Helsing

Reporting drawing on an internal German Ministry of Defence presentation found Helsing's HX-2 drone had only a 36% success rate against targets in Ukrainian combat use, contradicting the confident public positioning of Helsing co-CEO Torsten Reil, who told a Bloomberg Tech Summit audience in London that 'Europe is going to lead even over the US in terms of the deployment of real AI-enabled autonomous systems.' Helsing disputed the scale of deployment implied by the government figures and did not fully detail which promised AI components were missing from fielded systems, even as the company proceeded to raise a EUR12 billion funding round in June 2026 and continued pursuing German procurement contracts.

Germany's Defense Ministry moved to award Munich-based Helsing a €580 million Combat Fighter System Nucleus (CFSN) contract to build the software/autonomy backbone for the country's post-FCAS air-combat program, internal documents reported by Politico in August 2026 show. The ministry's own procurement notes warned the CFSN architecture 'should avoid dependence on any one supplier' yet proceeded to award the first phase to Helsing alone, citing a national-security exemption from standard EU tender rules; of four contractors considered (Airbus Defence and Space, Helsing, MBDA Germany, Diehl Defence), only Helsing is reported to have supplied all requested evidence. The contract is structured as cost-reimbursement rather than fixed-price, and a second 2027 phase was designed to avoid the parliamentary budget-committee approval normally required for projects over €25 million.

A November 2025 internal German Ministry of Defense presentation found Helsing's HX-2 loitering munitions suffered high failure rates on takeoff and vulnerability to electronic jamming during Ukrainian frontline testing. Ukraine suspended additional orders and Germany said it would not place follow-on orders until Ukraine formally expressed renewed interest. Helsing disputed the characterization, said it was unaware of the internal presentation, rejected the reported failure rates, and said it was 'too early to draw conclusions from limited frontline testing.'