“The Americans, the Europeans and everybody who has a defence business goes to the growth markets and guess what? It is always the same countries, it’s India, it’s Brazil, it’s the Middle East where we all meet and have a cut-throat competition, so that is not an easy thing,” he said.

“On top of that, those countries (leading emerging economies) are increasingly raising the hurdles - technology transfer, production transfer, all of that. It is much less a business case to do that than it was 10, 20 years ago.”

“The clock is more than ticking. It is not about strengthening the (European) defence industrial base, we should talk about the further erosion that is happening and in my view it is unlikely to stop,” he said.