Defense Tech Capital Brief

Issue 005 · 4–10 September 2026 · Released 11 September 2026 Palisade Bergschrund · Research, Data & Analytics

Jesse Nuese, Managing Partner · jn@pal-berg.com · +1 929 613 6061 · pal-berg.com

Provided for general informational and evaluation purposes only; not legal, regulatory, tax, procurement or military advice. See Legal disclaimers below.

Executive analysis

This week's capital flowed into production capacity.

Covenant came out of stealth with a missile factory already open in Texas and plants in Germany and Israel behind it. Mach Industries raised $600 million on a distributed factory network and a solid-rocket-motor acquisition. Volkswagen agreed to turn a 125-year-old car plant over to air-defense production. Around those three sit the same trade at other scales: GE Aerospace paying about 26 times forward EBITDA for a castings supplier, HII committing up to $900 million to automate welding in Navy shipyards, Croatia buying Korean rocket artillery on delivery time. Each is a position on production capacity: building it, owning it, converting it, automating it, or buying from whoever has it spare.

The scarce asset this cycle is proven capacity, not proven concept.

What the money is buying is illustrative: capacity, rather than demonstrations or contract backlog. Covenant disclosed no valuation with about $150 million booked, while Mach carries $3.7 billion on fixed-price development work. Investors are paying for the ability to build at scale before the production contracts exist, betting that factories convert into awards rather than the other way around. The indicator is a production award before the next raise; buyers, meanwhile, are paying for whoever can deliver soonest, as Croatia's launcher choice shows.

The same filter runs through the Ukrainian deals, where combat validation and production capacity are priced differently against cross-border financial structures. Swarmer's Nasdaq listing let it buy Ratel largely with stock; Uforce's London holding company is drawing a reported ten-figure mark; the founders still onshore price themselves in the billions and stay unbought. The technology travels when the structure does, and the week's deals put a price on exactly that difference.

In this issue

• The Top Line · Covenant leaves stealth with its factory already built
• Ukraine in Focus · Swarmer–Ratel, the founder marks, the RAM-2X
• The Round · Mach, Uforce, Osnabrück, castings, the laser pre-seed, Croatia and Sweden
• The Contract Column · Lasers, shipyards, breaching, the IDIQ ceilings

Rounds · Exits · Awards · Fund closes · Public pricing · Editorial Standards V1.1

The Top Line

01 Covenant leaves stealth with $250 million raised and a cruise-missile factory open in Texas.

Record

Announced 9 September. Covenant's product, Anthem, is a ground-launched, heavy-payload cruise missile, reported as Tomahawk-class, carrying over 200kg at a target price in the mid-six figures per unit. The company reports more than 200 test flights, a live fire at Project Convergence Capstone 6 (the Army's joint experimentation campaign), an Army agreement for accelerated testing and qualification, and a Navy Rapid Capabilities Office contract worth about $70 million for a maritime variant. Backers span a16z, Founders Fund, Lux, 8VC, Aleph and Lightspeed. The 105,000 square foot Dallas-area factory opened on announcement day, with production capacity in Saxony and northern Israel. Dallas plans 1,000 missiles in its first year of serial production from Q1 2027, scaling to 5,000 a year. About $150 million is booked, a company figure. COMPANY-REPORTED

Assessment

Long-range strike has been Lockheed Martin and RTX territory. A two-year-old company built a factory before it announced itself. The company targets U.S. Army fielding next year and says an international customer takes deliveries before the end of this one, so a venture-backed cruise missile may reach an allied arsenal before an American one.

Bottom line: the factory came before the announcement, and the first deliveries may go to an ally.

Out of stealth · $250M | Munitions · Long-range strike | US · Germany · Israel

Source: Covenant via Business Wire

Ukraine in Focus

In partnership with Defender Media

Swarmer buys Ratel Robotics for up to $224m in cash and stock.

A Ukrainian frontline firm draws Western-scale M&A for the first time; roughly $210m of the headline price is Swarmer stock, most of it contingent on earnouts.

