Defence companies in Denmark: the state of the industry (2026)

Terma, based near Aarhus, is the largest. It reported revenue of DKK 3.4 billion (about €455 million) for its 2025/26 financial year, up 16% organically, has more than 2,400 staff and took on almost 600 people during the year. It makes radars, command-and-control systems (the software and hardware commanders use to see and direct their forces) and aircraft structures, including parts for the F-35. Terma has also started buying smaller companies, including the British counter-drone integrator OSL Technology in 2025 and the Danish encryption company Dencrypt, in an agreement announced in August 2026. Systematic, the Aarhus software house, reported revenue of €299.6 million for 2024/25 and grew its staff from 1,172 to 1,283. NATO chose its SitaWare software in 2024 for planning land operations.

Weibel Scientific in Allerød, north of Copenhagen, makes Doppler radars for air defence, drone detection and space tracking. Its revenue passed DKK 900 million for the first time in the year to April 2026, and its staff rose from 460 to 609. FMI, the defence ministry's procurement agency, has ordered its radars twice since December 2025, and those bought for army air defence will feed Terma's command systems. In August 2026 Terma also agreed with the counter-drone maker MyDefence to combine its radar with MyDefence's radio sensors and jammers.

Below these sit a few mid-sized manufacturers, several of them foreign-owned. Hydrema in Støvring, which makes mine-clearing vehicles and assembles and services military vehicles for other manufacturers, had revenue of DKK 1.38 billion and 524 staff in 2025, though defence is only part of its business. INVISIO's Danish company in Hvidovre, owned by the Swedish group of the same name, makes soldier headsets and hearing protection and grew revenue by 25% to DKK 944 million in 2025, with 182 staff. Saab Danmark in Sønderborg, which builds tactical communication systems, went from 237 to 322 employees in 2025. By the end of 2022, Danish companies had won F-35 orders worth just over $1 billion, according to the 2024 study.

Shipbuilding and ammunition production are being rebuilt with state orders and state money. The navy's new ships for cleaning up pollution at sea and laying mines were ordered in early 2026 from a consortium led by Karstensens Skibsværft of Skagen and are due in service around 2029. Its 5 new ships for Greenland and Arctic waters are further behind. The state has paid DKK 490 million since 2023 to the Danske Flådeskibe consortium, which includes Terma, but in August 2026 there was still no build contract. At Elling, near Frederikshavn, the Nordic ammunition group Nammo is restarting a plant that closed in 2020, to make 155 mm and 120 mm shells and rifle cartridges from the second half of 2027. The Danish state holds 15% of Nammo Denmark, in an industry the 2024 study had described as entirely privately owned. A private company, SkyPro Propulsion, has state permission for Denmark's first production line for artillery rockets at a former NATO depot in Vandel and plans about 110 hires. “We must be able to produce at least 10,000 rockets a year,” its chief executive Michael Kjær Sørensen told the public broadcaster DR (translated from Danish).

The companies in the DefenceJobs atlas look different from the established core. Among those founded before 2018, most work on radar, sensors, satellites or encryption. Among those founded since, drones are the largest group, about a third, and a handful of small ammunition and rocket makers have appeared since 2020. None of the companies we list that were founded in 2018 or later is known to employ more than 50 people.

Many of them come out of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), north of Copenhagen. Triton Depth was started by DTU students in 2025 and puts listening sensors on the seabed to protect cables and pipelines. By September 2026 it had run more than 25 sea tests and presented the system to the navies of Denmark, Sweden and Ukraine. Celare Quantum Communications and Alea Quantum Technologies, 2 DTU spin-outs that share a chief executive, build quantum encryption hardware, and the Ministry of Defence has installed Celare's quantum key distribution systems, which send encryption keys in a way that exposes any eavesdropper. UMag Solutions, which finds mines with drone-mounted magnetometers, and Dencrypt also grew out of DTU research.

Odense is the other hub. Its robotics cluster, Odense Robotics, runs APUS with the defence industry network CenSec, a DKK 17 million programme that helps small Danish drone and unmanned-systems companies develop products for Ukraine and other military users. The city is home to OODALOOP Technologies, Bionic System Solutions, Quadsat and Dropla Tech, which was founded in 2023 by 4 Ukrainians and does its engineering in Ukraine. Others have moved across from civilian work. Quadsat began by testing satellite antennas with drones before it built electronic warfare payloads, and UPTEKO also markets its drones to police, fire services and wind farm operators.

The ones that have grown large are older, and most got there with outside money or foreign customers. UXV Technologies in Ishøj, founded in 2014, makes ground control stations, the consoles operators use to fly military drones, and has almost 150 staff in Denmark, according to the business register. MyDefence, a counter-drone maker founded in 2013 in Nørresundby, across the fjord from Aalborg, has been majority-owned by the private equity firm Bridgepoint since 2024. It reported a 2025 net profit of DKK 125.4 million and says its staff grew from 52 at the start of 2025 to 135 in May 2026. Sky-Watch in Støvring, founded in 2009 and maker of the hand-launched RQ-35 Heidrun reconnaissance drone, was bought in 2022 by the US-based AIRO Group, and the Netherlands chose the RQ-35 in an open competition in June 2026. GomSpace in Aalborg, founded in 2007, is listed in Stockholm, and its neighbour Space Inventor, which built the BIFROST surveillance satellite that Danish and Swedish defence paid for, says it has more than 100 staff.

