[Nicolas Bárdos-Féltoronyi]

Financial Times

Financial Times Europe07 févr. 2026

Defence giant Rhein­metall goes into orbit as it tar­gets space tech­no­logy spend­ing

Rivals unsettled after boss of Ger­many’s rap­idly grow­ing weapons maker says he can ‘catch’ €300bn of con­tracts

LAURA PITEL — BERLIN

Earthly ambi­tions are not enough for Rhein­metall’s Armin Pap­per­ger: the boss of the Ger­man arms group is set­ting his sights on space.

Pap­per­ger, who says the artil­lery and tanks spe­cial­ist had “no clue” about satel­lites until a few years ago, is eye­ing the Ger­man mil­it­ary’s planned €35bn in space tech­no­logy spend­ing over the next four years, part of Ber­lin’s drive to reduce reli­ance on the US.

While stress­ing he was “not say­ing” the com­pany would win it all, he told the FT Rhein­metall was con­sid­er­ing bid­ding along­side part­ners for three space pro­grammes worth more than €20bn.

Ger­man MPs in Decem­ber approved the com­pany’s first satel­lite pro­duc­tion con­tract, worth up to €2bn as part of a joint ven­ture with Fin­land’s Iceye. The FT last week revealed it was also in talks over a joint bid to build an equi­val­ent to Elon Musk’s Starlink inter­net ser­vice for the Ger­man mil­it­ary.

Rhein­metall has been push­ing into a dizzy­ing array of tech­no­lo­gies and geo­graph­ies as Pap­per­ger seeks to turn it into a multi-domain group akin to big US defence con­tract­ors.

Rev­en­ues are fore­cast to have topped €10bn last year, more than double the level of 2021, before Rus­sia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine. However, Pap­per­ger has much big­ger ambi­tions and is tar­get­ing €50bn by 2030 as he pos­i­tions Rhein­metall to bene­fit from a surge in EU defence spend­ing and a “buy European” tilt.

On tak­ing office last spring, Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz vowed to build Europe’s strongest con­ven­tional army and unleashed unlim­ited bor­row­ing to fund it.

Pap­per­ger, who estim­ates his com­pany secured about €40bn of a €100bn spe­cial fund announced in 2022 for over­haul­ing the coun­try’s neg­lected armed forces, reck­ons he can “catch” about €300bn worth of con­tracts in Europe by 2030.

That would rep­res­ent 15 per cent of the roughly €2tn in defence spend­ing by EU nations over that period if they uphold Nato com­mit­ments, accord­ing to European Com­mis­sion estim­ates.

For sup­port­ers, the group’s expan­sion is a nat­ural con­sequence of Ger­many’s decision to move past its era of mil­it­ary reti­cence after the second world war.

“In Rhein­metall we have a player that can handle big orders, pro­duce at scale and stand on an equal foot­ing with global defence com­pan­ies,” said Andreas Mattfeldt, a Chris­tian Demo­crat MP on the budget com­mit­tee and defence spend­ing spe­cial­ist. “The scale of the expan­sion may seem excep­tional. But these are extraordin­ary times.”

For oth­ers, it is a source of con­cern. Mor­itz Schu­larick, head of the Kiel Insti­tute for the World Eco­nomy and an adviser to Ger­many’s eco­nomy min­istry on the defence industry, said: “What Rhein­metall is offer­ing right now is a solu­tion to the co-ordin­a­tion prob­lem the defence min­istry has. They are say­ing, ‘don’t worry, we’ll do it all’. Clearly from a com­pet­i­tion point of view it’s not very healthy.”

The 136-year-old com­pany’s for­tunes have ebbed and flowed through the dif­fer­ent eras of Ger­man his­tory.

After the first world war the can­non maker pivoted to mak­ing ploughs and type­writers when the coun­try was ordered to demil­it­ar­ise, but then became a cru­cial part of the Nazi war machine. Dur­ing the cold war it sup­plied gun tur­rets for West Ger­man fight­ing vehicles. The fall of the Ber­lin Wall in 1989 forced it to invest in pro­duc­tion for the motor sec­tor.

Now, with Ger­many boast­ing the world’s fourth-largest defence budget, Rhein­metall is pre­par­ing to sell its car divi­sion to focus on weapons and is expand­ing in many dir­ec­tions.

