A German robotics start-up wants Europe’s car industry to become the production base for military drones and unmanned vehicles

Munich-based ARX Robotics argues that Europe cannot rearm by building entirely new defence factories; it needs the manufacturing infrastructure already sitting inside the automotive supply chain. Its new plant outside Munich is designed for about 8,000 unmanned ground vehicles annually, but co-founder Marc Wietfeld expects eventual demand far above that. Ukraine alone is targeting around 50,000 UGVs in 2026.

ARX already works with Deutz and Schaeffler and is talking to Bosch. The German government is encouraging similar defence-auto partnerships; Volkswagen’s Osnabrück plant, for example, is producing components for Israel’s Iron Dome system.

The interesting industrial-policy idea is modularity: defence start-ups supply software, autonomy and rapidly changing product designs; established car suppliers provide tooling, quality control and mass production.

Europe’s defence bottleneck is increasingly not inventing weapons but converting civilian manufacturing capacity into production measured in tens of thousands rather than hundreds.