screen time. TikTok has a 60-minute daily screen time limit for under-18s after which they must enter a password to continue, and a reminder to switch off at 10pm. The company say this is to support a healthy relationship with screen time. Pinterest have supported phone-free policies at schools, in the US and Canada and say they are looking to expand this elsewhere.