Record

Swarmer, a Ukrainian-founded drone-software company that listed on the Nasdaq in March, agreed to buy Ratel Robotics, which makes ground robots and, more recently, aerial strike drones, in a deal valued at up to $224m. The structure, from Swarmer's SEC filing, is the story: Ratel's owners get $7.2m in cash and 1,064,942 Swarmer shares at closing, and up to a further $7.2m in cash and 4,422,125 shares if Ratel hits revenue and operating-income targets through 2028. At full earnout, roughly $210m of the $224m is stock. Closing needs Swarmer shareholder approval. The $224m is a ceiling. DOCUMENTED

Swarmer coordinates drone swarms in software and has owned little hardware of its own; Ratel brings about 300 staff and a battlefield-proven line. Swarmer listed at a peak above $800m and is worth roughly $563m today. Chairman Erik Prince said the company means to keep buying firms whose products have been proven in combat. REPORTED

Separately, Ratel confirmed to Defender it is among the first firms named in Ukraine's forthcoming "Drone Deal" with Canada, a joint-production framework the two governments aim to finalise at the UN General Assembly this month. COMPANY-REPORTED

Assessment

A software company is buying proven hardware almost entirely with its own stock: $7.2m in cash at closing against up to roughly $210m in shares.

That makes the deal a bet on Swarmer's share price as much as on Ratel. The sellers are paid in a currency that has already fallen from an $800m-plus peak to about $563m; if it slides further, the real price of Ratel slides with it. We read the transaction as the first acquisition of a Ukrainian frontline manufacturer at this size by a Western-listed buyer — the "first at this scale" call is our judgment — and as the clearest read yet on what the market pays for. Erik Prince's rule, buy what has been proven in combat, is the mispricing lens said aloud: the asset is the delivery record, and Ratel's place in the Canada deal shows that record already pulling government demand. It also sets the week's one signed price on real hardware: the number to measure the founder valuations below against.

Acquisition | Ground robots · Swarm autonomy | Ukraine – US

Vyriy and Fire Point: two founders claim valuations in the billions.

Record

Two Ukrainian founders have priced their companies in the billions in recent interviews. Oleksii Babenko of drone maker Vyriy put the figure at $2–5bn, and said he turned down a $25m acquisition offer from former Google chief Eric Schmidt; the company raised about $24m in corporate bonds this month and faces an open Ukrainian state investigation. Fire Point — which builds deep-strike drones and long-range missiles — carries a longer valuation trail. Its founder has rejected a series of outside approaches: roughly $1bn for half the company from a businessman since caught up in corruption investigations, and $758m for 30% from the UAE's state-owned EDGE Group at a $2.5bn valuation in late 2025. That deal did not close, amid antitrust friction, and the founder now hints the company is worth around $6bn, having also turned down a bank-brokered approach at $5.8bn. REPORTED

Assessment

One of these numbers has a real bid behind it. Both founders are marking above the last price anyone actually offered.

Fire Point has the bid: EDGE offered $758m for 30% at a $2.5bn mark in late 2025 — the closest thing to an arm's-length price the sector's marquee names have produced, and the number to treat as the anchor. Vyriy has nothing comparable; behind its $2–5bn claim sit a declined $25m offer and a $24m bond raise. Even so, Fire Point's founder now prices the company near $6bn, above every outside bid he has turned down, a $5.8bn approach included. And the asset resists clearing at any price. A strategic missile maker cannot freely sell equity abroad, its one sovereign bid stalled on antitrust review, and the company operates under a corruption-investigation cloud it disputes. Swarmer–Ratel shows the sector can sign at a nine-figure ceiling. These are ten-figure marks that no closed deal supports.

Valuation claims | UAV · Missiles | Ukraine

Throughline from Issue 004 · Fedorov's fund: more names, still no structure.