Last year it began mak­ing fusel­ages for F-35 fighter jets, branched into mak­ing in-house armed drones and announced a deal to buy its first shipyard. At the same time, the com­pany has been expand­ing geo­graph­ic­ally, using local man­u­fac­tur­ing to build capa­city and secure polit­ical sup­port. It is pro­du­cing ammuni­tion and armoured vehicles across Europe and is also try­ing to break into the US mar­ket.

Ben­jamin Heelan, a Bank of Amer­ica ana­lyst, said Pap­per­ger had done “a really good job of expand­ing and diver­si­fy­ing” Rhein­metall, cit­ing its joint ven­tures with com­pan­ies from Italy’s Leonardo to US drone maker Anduril.

But rivals big and small are alarmed.

Cassi Welling, chief oper­at­ing officer at Ger­man start-up Con­stellr, which provides thermal ima­ging via satel­lites, said: “By invest­ing in a single player that becomes a ‘mega prime’, you start to degrade the resi­li­ence of the entire eco­sys­tem and risk the loss of innov­a­tion.”

Mattfeldt and other MPs were irked when offi­cials awar­ded a con­tract to Rhein­metall to develop a mar­ine laser sys­tem without an open tender, even though a rival had a ready-to-go solu­tion. The satel­lite deal was also awar­ded without com­pet­i­tion.

Iceye chief exec­ut­ive Rafał Mod­rzewski, whose com­pany will help Rhein­metall pro­duce radar recon­nais­sance satel­lites, said there was “not any other com­pany in Europe that can deliver such cap­ab­il­it­ies so quickly”.

But Green MP Sebastian Schäfer, another mem­ber of the budget com­mit­tee, said it some­times seemed as if Ber­lin was “build­ing Rhein­metall into a European cham­pion without being trans­par­ent about it”. The Ger­man defence min­istry said that while it did not com­ment on indi­vidual com­pan­ies, pro­cure­ment decisions were determ­ined by the armed forces’ needs in a pro­cess that was “sub­ject to strict reg­u­la­tions and close polit­ical con­trol”.

Rhein­metall does not win everything. It recently lost a com­pet­i­tion to build a 6x6 armoured vehicle to Fin­land’s Pat­ria. But the decision promp­ted the heads of five Ger­man states to urge the defence min­istry to recon­sider — a sign of Pap­per­ger’s polit­ical clout.

Some people are irrit­ated by the Rhein­metall boss’s con­fid­ence. The com­pany partly suf­fers from “tall poppy syn­drome”, accord­ing to defence industry ana­lyst Sash Tusa, who said rivals were often jeal­ous of its suc­cess.

Pap­per­ger, who joined Rhein­metall in 1990, became CEO in 2013 and earned €4mn in 2024 in pay and bonuses, has little time for polit­ical cor­rect­ness. He refers to industry play­ers as “big boys” and “little boys”, and enjoys the com­pany’s hunt­ing tra­di­tion, him­self killing two deer and a wild boar at the com­pany’s annual gath­er­ing in Novem­ber.

Com­pany insiders say they are focused on their biggest chal­lenges — capa­city and speed. Rhein­metall is estab­lish­ing ammuni­tion plants across Europe with the aim of pro­du­cing 1.1mn 155mm artil­lery shells a year by 2027 — up from 70,000 in 2022. “The biggest chal­lenge now is just build­ing all the new sites,” one exec­ut­ive said.

Another high­lighted the dra­matic scale-up in pro­duc­tion required from small sup­pli­ers of niche parts while a third admit­ted a planned fact­ory in Ukraine had been delayed and that a tank repair and main­ten­ance centre in Lithuania had been “a bit slow”.

Scep­tics in Ger­many worry Rhein­metall will be slow to deliver on its prom­ises. An order for Skyranger anti­drone can­nons has been delayed by lengthy dis­cus­sions with pro­cure­ment offi­cials about the type of chassis needed. The com­pany is also embroiled in an ill-fated €20bn attempt to digit­ise the com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tem of the Ger­man land forces.

Schäfer, the Green MP, said: “Rhein­metall is very good at prom­ising things but much less con­sist­ent in pro­du­cing punc­tu­ally and without faults.”

Crit­ics fear that Pap­per­ger, who leads nego­ti­ations on big Ger­man con­tracts, runs rings around pro­cure­ment offi­cials. “For the com­pany it doesn’t really mat­ter if a project is delayed,” one European offi­cial said. “Once they’ve got the con­tract it’s incred­ibly unlikely it will be taken away.”

