What Germany is building in defence tech (2026)

The Vector takes off vertically and cruises like a fixed-wing aircraft, an airframe Seibel patented when he started the company in 2015. Ten years on, the Bundeswehr placed a €210m framework order, Twister, for up to 747 systems to replace the older ALADIN drone in the army, navy and air force. The US Army selected the same airframe in April 2026 under a $15.3m award for brigade-level reconnaissance. Quantum-Systems drones have flown more than 20,000 combat hours in Ukraine since February 2022.

Stark is in Berlin, with a production hall in Munich that opened in summer 2025. Its main product, Virtus, is a one-way attack drone shaped like a small aircraft that launches vertically and dives terminally at 250 km/h. The Bundeswehr is procuring up to 12,000 loitering munitions from all three suppliers under separate framework contracts. The Bundestag approved Helsing and Stark in February 2026, with initial firm orders of around €300m each, and Rheinmetall followed in April under a framework worth up to €2.4bn. In October 2025, in trials with British forces in Kenya and German forces near Munster, all four Virtus rounds missed their targets. One crashed into woodland 150 metres from its aimpoint, another's battery ignited after impact. Stark said the company had crashed drones a hundred times during development and this was what testing looked like. In a separate German trial Helsing's HX-2 reportedly scored 17 hits while Virtus missed both targets. Sequoia had led Stark's $62m Series A at a $500m valuation in August, two months before the trials. The Bundeswehr placed the production order regardless.

Wingcopter in Weiterstadt near Darmstadt built its name on delivery drones for humanitarian logistics. In February it signed a manufacturing joint venture with Ukraine's TAF Industries to build reconnaissance UAVs in Germany, with Chancellor Merz receiving the partnership at the Munich Security Conference. Avilus in Ismaning builds three larger dual-use platforms with Hensoldt sensors, including an electric medevac airframe called Grille. Donaustahl, in the Bavarian town of Hutthurm, financed itself in 2025 with a 5.9% retail bond and a €4m crowdfunding round, hired a former KNDS executive as CFO, and tripled its revenue selling loitering munitions it markets as Offense-Tech. Smaller drone teams sit in Berlin, Konstanz, Hamburg and Essen.

Aaronia is in Strickscheid, a village in the Eifel hills near the Belgian border with 28 inhabitants and no railway station. The company has been there since 2003 and now employs 75 people who build RF spectrum analysers and the AARTOS counter-drone system, used by the German, Austrian, Australian, Portuguese, Finnish and Estonian armed forces, the Dutch and British defence ministries, and Heathrow Airport.

Tytan Technologies in Munich builds the METIS interceptor, an AI-guided drone that hunts other drones at 350 km/h within a 25 km radius. Earlier this year Tytan closed a €30m Series A co-led by Armira and the NATO Innovation Fund, won a slot in a multi-hundred-million-euro Bundeswehr counter-drone programme, and announced engine and sensor partnerships with Deutz and Hensoldt. The interceptor is designed for production at up to 3,000 units a month. Alpine Eagle, also in Munich, builds Sentinel, an air-to-air counter-drone platform that operates from the sky rather than the ground, with the Bundeswehr as launch customer in 2025.

Inleap Photonics in Hanover, a 2023 spin-off from the Laser Zentrum, builds a fast-steering laser called FastLight Shield. In April 2026 it was integrated onto Stark's Vanta unmanned surface vessel and is rated to defeat up to 300 drones a minute against swarm attack. Dedrone, founded in Kassel and now owned by the American police-tech group Axon, is one of the longest-running German counter-drone names. Skylance in Hürth markets a kinetic counter-FPV interceptor. Riseport Europe in Hamburg has built a passive acoustic-and-optical detection system priced under €100k a unit.

Helsing was founded in 2021 by Torsten Reil, who had earlier sold a motion-synthesis company called NaturalMotion to Zynga; Gundbert Scherf, a former McKinsey defence partner who had spent two years as a special representative inside the German Ministry of Defence; and Niklas Köhler, a machine-learning engineer from medical AI at Helmholtz Munich. The first office was in central Munich, and five years later the company has offices in Berlin, London and Paris, subsidiaries in Estonia, France and the United Kingdom, around 900 staff, and a €12bn valuation, set in a €600m Series D in June 2025 led by Daniel Ek's Prima Materia. Helsing is Europe's most valuable private defence company.