Issue 004 covered Mykhailo Fedorov's plan to build Ukrainian defence companies as well as finance them, with Palantir's Alex Karp as lead backer, and said the disclosure to watch was the fund's structure. Back from a US trip, Fedorov now calls it "the largest venture fund in defence tech," based in Kyiv, names two more American backers he met — Nate Fick of Cerberus and Guy Filippelli of Squadra Ventures — and adds a war-forecasting think tank alongside it. The three stated priorities are unchanged: frontline robotics, interceptors against jet-powered Shaheds, and cheap strike missiles. Still missing is exactly what 004 flagged — a fund size, a first close, and whether it founds companies or only funds them. The cast is filling in ahead of the structure. COMPANY-REPORTED

Ukrspecsystems says it hit 450 targets in two years. Only now can it take the credit.

Ukrspecsystems reveals the RAM-2X and opens an archive of its combat footage.

Record

Ukrspecsystems, known until now for surveillance drones, revealed an attack drone called the RAM-2X at a defence show in Poland. It is a medium-range strike aircraft: about 180 km of reach, more than two hours aloft, a choice of two warheads, and the ability to pair with a scout drone so it can still find its target when the enemy jams its signal. The company says the drone has hit more than 450 targets since 2024, and it released a library of strike footage led by hits on Russian air-defence systems, which exist to shoot drones down. Per Defender's reporting, the government cleared the firm to publicise and export the system, and the units that flew the missions approved the release. No price, production volume, or hit rate was disclosed. COMPANY-REPORTED

Assessment

Ukrspecsystems now has a strike record to sell. No one outside the company has measured it.

A proven combat record is now the credential that sells, and firms are racing to attach their names to it. The limit is that the proof is the maker's own. The footage is curated, and with no price and no hit-versus-attempt count there is no way to compute cost per successful strike — the one figure that tells a buyer of expendable weapons whether the system earns its keep. Manufacturer footage is a marketing asset dressed as evidence until an independent party measures it.

Product reveal | Strike UAS | Ukraine

Watch · A defence tax cut awaiting signature. Parliament has passed, and the president is expected to sign within days, a bill scrapping VAT and import duty on finished defence goods and imported components. We will assess the effect on unit economics once it is law. DOCUMENTED · AWAITING SIGNATURE

The Round

The week's remaining deals, numbered from 02; the Top Line is 01.

02 Mach doubles its valuation in three months, on factories not yet matched by production awards.

A $600m extension at $3.7bn; June's Series C was priced at half that.

Record

Reported 10 September. The extension doubles the valuation set by June's $300 million Series C and brings the round to $900 million in total; Mach was valued at $470 million fifteen months ago. Infinite Capital led, with Ribbit, Bedrock and Sequoia participating. Proceeds fund long-range strike and counter-drone platforms, Forge, the company's distributed factory network, and energetics. Mach bought solid-rocket-motor maker Exquadrum for $50 million in May. SINGLE-SOURCED

Assessment

Read it against Covenant. Both sell cheap strike built for mass production. Mach's disclosed government work is fixed-price development, led by an Army Applications Laboratory award for Viper, a vertical-takeoff cruise missile. The valuation is a bet that Forge converts into production awards. Nothing public yet says it has.

Series C extension | Long-range strike · Energetics | US

What to watch: a production award before Mach's next raise.

03 Uforce is reported raising about $500m at a roughly $5bn valuation.

Talks, not a close: about $500m led by Valor, at five times the March mark.

Record

Bloomberg reported on 7 September that Uforce is in talks to raise about $500 million, led by Antonio Gracias's Valor Equity Partners, at roughly $5 billion. That would be five times the valuation set in March, when Uforce raised $50 million at about $1 billion in a round led by Shield Capital and Lakestar. Uforce combines nine Ukrainian manufacturers, including the makers of Magura sea drones, Nemesis bomber drones and counter-drone systems, and moved its headquarters to London for security reasons. The sourcing is people familiar with the talks, consistent with Sifted's August report. Uforce declined to comment, Valor did not respond, and terms may change before any close. SINGLE-SOURCED

Assessment

Consolidating and redomiciling is one answer to the question every exporting Ukrainian producer faces: how to become an asset a Western fund can own. Swarmer's purchase of Ratel is the other. If the round closes near these terms, it is the week's one ten-figure price on Ukrainian-origin hardware with a named outside lead. The founder marks in Ukraine in Focus sit above every bid they have drawn; the difference is structure. Valor was also among the new investors in General Intuition two weeks ago.