The foray into the notori­ously dif­fi­cult ship­build­ing busi­ness with the pur­chase of Naval Ves­sels Lürssen has unsettled insiders and ana­lysts. Pap­per­ger has expressed will­ing­ness to take over a troubled frig­ate pro­gramme from Dutch shipyard Damen, but some won­der whether he is bit­ing off more than he can chew.

Pap­per­ger said the move was about provid­ing new “plat­forms” that enable Rhein­metall to integ­rate its exist­ing sensors, elec­tron­ics and weapons. “We can com­bine the tech­no­lo­gies,” he said.

He hopes to trans­late cross-plat­form sales into higher profits, tar­get­ing an oper­at­ing mar­gin of more than 20 per cent by 2030, versus 15 per cent in 2024.

Tusa, the defence ana­lyst, said that while Rhein­metall made “some very big prom­ises, I don’t think they’ll deliver on all of them”. However, he added: “What mat­ters over­all is that Europe re-arms — and for that you need com­pan­ies with ambi­tion.”

The com­pany’s share price, up 21-fold since early 2022, has wobbled recently, not least dur­ing US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s efforts to force Kyiv into a peace deal with Moscow. Pap­per­ger said he felt “very safe” in terms of orders until 2030 or 2032. He used last year’s dips to per­son­ally buy €2.8mn of stock. Trump’s threats to take over Green­land last month gave the shares a fresh boost. Ana­lysts also remain bullish. Mor­gan Stan­ley recently named Rhein­metall its top European defence pick for this year.

For their part, Ger­man offi­cials are relaxed about the com­pany’s rapid growth.

Speak­ing at the inaug­ur­a­tion of a new Rhein­metall ammuni­tion plant in Lower Sax­ony in August, defence min­is­ter Boris Pis­torius poin­ted dir­ectly to Pap­per­ger and said: “We want you to be suc­cess­ful because your suc­cess means secur­ity for our coun­try.”

 

[Nicolas Bárdos-Féltoronyi]

200 millions de dollars partis en fumée : un F35 américain se crashe

In : CAPITAL, Alexis Fargeaudoux 28/08/2025

Au mois de janvier, un pilote de l’US Air Force est parvenu à s’éjecter d’un avion de chasse F-35 juste avant son crash en Alaska. L’enquête a révélé qu’il est resté «50 minutes à la radio» avec les ingénieurs de Lockheed Martin. Il n’a souffert que de blessures mineures.

On en sait plus sur le crash d’un avion de chasse F-35 de l’US Air Force en janvier dernier. Le pilote avait réussi à s’extraire de l’appareil qui volait au-dessus de la base aérienne d’Eielson, en Alaska. Les images du crash avaient fait fortement parler sur les réseaux sociaux. L’avion, d’une valeur estimée à moins de 200 millions d’euros, avait plongé à la verticale et explosé dans une boule de feu, rapporte Le Parisien.

Ainsi, l’enquête révèle que le pilote était en connexion permanente à la radio pendant «50 minutes» avec les ingénieurs de Lockheed Martin, le constructeur américain de l'appareil. Il a ensuite tenté deux atterrissages «touch and go», où l’avion atterrit brièvement, pour essayer de redresser le train avant coincé. En vain. Les capteurs du F-35 sont passés en «mode de fonctionnement au sol automatisé» et l’avion est alors «devenu incontrôlable». Le pilote s’est donc éjecté avant de laisser tomber l’avion au sol. Fort heureusement, il n’a souffert que de blessures mineures.

Une température de -18° Celsius au moment de l’incident

Selon les conclusions de l’enquête de l’armée de l’air publiées en début de semaine et relayées par CNN, l’accident est la conséquence de la présence de glace dans les conduites hydrauliques du train d’atterrissage avant et principal du F-35. Ils ont ainsi été empêchés de se déployer correctement. Au moment de l’incident, la température était de -1° Fahrenheit, soit -18° Celsius.

«Je peux vous assurer que l’armée de l’air américaine mènera une enquête approfondie sur cet incident afin de minimiser les risques que de tels incidents ne se reproduisent», avait déclaré le colonel Paul Townsend, commandant de la 354e escadre de chasse, affirmant que les «employés sont (leur) ressource la plus importante». «Nous nous engageons à assurer leur sécurité», avait-il ajouté.

 

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