The plant in Born, Netherlands, is run in conjunction with local company VDL Defentec, which specializes in assembling armored vehicles and their electric propulsion.

The facility has already produced its first THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, for the Dutch government, part of a run of more than 100 such robots the Netherlands has pledged to send Ukrainian forces, Milrem said in a statement.

The tracked THeMIS vehicles are configurable for a plethora of battlefield applications, according to the manufacturer’s website. There are weapon-mounted versions for assault missions, sensor-laden variants for spying on enemy movements, and cargo-capable robots for carrying gear or extracting wounded personnel.

Ukrainian forces have used the UGVs since 2022, where soldiers found them to be reliable and effective in combat conditions, according to Milrem.

“The opening of this production line and the handover of the first THeMIS vehicles manufactured in the Netherlands mark an important milestone in our cooperation with the Dutch government and VDL Defentec,” said Milrem Robotics CEO Kuldar Väärsi.

“It demonstrates that Europe’s defense industry is capable of rapidly increasing production capacity and delivering meaningful capabilities to Ukraine,” he added.

The new assembly line is designed for flexibility and rapid scaling, the company notes, meaning it can spit out more robots faster when required.

Unmanned systems in the air and on land have become a defining feature in Ukraine’s defense against Russian forces. Both sides have used aerial drones and UGVs to such a degree that human soldiers cannot move on the front line without being immediately detected and targeted.

Lawmakers on the parliamentary budget committee on Feb. 25 approved contracts worth €268 million ($316 million) each for startups Stark Defence and Helsing to supply the Virtus and HX-2 loitering munitions, respectively. Contractual options could add €1 billion to each of the deals, provided the systems prove technologically mature and lawmakers agree to additional purchases.

A third offer by defense giant Rheinmetall is expected for budget committee consideration within weeks and will receive the same spending plan, according to Andreas Schwarz, budget committee member and point man for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in defense budget matters.

“We want to treat everybody equally,” Schwarz told Defense News.

Rheinmetall announced last week the successful demonstration of its FV-014 loitering munition to a “potential NATO customer” at a range in Germany.

Having three manufacturers on tap means defense leaders and lawmakers are in a position to guide the future flow of money to the most capable offerings, Schwarz said.

Loitering munitions are designed to fly to a general target area, stay airborne above it and automatically propose strike targets to human operators a safe distance away. The target selection process happens by way of on-board sensor data collection and analysis, supported by artificial intelligence.

When cleared for attack, the drones lock on to a target and try to ram their warhead into it.

The deadly technology is so effective in the war in Ukraine that large stretches of the front line are no-go areas for human soldiers.

The German parliament agreeing to spend large sums on these types of weapon is part of a remarkable turnaround for the European country’s military posture since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago. Previously, lawmakers, including in the SPD, were wary of allowing the military to install weapons of any kind on drones.

“We have to adapt to the realities that exist in the world,” Schwarz told Defense News.

As a first step, the three German manufacturers’ weapons are destined to equip Germany’s armored brigade in Lithuania in 2027.

Speed in fielding the new weapons is of the essence for German military leaders. Having soldier testing and training happening in parallel rather than sequentially is meant to save time, according to a defense ministry statement.

Such an approach typically increases risk in defense acquisitions, especially when fielding novel technology.

That’s why lawmakers attached reporting requirements to the approved spending plan, designed to keep a close watch on the progress. Cancellation clauses also enable the government to walk away from offerings if manufacturers fail qualification tests.

Meanwhile, manufacturer Stark Defence has managed to assuage lawmakers’ concerns about the involvement of libertarian U.S. investor Peter Thiel in the company.

Thiel’s shares in Stark amount to a one-digit percentage, which means he has no access or insight into the startup’s operative business, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters on Wednesday.

Pistorius and Schwarz said they were content with have a written commitment to that effect from the company.

Ahead of the budget committee vote, critics said Thiel’s touch could make the Stark deal iffy.

“The fact is that Peter Thiel openly rejects our democracy. We do not know how large his influence at Stark is. And even worse: The federal government cannot explain it,” Greens lawmaker Jeanne Dillschneider was quoted as saying in a Politico report on Tuesday.

The so-called Military Type Certificate means the Royal Air Force’s Protector RG Mk1, which also goes by the designation MQ-9B, has passed a rigorous airworthiness assessment, a General Atomics statement reads.