Growth round · In talks | UAS · Maritime · C-UAS | UK · Ukraine

04 Volkswagen's Osnabrück plant converts to air defense.

The first whole car factory to go, in a structure that takes VW out of the project.

Record

Announced 7 September. Volkswagen will sell its 125-year-old Osnabrück plant and its 1,800 workers to Aurelius Capital as majority owner, with the state of Lower Saxony, VW's second-largest shareholder, alongside; the works council puts jobs preserved at 1,400. Rafael, Israel's state-owned defense company, is the anchor project: air-defense systems and components built in Germany for Germany and Europe. Car production ends in summer 2027. It is a statement of intent, with no price and regulatory review outstanding. DOCUMENTED

Assessment

German supplier plants have been converting for eighteen months: Rheinmetall's Berlin Pierburg site to 155mm shell casings, KNDS into Alstom's Görlitz railcar works, Hensoldt hiring from Bosch and Continental. Osnabrück is the first whole car factory to go. The structure matters as much as the site. Bloomberg and Bild report that Qatar, which holds 17% of VW's voting rights, blocked a direct VW–Rafael venture in July; selling the plant to Aurelius and the state takes VW out of the project. We expect Osnabrück to be the template.

Conversion | Air & missile defense | Germany · Israel

What to watch: the four other German plants VW flagged for alternative uses days earlier; each is a candidate for the same structure.

05 GE Aerospace buys castings supplier Consolidated Precision Products for $11.75bn.

About 26 times forward earnings for the part of the supply chain engine production waits on.

GE Aerospace

Record

Announced 8 September. GE Aerospace is buying Consolidated Precision Products from Warburg Pincus and Berkshire Partners at about 26 times 2027 EBITDA before synergies, with close expected in the second half of 2027. GE cites castings capacity for commercial engines, aftermarket and defense. DOCUMENTED

Assessment

Castings are the binding constraint in engine production. An engine maker paying 26 times forward earnings to own that capacity is pricing supply-chain scarcity, and every private owner of a castings or forgings business now has a comparable.

Acquisition | Castings · Supply chain | US

06 Ground A raises a €9.1m pre-seed eight months after founding.

Reported as Germany's largest defense-tech pre-seed; the GA 1000 is in testing and validation.

Company · Tech.eu

Record

Announced 8 September; the round closed in June. Founded in January 2026, Ground A is finishing validation of the GA 1000, a pallet-sized laser counter-drone system, and setting up series production in Germany. Quantum Systems, the German drone maker, invested directly. Reported as Germany's largest defense-tech pre-seed. COMPANY-REPORTED

Assessment

It follows Inleap Photonics' roughly €20 million raise for laser drone defense on 31 August, and lands in the week AeroVironment booked its first international LOCUST order. Directed energy is now financed at both ends: production contracts in the United States, seed capital for domestic alternatives in Europe. Ground A puts the GA 1000 in the low single-digit millions per system, a company figure. Neither European company has published the number that decides the category, cost per drone defeated.

Pre-seed | C-UAS · Directed energy | Germany

07 Croatia buys Korean rocket artillery for its faster delivery times.

7 September. Poland's WB Group supplies the command-and-control layer. The defense minister named Hanwha's 24 to 36 month delivery times and its openness to industrial cooperation as deciding factors. Defense News reports the purchase follows Croatia's own earlier HIMARS buy from the United States, which makes this a second rocket-artillery line bought for speed. Poland, Estonia and Norway had already chosen Chunmoo. DOCUMENTED

08 Sweden takes HIMARS with domestic ammunition attached.

7 September. About 10 Lockheed Martin HIMARS launchers for roughly SEK 7bn (~$728.8M), deliveries from 2027, with Saab producing ammunition in Sweden alongside Lockheed. DOCUMENTED · Reuters

Same day, same class of weapon. Sweden took the U.S. system with domestic ammunition production attached. Croatia added the Korean one on delivery time. Four NATO members have now picked Chunmoo. Lead time is carrying weight in allied rocket-artillery decisions that unit price used to carry, and other single-sourced U.S. systems with long backlogs face the same test.