Helsing's product range now spans three domains. The HX-2 is a strike drone, the SG-1 Fathom is an underwater drone, and the CA-1 Europa is an autonomous combat aircraft programme run with Saab. In November 2025 Helsing and Saab Germany signed a €258m contract in Munich to integrate Helsing's Cirra AI software into Saab's Arexis electronic-warfare sensor suite for the Eurofighter EK, the German variant replacing the Tornado in the EW role. The wider Bundeswehr loitering-munition tranche put Helsing on the same paper as Stark and Rheinmetall, and in a comparative trial Helsing's drones reportedly hit 17 targets to Stark Virtus's zero.

Beyond Helsing, a cluster of smaller defence-software companies has formed in the past three years, most of them in Munich. 21strategies in Hallbergmoos, just past Munich's airport, builds Third Wave decision AI for the Bundeswehr with Hensoldt as both an investor and a consortium partner. Aereus, founded in April 2025 by two computer-vision researchers, is in NATO's DIANA programme and won the German leg of the EU defence-innovation hackathon working on real Ukrainian reconnaissance footage. Traversals in Erlangen builds an OSINT fusion platform that, among other things, monitors the Ukrainian front line. Hat.tec in Neubiberg ships airborne mission software for manned-unmanned teaming. Scipio Networks in Berlin is building military logistics software, and 3yourmind across town runs additive-manufacturing workflow tools that have ended up identifying spare parts for armoured-vehicle fleets. Project Q, a Munich open-source initiative, ships an Apache-licensed coordination platform called Hydris.

Some of the engineers behind these companies come from the German automotive industry, which has announced multi-thousand-job cuts at Bosch, ZF and Volkswagen since 2023. Rheinmetall received around 120,000 applications for 3,000 advertised positions in the first half of 2025 and has been recruiting at automotive sites being shut down. Helsing, Stark and Quantum-Systems do not publish their hiring numbers, but the largest defence-tech employers and the largest automotive employers are within a few hours of each other in southern Germany.

Arx Robotics was founded in 2022 by three former Bundeswehr officers, Marc Wietfeld, Maximilian Wied and Stefan Roebel, as a spin-off from the Gereon research project at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. Its flagship vehicle, also called Gereon, is a tracked unmanned ground vehicle small enough to fit in the back of a Sprinter van, used for reconnaissance, logistics, casualty evacuation, route clearance and weapons-carrier missions. Germany has supplied around 30 Gereon units to Ukraine, and the British Army signed a contract in April 2026.

Arx closed a €42m Series A across two tranches in 2025, led by HV Capital with Speedinvest behind, and now employs around 140 in Munich. The Franco-German Main Ground Combat System programme has slipped to an operational target of 2040–2045, and the joint project company was only registered in Cologne in April 2025. France is studying a national fallback. Arx vehicles are already in service.

Swarm Biotactics in Kassel builds cyborg-insect swarms with onboard edge AI for reconnaissance in collapsed structures and denied terrain, at a much earlier stage than Arx.

Plath has been building signals-intelligence equipment from a Hamburg radio-engineering bureau that Maximilian Wächtler established in 1950. The company today is a family-owned group of 12 subsidiaries with more than 500 staff, building COMINT systems, SIGINT systems, direction-finding equipment and electronic-warfare suites used at sea, on the ground and in the air, though it does not publicly name customers. In November 2025 Plath conducted at-sea trials of a new naval product called Nautilus, and earlier in 2025 flew an EW jamming demonstrator with Airbus Defence and Space and Hensoldt as part of the luWES programme.