In practice, the drones now have the blessing to operate “without geographic restrictions, including over populous areas,” the company said.

The achievement has been a long time coming for the U.S. drone vendor, which has pitched its drones’ ability to fly safely in civilian airspace as a key selling point for its business campaign in Europe.

Military drones must normally stay within protected corridors when flying over land, especially in densely populated areas found in many parts of Europe. That is because unmanned aircraft were traditionally designed with military objectives in mind, giving little consideration to fail-safe propulsion or collision avoidance in mid-air, for example.

“This April 29 decision was a first-of-its-kind milestone for a large, unmanned aircraft system,” General Atomics said in the statement, referring to the date the UK Military Aviation Authority passed its judgment. “It’s a huge accomplishment for the UK and a technological watershed in the history of unmanned aircraft systems.”

At the heart of the certification lies a NATO standard, dubbed STANAG 4671. The idea is that drone airworthiness achieved to these specifications is transferable across alliance members.

Linden Blue, the CEO of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, said the company had spent $500 million over 11 years to have the the MQ-9B certified to the NATO safety standard.

Besides the British Royal Air Force, the company said it has MQ-9B orders from Belgium, Canada, Poland, Japan Coast Guard, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, Taiwan and India.

Under the banner of Enterprise Architecture Management, or EAM, and armed with a freshly awarded contract to the ministry’s own information technology company BWI — one that will ultimately grow into €180 million ($187 million) over 10 years — officials are fanning out across the agency to catalogue how data travels through the vast bureaucracy.

The idea is to look under the hood of all moving parts, documenting processes that range from guiding missiles on their targets to assigning military hospital beds to injured soldiers.

The insights are meant to generate a blueprint for a new way of doing business, streamlined flows of standardized data and all. In essence, it’s an attempt at cutting through the fog of war — literally and bureaucratically — and unearthing hidden interdependencies that will ideally ignite proverbial light bulbs on doing things more efficiently.

“We’ve always had architectures in IT, but they were isolated,” said Col. Ralf Blasajewsky, who is charged with laying the EAM governance groundwork on the Bundeswehr’s planning staff until the program gets its own subdivision office in April.

The idea of connecting the dots of previously disparate processes stems in part from a report by government auditors that lamented the lack of data interconnectedness, Blasajewsky said in an interview.

In response to the charge, he added, defense officials decided to start “something big” — a comprehensive digital model for the entirety of the military apparatus, neatly sorted into functional compartments.

While the work is meant to yield new insights into the operations of the defense ministry, there is also the objective of facilitating joint operations with Germany’s other security agencies as well as with allies.

When it comes to the vision of Germany as a central European logistics hub for NATO forces in the event of a major war, for example, officials believe an über-model of government models could do wonders in gauging the requirement for, say, grub for transiting troops.

“If there were 150,000 American soldiers to march through Germany, there has got to be a baker who delivers the Brötchen,” said Blasajewsky, referring to the mini breads popular for breakfast here.

The spirit of the EAM approach is more advanced in some communities than others. In joint fires, for example, practitioners have always had to deal with data flowing across the various elements of what officials call the “kill chain” — everything from sensors finding a target to warheads striking it.

Building out the modeling approach even further for artillerists could help leaders understand existing capability gaps — a cannon with a particular range, for example — and derive acquisition strategies, Blasajewsky said.

The integration of drones into combat formations would also benefit from an EAM examination, he argued.

As defense officials get started with their modeling work, they are finding that specialists are hard to come by on the labor market. That is because the EAM discipline is also en vogue in the private sector, under the industry modernization mantra known here as “Industrie 4.0,” according to Blasajewsky.

He said the success of the project will depend to a great degree on how the tenets are socialized in the department, ideally with support growing from the lower echelons of the service branches.

“If we dictate it from above, it won’t work.”

Officials staged the two-week experiment last month in the Baltic Sea, which has become something of a microscope of global tensions. NATO, Russian and Chinese vessels routinely criss-cross the shallow body of water, as vital communications cables and energy pipelines lie on the seabed.

The German sea service explicitly envisions an anti-submarine warfare role for the BlueWhale vehicle, made by Israel Aerospace Industries. Equipped with various cameras as well as active and passive sensors, the drone can spot submarines, surface vessels and sea mines — notably, without emitting signals of its own that would alert targets that they are being tracked, according to the Germany Navy.