Of the younger companies, the drone makers are furthest along. In August 2026 Nordic Wing, founded in 2018 at the old Værløse air base, signed a SEK 350 million (roughly €30 million) contract with Sweden's procurement agency FMV for its Astero reconnaissance drone and Raptor 2 loitering munition, a drone that circles over a target before diving onto it. The Swedish broadcaster SVT called it the country's first purchase of attack drones.Renegade UxS in Holte, north of Copenhagen, registered in 2024 and with about 20 staff, has delivered about 10,000 of its Nightmare FPV drones (small drones flown through a live video feed) to Ukraine's defence ministry, its founder told Janes in February 2026. Others aim at heavier loads or lower prices, from Hecto Drone's petrol-electric multirotors to OODALOOP's expendable strike and interceptor drones. “Many price their solutions at around €100,000, and that's not something everyone needs,” OODALOOP's co-founder Christian Møller told Odense Robotics. In counter-drone work, Nordic Radar Solutions in Egå is the only Danish company in E-CUAS, an EU-funded counter-drone project, and in July 2026 a consortium led by Bionic System Solutions, with MyDefence as a partner, won a place as 1 of 5 suppliers on a NATO counter-drone framework, a standing contract that member countries can order from.

A support system for these companies has formed since 2025. Defence Tech Denmark, the national defence accelerator, was launched in April 2025 with up to DKK 200 million from EIFO, the state export and investment fund, the Danish Industry Foundation and Innovation Fund Denmark, and is run by DTU Science Park and the Danish Technological Institute. It took 27 companies, 13 startups and 14 established small firms, from more than 150 applicants into its first round in January 2026. Each startup can receive about DKK 1 million in early funding and the chance to test with FMI, and the programme aims to take 72 companies through in 3 years. More than 10 of its first round appear in this report. “Denmark does not lack ideas or technology. What we lack is speed, coherence and a professional pathway from development to application,” its director at the time, Jimmy Binderup Andersen, said when the first round started.

Innovation Fund Denmark is putting at least DKK 585 million into up to 4 defence research centres from 2026 to 2029 and at least DKK 105 million into a defence technology call with decisions expected in December 2026. NATO's DIANA accelerator picked Robotto, an Aalborg company whose software steers drones without satellite positioning, for its 2026 cohort of 150 companies from 3,680 applicants. FMI also holds open days where companies can meet its industry office and the Danish Defence Innovation Unit.

The main way money from foreign contracts reaches Danish firms is industrial cooperation, the Danish rules that let the state require a foreign supplier on a contract above DKK 50 million to place 25% to 100% of its value with Danish industry. Outstanding obligations rose from DKK 11.1 billion in December 2025 to more than DKK 30 billion (about €4 billion) by August 2026, and DI estimates the air defence purchase alone could add DKK 35 to 40 billion. The figures overstate the orders, because suppliers can count some contributions several times over, up to 7 times for technology transfer. The work has also stayed with a few firms, and in 2021 just 25 companies handled 97% of it. DI now proposes extra credit when foreign suppliers use small companies, and some foreign groups are already approaching them. At the procurement agency's annual industry fair in Herning in August 2026, the British defence group Babcock signed letters of intent with Danish startups including STORMBORN, which builds uncrewed boats.

The government that took office in June 2026 wants defence equipment bought to a greater extent from Danish and European companies, but it has not yet published its promised defence industrial strategy, which would be the first since 2021.

Selling directly to the armed forces is slow. DI says it can take 5 to 10 years from first contact to a contract, and Nordic Wing spent more than 4 years in talks and unpaid tests before it became a supplier in 2025. Its chief executive, Pernille Aagaard, still called the process fair. “Just because you are a Danish company with a good product, I don't think you automatically have the right to become a supplier,” she told the business association Dansk Erhverv's magazine (translated from Danish). FMI has added quicker routes, including short test purchases of drones, an online form for proposing ready-made equipment and a DKK 4.3 billion fund for buying finished equipment from industry to give to Ukraine.

Venture investment in Danish defence companies is small. A Dealroom and Danske Bank report in November 2025 put venture investment in defence and dual-use technology (technology with both civilian and military uses) in Denmark at USD 18 per person since 2019, against USD 162 in Finland. The rounds we could confirm for Danish defence startups in 2025 and 2026 ranged from about €0.7 million to €5 million, such as Acodyne's €2.5 million for its cargo drones in June 2026. EIFO appears in most of them and aims to reach DKK 3 billion of defence and security commitments by 2030. The biggest ownership changes have been takeovers rather than venture rounds. Bridgepoint, which took control of MyDefence in 2024, agreed in July 2026 to buy a majority of UMag Solutions, a Birkerød company that finds mines with drone-mounted magnetometers. In September 2026 2 small Danish defence venture funds, Final Frontier and Myriad, merged and are raising a new fund with a target of €100 million.

