Belgian metal additive manufacturing company AnyShape has been selected as an industrial partner by Airbus Defence and Space for the Eurodrone program. The contract is not a prototype run or a technology demonstration. It covers sustained production volumes over multiple years, under the kind of aerospace-grade quality controls that have historically kept additive manufacturing at the margins of defense supply chains.
AnyShape is joined in the program by fellow Belgian company Materialise, which is producing the Environmental Control System through its industrial AM service division.
What Eurodrone Actually Is
Eurodrone is a remotely piloted aircraft system developed under a four-nation framework involving Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, managed by OCCAR and led by Airbus Defence and Space as prime contractor. It is the first RPAS designed from the ground up for integration into non-segregated civil airspace, meaning it can operate alongside conventional aircraft without airspace restrictions, and is certified against NATO STANAG 4671 Ed. 3.
The platform’s performance figures set it apart from existing systems. With a maximum mission payload of 2.3 metric tons and an endurance of up to 40 hours, its payload-to-endurance ratio has no current equivalent among operational RPAS platforms. Its mission scope spans intelligence gathering, surveillance, maritime patrol including anti-submarine warfare, airborne command and control, and attack roles. A twin-engine configuration provides redundancy under adverse conditions. Critically, the system is architected to exclude ITAR-controlled components, preserving full operational sovereignty for the nations that deploy it.
When Aerospace Primes Commit: AM Moves From Parts to Programs
The selection of AnyShape and Materialise for Eurodrone follows a pattern that Airbus in particular has been building toward for years, progressively embedding qualified AM suppliers into certified, long-cycle production programs rather than limiting additive to prototyping or isolated component development.
Stratasys produces over 25,000 flight-ready 3D printed components for Airbus annually, with parts certified under strict traceability protocols across multiple aircraft programs, a scale that reflects how deeply additive manufacturing has been wired into Airbus’s production infrastructure. On the metal side, Italian AM company Aidro was selected to supply flight-ready metal 3D printed parts for Leonardo helicopters, establishing a direct precedent for metal AM suppliers being qualified into multi-partner European defense production chains.
The qualification infrastructure supporting these commitments is also maturing. The UK’s £38 million DECSAM program brought together Airbus and a broad industry consortium to boost laser powder bed fusion productivity and advance certification frameworks, while ASTM International expanded AM accreditations across Germany, Latvia, and the Philippines as part of a coordinated push to scale qualified AM production globally.
Eurodrone sits at the intersection of these two converging trends, a prime contractor with deep AM production experience, a certification environment that is finally catching up with production ambitions, and European industrial policy that is actively pushing toward supply chain sovereignty.
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Featured image shows Eurodrone is the first RPAS natively designed and certified to fly safely in non-segregated (civilian) airspace. Image via Airbus.
