Our friends across the pond are pretty big on building up sovereign defense capabilities these days, and Rheinmetall has moved at lightning speed to snap up the lion’s share of that European military spending boom.
Today, the German defense giant and Dutch drone startup Destinus unveiled a new, co-produced long-range deep-strike cruise missile called the RUTA Block 3—the third and longest-range variant in their RUTA family of zoom and boom tech.
This is the first platform produced out of their joint venture (creatively) called Rheinmetall Destinus Strike Systems, which was announced last month.
Eurostars: Rheinmetall needs no introduction. The company has ridden Europe’s defense spending surge to a €56B ($65B) market cap and has snapped up billions in contracts, particularly with Germany’s (newly) big-spending military. The German giant’s order backlog hit a record €73B ($85B) this year, up from €56B ($65B) a year ago.
Destinus, meanwhile, is a bit more under the radar, but it’s one of those companies where once you start looking, you realize they’re everywhere. The company was founded in 2021 and kicked things off in the hydrogen and hypersonic flight game, but pivoted hard into drones. They’ve now got operations in Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, the UK, and Ukraine.
- Bloomberg reported on Friday that Destinus is in talks to raise about €200M ($233M) at an over €5B ($5.82B) valuation ahead of a planned IPO. The company’s annual revenue forecast is around €500M ($582M).
- They’ve also teamed up with Shield AI, flying Destinus’ Hornet interceptor drone with Shield AI’s Hivemind software during a test campaign in March.
Team up: Last month, the prime and the wunderkind announced a joint venture designed to “exploit market opportunities and further develop modern missile systems,” including cruise missiles and ballistic rocket artillery, and to “strengthen existing product portfolios.”
- Rheinmetall and Destinus hold 51 percent and 49 percent stakes in the Rheinmetall Destinus Strike Systems joint venture, respectively.
Bring the boom: Destinus’ RUTA family of strike systems is getting a big Rheinmetall-flavored upgrade with this new RUTA Block 3. The deep-strike system “will build on the RUTA architecture,” which includes:
- Block 1: The first-generation RUTA is a cruise-missile-like drone for ISR and strike, with a 300km range and a 150kg payload capacity. The OG RUTA is deployed in Ukraine.
- Block 2: The second variant has a 700km range and 250kg payload capacity and can be launched in salvos from a 40 ft container. Destinus completed a successful test flight of the RUTA Block 2 in March and is set to scale up production throughout this year. Block 3: The newest member of the family is Destinus and Rheinmetall’s biggest and baddest yet, with a 2,000km range, a 250kg payload capacity, and “low-observable shaping” designed to extend “the Ruta architecture into long-range deep strike against high-value military targets in contested environments,” Destinus said.
Ramping up: In keeping with the whole continental sovereignty ethos, production of the RUTA Block 3 is split between three European hubs:
- The Netherlands, where Destinus “serves as the engineering and design authority” and is already manufacturing the missile.
- Ukraine, where Destinus will “contribute to both the development and operational testing” of the system, as well as a source of components.
- And Germany, where Rheinmetall will add “high-rate manufacturing, qualification, and final integration capacity for Bundeswehr and broader European institutional customers.”
“Europe is entering a new defense era where the decisive factor is no longer the existence of precision weapons, but the ability to produce, replenish, and evolve them at an industrial scale during prolonged high-intensity operations,” Destinus CEO Mikhail Kokorich said. “RUTA Block 3 is designed around that reality: sovereign European architecture, distributed industrial production, and the ability to scale rapidly across allied nations.”
Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said the JV will “produce and deliver” the first RUTA Block 3 missiles “before the end of 2026.”
Watch out, y’all. The Europeans are coming—and fast.