Confirming a corresponding report in the Financial Times Deutschland, the spokesman said EADS would cut the number of subsidiaries within the division from five to three.

The services activities, hitherto pooled into a separate business unit, would be divided up between the three main units, Military Air Systems, Defence and Communications Systems, and Defence Electronics.

And the missiles activities would be integrated into MBDA, a joint venture between EADS, British firm BAE Systems and Finmeccanica of Italy.

In Germany, EADS would relocate close to 2,500 employees in the Military Air Systems unit from their current base in Ottobrunn close to Munich to Manching, about 80 kilometres away. The defence and security division currently accounts for around a quarter of group sales, but division head Stefan Zoller hopes to increase that proportion to 30 percent within five years.

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