Orbint, founded in Neubiberg next to the University of the Bundeswehr Munich in March 2025, builds a distributed small-sat constellation that detects, identifies and geolocates radio-frequency signals in near-real-time, with Rohde and Schwarz taking a strategic stake in November. Orbint is a UniBwM defence spin-off, alongside Quantum-Systems (via Florian Seibel) and Arx Robotics (via the Gereon project), all out of the same university.

Aerodata in Braunschweig is the world market leader in flight-inspection systems used by aviation authorities. Vected in Fürth and Andres Industries in Berlin build thermal imaging and night-vision optics. Hema Electronic in Aalen makes ruggedised FPGA vision modules for armoured vehicles and submarines. Schmidt and Bender in the Hessian village of Biebertal, where two precision-mechanics instrument makers founded the firm in 1957, today supplies riflescopes to the United States Marine Corps and to United States Special Operations Command. True Detection Systems out of the Federal Institute for Materials Research in Berlin makes a 1.3kg fluorescent-dye explosives-trace detector.

Aeromaritime Systembau in Neufahrn bei Freising, 20 minutes north of Munich airport, has supplied 650+ integrated communications systems across 45+ navies since the company was founded in 1971. It builds the APCOS 4000 ship-communications architecture that runs on the German Navy's F125 frigate, the SAMMS secure-messaging system, and multifunctional submarine antennas.

CeoTronics in Rödermark builds tactical headsets and PTT control units. Cestron in Berlin builds HF and broadcast antennas. Neosat in Neubiberg builds eavesdropping-secure SATCOM. Elna in Tangstedt builds maritime MF/HF antennas. ZeroPhase in Munich, founded in 2025, builds adaptive data links that keep unmanned systems connected under jamming and electronic warfare.

In October 2025 ThyssenKrupp spun off TKMS, its submarine-building arm, and floated 49% on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The shares opened at €60 and closed the first day near €107, a 78% gain. Germany had already lifted its Type 212CD submarine order from two boats to six in December 2024, and Norway signed for two more in January 2026, taking the joint German-Norwegian programme to its planned ceiling of 12. The Type F127 air-defence frigate, replacing the Sachsen class, is expected to be contracted in summer 2026 with first delivery around 2034. In September 2025 Rheinmetall agreed to acquire the private shipbuilder NVL from the Lürssen family.

Elac Sonar in Kiel, owned by the British defence group Cohort, builds submarine sonar suites and has just rolled out a new seabed surveillance product called Enlitor. north.io, also in Kiel, builds the TrueOcean and TrueEarth platforms, big-data infrastructure for underwater and terrestrial sensor networks. The Portuguese Navy is a customer, and the company joined NATO's REPMUS exercise in 2025. Gabler Maschinenbau in Lübeck builds submarine periscopes and torpedo-tube-launched USVs. Euroatlas in Hamburg builds the Greyshark autonomous underwater vehicle. Flanq in Rostock builds Q-Recon unmanned surface vessels and the Q-Mind autonomy stack. Uni-Safe in Wedel builds special-purpose RHIBs. EvoLogics in Berlin builds the underwater acoustic modems used by most of them.

In September 2025 Boris Pistorius announced €35bn of military space spending by 2030, including secure constellations, a Bundeswehr space command and an explicit policy shift toward considering offensive space capabilities. Bremen, where OHB, Airbus Defence and Space and ArianeGroup all have major sites, has more than 140 aerospace companies and 12,000 aerospace jobs. Polaris Spaceplanes in Bremen, founded in 2019, holds the BAAINBw HYTEV contract announced in January 2026 to build a fully reusable two-stage hypersonic test vehicle, fighter-sized, flight-ready by the end of 2027. The company has flown around 250 test flights with seven demonstrators, including a successful aerospike ignition with the MIRA II vehicle, and is integrating Diehl IRIS-T missiles into a hypersonic carrier configuration.

Reflex Aerospace, headquartered in Berlin with manufacturing in Munich, aims at sub-12-month design-to-orbit cycles and launched its first satellite, Sigi, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in January 2025. In November 2025 Reflex closed a €50m Series A, the largest European new-space Series A to date, led by Human Element and Alpine Space Ventures with Bayern Kapital and HTGF alongside. The Optimas defence-communications project, an EU-funded 12-partner consortium with the Spanish naval prime Navantia in the lead, has Reflex designing the space segment.