Denmark's support for Ukraine has brought Ukrainian manufacturing into the country. In 2024 Denmark became the first country to pay for weapons made by Ukrainian companies for Ukraine's forces, with the orders placed through the Ukrainian state, and the defence ministry says Denmark, the EU and allies had put more than DKK 17 billion through this “Danish model” in 2 years. Fire Point, which says it supplied drones under the scheme, is now building a plant at Vojens in southern Jutland, next to the Skrydstrup air base, to make solid rocket fuel and motor components for its missiles. Parliament passed a law in September 2025 letting the project set aside more than 20 Danish rules, but safety requirements still forced a new building with extra-thick walls. Production, first promised before the end of 2025, is now expected at the end of 2027, and the company says the budget has tripled to about €150 million. Fire Point plans 300 to 400 jobs, with its engineering and final assembly staying in Ukraine.

The government treats these plants as reserve capacity for Denmark. “Their primary destination is of course Ukraine, but if we really find ourselves in a crisis, we too will be able to get products for our own defence out of Ukrainian factories,” Nikolaj Kihl, who heads FMI's new office for defence industrial mobilisation, told the armed forces' magazine Honnør (translated from Danish). More than 300 residents came to a public meeting in Vojens in September 2025, worried about hazardous transport, groundwater and the risk of attack, and the security service PET warned of espionage and sabotage threats against the company.

A second wave is organised as Danish-owned joint ventures. Vidar Industries plans 12 Danish companies producing licensed Ukrainian drones and ground robots, and UPTEKO signed a memorandum of understanding (a non-binding agreement) with Ukraine's TAF Industries in August 2026 to build FPV drones in Denmark from early 2027. None of these is producing yet, and money also flows the other way. GomSpace agreed in April 2026 to set up a satellite joint venture in Ukraine, Robotto is investing in electronic warfare production there, and EIFO will guarantee 70% of a Danish company's defence investment in Ukraine, although only 3 companies had used the scheme by February 2026.

Citizens of the EU, the EEA (the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and Switzerland can work in Denmark without a permit and register for an EU residence document if they stay more than 3 months. Nordic citizens only register with the civil registry. British citizens moving now are not covered and need a permit like other non-EU nationals. The usual route for non-EU engineers is the Pay Limit Scheme, which requires a salary of at least DKK 552,000 (about €74,000) a year for applications from 1 January 2026, according to SIRI, the Danish agency for international recruitment. Jobs on the Positive Lists, which from 1 July 2026 cover 164 graduate job titles (including electronics, mechanical and software engineers) and 63 skilled trades, have no fixed salary threshold, though pay must match normal Danish levels.

Security clearance is a separate process that the individual cannot apply for. For companies supplying the Ministry of Defence, the employer's security officer nominates the employee and the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (FE) decides. Foreign citizens are not excluded as such. If the person has lived in Denmark for less than 5 years, FE can ask the security authority in their home country to carry out or confirm the clearance. But FE's guidance for companies sets firm limits. Only nationals of NATO countries can be cleared for NATO-classified information, and a clearance normally requires the past 7 years to have been spent in Denmark or in NATO or EU countries. Not every role involves classified information, and adverts that need clearance usually say so.

Of the more than 40 open roles at Danish defence companies in Denmark on DefenceJobs, fewer than 1 in 10 are software jobs. The rest are for production and operations staff, hardware and test engineers, technicians, quality inspectors, purchasers and business developers. Weibel wants test engineers and electronics technicians in Allerød, Nordic Wing composite and assembly workers at Værløse, Sky-Watch quality and purchasing staff in Støvring, and GomSpace and Space Inventor spacecraft engineers in Aalborg. Several adverts, especially for production roles, are written in Danish.

The companies cluster in 4 areas. About half of the companies we list are in and around Copenhagen, including most of the encryption and quantum firms. North Jutland has the Aalborg satellite makers, MyDefence and Sky-Watch. The Aarhus area has Terma, Systematic and Chora, and Odense's robotics cluster is home to Bionic System Solutions and OODALOOP. See the open defence jobs in Denmark and the Danish drone roles.

Much of the new production capacity is still being planned, and the next 15 months will show how much of it is built. Sky-Watch plans full-scale production of its larger RQ-70 drone from January 2027, UPTEKO and TAF Industries plan to start building drones together early that year, and Nammo's plant at Elling and Fire Point's at Vojens are due to start production by the end of 2027. Defence Tech Denmark's second application round closes on 1 October 2026. The new factories will mostly need production staff and technicians, the same kinds of roles that already make up most of the open jobs. Explore all Danish companies →

The Danish defence technology companies on DefenceJobs, grouped by what they build, with their open roles. Established groups such as Terma and Systematic are covered in the report above.