European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, Germany & Netherlands – ECCI
Germany is betting big on killer drones. In Ukraine, they couldn’t hit their targets.
POLITICO ـ Supplier Helsing, a darling of the country’s new defense industry, insists that its unmanned devices are reliable — but data from the front lines suggests otherwise. Germany is preparing to spend hundreds of millions of euros on a new armed drone system just as battlefield data from Ukraine raises questions about how well it works.
The planned €267.7 million purchase — from the defense startup Helsing — is a centerpiece of Germany’s drive to modernize its army and turn the Bundeswehr into a force capable of fighting a war, a multibillion-euro effort made urgent by the Russian threat and the U.S. pullback from its traditional security role in Europe.
Helsing is a Munich-based defense tech startup founded in 2021 that specializes in AI-enabled military systems, including drones. Valued at some €12 billion, it has emerged as one of Germany’s most prominent new defense firms, attracting €600 million in new funding last year, including from former Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, now the company’s chairman.
Field data from deployments in Ukraine shows the drones performed far below expectations, successfully reaching their targets just one-third of the time, according to internal German defense ministry information seen by POLITICO. Most of the failures were attributed not to Russian countermeasures but to technical problems: unstable video transmission, limits in target acquisition and rigid sensor systems.
The data from Ukraine raises the prospect that Germany’s latest military buildup could slip into a familiar Bundeswehr pattern — pouring money into new hardware that underdelivers in the field, echoing past failures that left fighter jets grounded, helicopters unflyable and troops scrambling for basics from secure radios to ammunition.
Helsing has publicly highlighted the deployment of its HX-2 loitering drones as proof of their reliability. Germany plans to acquire 4,350 of the unmanned vehicles, along with simulators, training equipment and technical accessories, according to a government tender seen by POLITICO.
“The HX-2 has been successfully tested in frontline operations in Ukraine and the performance of the system has been documented,” the company says on its website, adding that the system was approved for battlefield use and listed in Ukraine’s central military ordering system.
In its statement, the company also points to extensive testing outside Ukraine. According to Helsing, the HX-2 achieved hit rates “close to or at 100 percent” during trials in Germany, the U.K. and with the British Army in Kenya, results it says are documented in written test reports.
Ukraine doubts
But based on evaluated missions, the HX-2’s success rate was just 36 percent, meaning the drone reached its target in five out of 14 deployments. Losses were predominantly due to system-related issues, the data states.
Helsing cautioned, however, that the Ukrainian data set is extremely limited. The company said only a “low double-digit” number of HX-2 drones have so far been deployed on the front lines — too few, it argued, to draw statistically reliable conclusions about battlefield performance. “Any assessments to that effect are unreliable,” the company said, stressing that lower hit rates under combat conditions are not unusual.
The documents are not clear on whether the drones Germany plans to buy are identical to those deployed in Ukraine, or if they are more advanced variants. Due to confidentiality clauses, Helsing declined to comment on customer-specific technical configurations or differences between variants delivered to different armed forces.
Two officials familiar with Germany’s procurement process told POLITICO that the defense ministry is factoring the Ukrainian data into its internal assessment of its own procurement.
The defense ministry declined to comment on the data or the tender.
The company did defend the price tag, saying in a statement to POLITICO that the HX-2 is being offered for “one of the most competitive prices on the market.” It stressed that the cost covers not just the drone hardware but also warheads, software, ground control equipment and support. Training costs make up only a small share, because the system is already mature.
The deal is structured as a framework agreement, including options for up to 20,000 additional drones and further ground control stations — meaning the overall scale of procurement could grow far beyond what parliament is currently being asked to approve. Fifteen percent of the contract value is set to be paid in advance.
The German parliament must sign off on all military contracts above €25 million. A decision is expected by the end of February.
Bloomberg reported this week that Germany plans to split its broader loitering munition procurement between Helsing and the German startup Stark Defence, partly to avoid reliance on a single supplier. The €267.7 million contract now before parliament concerns Helsing alone, and the known operational data relates exclusively to the HX-2.
That leaves lawmakers facing a familiar procurement dilemma: how to weigh urgent military need against real-world performance data, especially when that data comes from an active war zone and concerns a system marketed as ready for serial production.
European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, Germany & Netherlands – ECCI
