Critical Care | Sustaining Europe’s frontline from Heidelberg

This episode is shared from Critical Care, a podcast produced by Shephard Studio in partnership with Collins Aerospace.

As Europe ramps up defence investment in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, the spotlight is turning to how nations sustain their growing fleets. In this episode of Critical Care, produced by Shephard Studio in partnership with Collins Aerospace, we travel to Heidelberg, Germany — home to a regional sustainment hub that’s proving crucial for fast, local support across Europe and beyond.

We hear from Holger Eckstein, Michael Mayer and Michael Nelson – leaders within Collins’ sustainment operations – as they explain how the Heidelberg service centre is handling everything from Eurofighter and Tornado repairs to complex electronics for helicopters and land platforms. They reveal how deep regional expertise, long-term partnerships with primes like Airbus and BAE Systems, and close ties to international customers are transforming the speed and scale of military readiness.

From reducing reliance on transatlantic repair cycles to enabling more responsive support for customers like the Royal Saudi Air Force, this episode explores how Heidelberg’s model of forward sustainment is setting a new benchmark. We also look at how Europe’s fragmented defence landscape is starting to shift towards more unified, collaborative approaches — not just for procurement, but for long-term support.

What emerges is a clear message: rapid, reliable sustainment isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s essential for operational credibility in a fast-changing world.

Coming up next: we head to the Netherlands to see what happens when Collins’ engineers go embedded with the Royal Netherlands Air Force, working side by side on the hangar floor.