“This a capability currently only available via manned submarines, which makes it significant for maritime surveillance,” officials wrote in a statement posted on the Navy’s website.

The BlueWhale drones fall into the category of large unmanned underwater vehicles, weighing in at 5.5 tons, with a length of almost 11 meters and a diameter of over 1 meter.

German naval-systems specialist Atlas Elektronik participated in the recent test, which service leaders consider a stepping stone towards their “Marine 2035+” strategy. The plan envisions accelerating the development of unmanned technology and quickly integrating new drones into the sea service’s command-and-control schemes.

Asked about the approach to integrating a non-NATO system into German and alliance naval operations networks, Dror Bar, vice president of IAI and CEO of subsidiary ELTA Systems, told Defense News there were existing interfaces to fall back on during the drill.

Those were developed in cooperation with Atlas last year for two NATO exercises hosted by Portugal, the Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping augmented by Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS) and the Dynamic Messenger events, Bar said.

Interest by NATO nations in underwater and surface drones as complements to manned naval warfare has increased significantly in recent years. Officials envision them as unattended sensors for repelling enemy warships or monitoring the health of critical infrastructure on the sea floor.

“Ukraine itself determines how it wants to deploy the donated equipment; the Netherlands has not imposed any additional conditions on this, other than the obligations arising from the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian law,” a spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Defense told Defense News.

The statement follows a report by the Associated Press last month that quoted U.S. officials as saying the widespread use of drones by Russian had exposed the donated Abrams to the risk of being detected and destroyed.

“When you think about the way the fight has evolved, massed armor in an environment where unmanned aerial systems are ubiquitous can be at risk,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady told the AP.

He added that U.S. officials would work with Ukrainian officials to develop new tank tactics on a changed battlefield “where everything is seen immediately.”

The report also quoted an unnamed official as saying Ukrainian forces weren’t using tanks in so-called combined arms operations, a military jargon reference to the practice of orchestrating air and land assets during combat so they can provide cover for one another.

Not so, say Ukrainian Abrams operators, according to a video posted on Youtube this week by Army TV, a channel run by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, as reported by Business Insider. A soldier of Ukraine’s 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade, identified in the video as Dmytro, said Abrams tanks were still being used in frontline combat, though not in tank-on-tank battles.

The video’s English subtitles quote him as saying, “Full of lies,” when an Army TV correspondent asks him about the Abrams sidelining reported by the “quite respectably American mass media,” an apparent reference to the AP story.

The Russian government is currently displaying captured Western weapons, including Abrams and Leopard tanks, as war trophies in Moscow. The exhibit comes comes as President Vladimir Putin, newly sworn in for another term following elections described by U.S. and European officials as a sham, has intensified his rhetoric casting the attack on Ukraine as an existential fight against NATO and the collective West.

The U.S. government has donated 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, of which five were reportedly lost in combat.

European leaders agreed last year to send about 80 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, with lead nations Germany giving 18 and the Netherlands and Denmark donating a combined 14.

The Dutch Ministry of Defense said officials aren’t tracking the donated behemoths. “The Netherlands doesn’t have any insight into loss or damage to Leopards that were provided in part due to involvement by the Netherlands,” the spokesperson told Defense News.

Defense officials in Berlin declined to comment on the question of Leopard operational caveats and losses, citing operational security concerns.

Ruitenberg reported from Paris.

The technology goes by the name of DragonFire, developed by MBDA in conjunction with Leonardo UK and QinetiQ. Conceived over three years, defense leaders in London are celebrating it as a poster child of recent defense-acquisition reforms aimed at fielding technology breakthroughs to U.K. forces more quickly.

Using directed energy to down aerial threats promises to revolutionize the business of air defense because it would obviate the need for missile interceptors that can cost millions of dollars. One DragonFire shot is expected to cost £10 (U.S. $12), according to a British Ministry of Defence statement posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Militaries around the world have been experimenting with the technology. Ship-borne deployment is perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit because naval vessels can accommodate the bulky equipment. Still, the routine employment of laser weaponry in combat has so far remained largely an ambition.

Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said April 12 the DragonFire weapon will be ready for installation on Royal Navy ships in 2027, capping a £100 million joint investment by industry and the U.K. Ministry of Defence.

Before that, contractor MBDA will conduct additional live-fire testing and begin building the required units, the company said in a statement.