Constellr, a 2020 Fraunhofer spinout in Freiburg and Munich, is building a thermal-infrared satellite constellation with DLR as a multi-year customer and raised €37m in February. Marble Imaging in Bremen is building Europe's first daily very-high-resolution Earth observation constellation. Vyoma in Munich, Okapi:Orbits in Braunschweig, Morpheus Space in Dresden and DeltaOrbit at Ottobrunn cover space domain awareness, traffic management and propulsion. Isar Aerospace, also in Ottobrunn, has raised over €400m in total. Its March 2025 inaugural Spectrum launch from Andøya failed 30 seconds in, and a second flight is planned. Rocket Factory Augsburg, the OHB-spun small launcher, is in the same race for the first commercial European orbital flight.

Mynaric, the Gilching laser-comms company that pioneered space optical terminals, exited a StaRUG corporate restructuring in August 2025. Rheinmetall weighed a national counter-bid in February before withdrawing on 11 March, saying it could access Mynaric's technology through licensing or subcontract without buying the company. Rocket Lab closed its $155m takeover on 14 April. The Gilching site is now an American launcher's only European production base.

Blücher GmbH, in Erkrath outside Düsseldorf, was founded in 1969 by two brothers, Hasso and Hubert von Blücher, to develop activated-carbon protective clothing. The company has since shipped 12m+ Saratoga protective systems to 55 countries, including 22 NATO members. OPCW chemical-weapons inspectors use Saratoga gear, and most NATO chemical-warfare suits come from Erkrath.

Autoflug, in Rellingen near Hamburg, was founded on 1 October 1919 in Berlin-Johannisthal as Spezialhaus für das AUTOmobil und FLUGwesen. The company moved north in 1958 and now builds parachute systems, ejection-seat integration, energy-absorbing helicopter and crew seats, blast-protected vehicle seats and CBRN protection. It has been a Bundeswehr Martin-Baker partner for over 60 years. Schmidt and Bender in Biebertal makes precision rifle scopes for the United States Marine Corps and USSOCOM. Dynamit Nobel Defence in Burbach, the Panzerfaust 3 maker, broke ground last March on a new tube production hall and has signed Bundeswehr framework agreements for shoulder weapons and Puma IFV reactive armour.

Schuberth in Magdeburg builds the current Bundeswehr Gefechtshelm. Busch PROtective in Gütersloh and Zentauron in Bad Salzuflen build ballistic helmets and plate carriers. Spekon in Saxony has been making parachutes since 1938. ACS Armoured Car Systems in Friedberg won the Bundeswehr Caracal contract for 3,000+ air-transportable armoured vehicles. Drehtainer in Hamburg builds ballistic command-post containers. FibreCoat in Aachen makes metal-coated yarns for radar-absorbing composites. Akhetonics in Berlin builds photonic computing chips, and Blackwave in Munich builds aerospace composites.

Behind these specialists, the German primes are scaling production to match the new orders. Diehl Defence is investing roughly €1bn to scale Iris-T missile production toward 2,000 missiles a year, more than tripling current capacity, with Ukraine signing a €2.2bn contract for additional Iris-T systems in June 2025. MBDA Deutschland is building Europe's first Patriot missile production plant in Schrobenhausen, 50km north of Munich, where the site passed 1,700 staff at the end of 2025. Hypersonica, founded in Munich in late 2023, became Europe's only private hypersonic-missile programme after a €23.3m Series A.

The €100bn Sondervermögen Bundeswehr that Olaf Scholz announced three days after the invasion of Ukraine runs out in 2027, and the architecture replacing it is larger and more permanent. None of this is irreversible, and German defence procurement has shown plenty of ways for things to go wrong, from the FCAS dispute to the slipped MGCS schedule. But the capital that has already moved into these companies, the engineers who have changed jobs, and the products already delivered to operational customers are harder to undo. The atlas tracks 90+ of these companies, with more arriving each month. Explore all German companies →