“MBDA [is] proud to lead this laser weapon program that will give the U.K. Armed Forces game-changing operational advantage to protect and defend themselves, and the U.K.’s strategic assets,” Chris Allam, managing director of the company’s Britain operations, was quoted as saying in a statement.

Fielding the laser weapon in 2027 amounts to a time savings of five years from a previous projection of when such technology would reach U.K. forces, according to a Ministry of Defence statement.

The quickened pace is partly due to a new set of procurement rules that took effect this week. The new guidance allows for the fielding of a so-called “minimum deployable capability,” meaning technology so promising it’s worth rushing into the field for operational use while working out any kinks afterwards.

The takeover, announced last year as valued at €675 million (U.S. $726 million), took effect April 2 following approval by regulatory authorities here.

“The acquisition adds strong design and system integration capabilities to Hensoldt’s product and solutions business and creates a national champion in defence electronics,” Hensoldt said in a statement.

Hensoldt is a key player in the trinational Future Combat Air System program of Germany, France and Spain, on which the company has worked with ESG in a national consortium to develop the envisioned weapon’s networked sensors and weapons.

American firm Lockheed Martin picked ESG last year to provide logistics support for Germany’s future F-35 fleet of 35 jets. ESG is on tap for similar work for the Boeing-built P-8 Poseidon maritime-surveillance and submarine-hunting aircraft, of which Germany has ordered eight.

According to a Hensoldt statement, ESG employs about 1,400 people in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, and it generated sales of about €330 million in 2023.

Hensoldt placed 51st in the most recent Defense News Top 100 list, which ranks global defense companies by defense-related revenue. The firm reported a defense revenue of $1.8 billion in 2022.

A scenario of nations jumping on lunar mining to refill their dried-up, terrestrial stocks has the potential for gray zone conflict, the kind of amorphous contest that transcends traditional notions of two warring parties shooting at each other, Air Vice-Marshal Paul Godfrey said at the Space Comm Expo trade show here.

For now, there is no commercial proposition for what Godfrey likened to a science fiction version of the U.S. Gold Rush of the nineteenth century.

“The cost of getting to the moon, creating a lunar base, extracting the minerals and getting them back to earth probably far outweighs mining precious minerals on the Earth,” he told Defense News in an interview.

It’s also still unclear exactly what types of rare-earth metals, critical in producing high-tech components, exist under the lunar surface. On Earth, China is a critical supplier of such ingredients. European and NATO nations are eager to diversify their supply chain as they view Beijing as an unreliable partner politically.

Godfrey characterized developments toward lunar mining as purely commercial, but, by raising the matter, made clear it has started to pop up on the radars of armed forces, with very practical questions emerging.

“Do you ring-fence your particular area on the moon if you strike gold, so to speak?” Godfrey asked.

Whether moon mining will become feasible one day depends on key technologies and ensured access to space for all, he said, adding that proliferating space debris could make the journey impossible for everyone at some point.

Reducing the cost of space launches and advancing the field of on-orbit manufacturing also are stepping stones to the vision of moon mining, Godfrey added.

The German vessel, newly arrived in the theater of operations, fired two Standard Missile-2 interceptors at the U.S. drone, but both missed, as German military news website Augengeradeaus first reported.

The attempted shoot-down came after a query with nearby allies about the status of the drone, which flew without a transponder turned on that would allow coalition forces to identify it as friendly, according to the report.

“We can confirm that a U.S. MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was targeted in the Red Sea Feb. 27,” a U.S. defense official told Defense News, adding that the aircraft was undamaged and continued its mission.

“CENTCOM is in close coordination with the EU and Operation Aspides to investigate the circumstances that led to this event and to ensure safe deconfliction of airspace,” the official added, using shorthand for U.S. Central Command, the command overseeing American operations in the Middle East.

Germany’s air defense frigate Hessen received parliamentary approval to partake in the European Union’s Operation Aspides last week while already underway to the Red Sea. It is joining a collection of allied warships organized under the EU auspices or the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect marine traffic in the vital cargo route from drone and missile attacks by the Yemen-based Houthi militia.

The group’s fighters are targeting civilian ships claiming support for Hamas in its war against Israel.

A German military spokesman declined to comment on the incident, pointing instead to comments by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Feb. 27 in which Pistorious confirmed the downing of two hostile drones and two failed attempts to intercept an additional, unspecified aircraft.