Also tracked

• Inleap Photonics · ~€20M seed · 31 August. Led by UVC Partners with HTGF, Balnord, Sentris and Scale Capital, for laser counter-drone systems. Announced before this window, so we hold it here. Source
• Stoke Space · $1B Series E at ~$10B · 8 September. Co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital; $2.3 billion raised to date. The week's largest round went to a launch company that has not reached orbit.
• The Exploration Company · $450M Series C · 8 September. Co-led by Bessemer, Atomico and EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, the €5 billion vehicle backed by the European Commission. The largest Series C by a European space company, with public money at the lead.
• Australia · AU$2.4bn (~$1.75bn) for integrated air and missile defense. A national commitment to layered defense against aircraft, drones and missiles.
• Poseidon Aerospace · $60M Series A. Led by TQ Ventures, for Egret, an uncrewed freighter with a 4,000lb payload. Read it next to REGENT's Series B two weeks ago: uncrewed cargo keeps drawing growth capital.
• Mistral · €3B for sovereign AI. Carried as dual-use adjacency, the same treatment we gave Alice last week.
• Boeing–Anduril advanced in the Army's IFPC Increment 2 competition, the program to defend fixed sites against cruise missiles and drones.

What we're reading

• Sweden's HIMARS purchase · Reuters
• Croatia's Chunmoo purchase · Defense News
• Uforce's reported raise at ~$5B · The Next Web, via Bloomberg
• HII's HYPR agreements with Path Robotics and GrayMatter · Evertiq
• LOCUST selected for the Army's E-HEL program · AeroVironment
• Mach Industries' $600M Series C extension · Tectonic
• Volkswagen's Osnabrück sale and the Rafael anchor · CNN
• Covenant's Dallas factory and production plan · CNBC
• Swarmer–Ratel terms, from the filing · DroneXL

The Contract Column

The week's awards and agreements read for what they reprice, with ceilings distinguished from obligations.

AeroVironment books the first international LOCUST order, over $50m.

8 September. AeroVironment booked its first international order for LOCUST, its high-energy laser counter-drone system, as a direct commercial sale: bought from the company rather than through the U.S. government's Foreign Military Sales channel. The buyer is not named. It follows the Army's 2 September award of a $464.8 million other transaction agreement under the Enduring High Energy Laser program, which AeroVironment describes as the first U.S. production contract for a high-energy laser weapon. The company puts cost under $10 per shot and is spending more than $30 million to expand its Albuquerque plant. Directed energy now has two paying customers in a week. Against cheap drones, the figure that decides the economics is cost per drone defeated, and that figure is not in the release. COMPANY-REPORTED · Source

HII commits up to $900m to automate welding in Navy shipyards.

7 September. HII, the largest U.S. naval shipbuilder, signed agreements with Path Robotics and GrayMatter Robotics, teamed as HYPR, for up to $900 million of shipbuilding work over seven years. Payment depends on hitting technology-readiness and manufacturing milestones, first in a Navy-grade development stage, then in delivery. Scope runs across carriers, submarines, destroyers, amphibious ships, future frigates and unmanned surface vessels. A seven-year commitment gated on milestones gives a robotics startup a revenue line that a lender or later-stage investor can underwrite. It is last week's Project Janus structure applied to a shipyard. DOCUMENTED · Source

Overland AI primes a $20m Army breaching award, with HII as a partner.

8 September. Breaching is the combat-engineer task of clearing a lane through minefields and obstacles under fire. Overland primes seven partners: Richard Childress Racing, the NASCAR team, builds the six-wheeled "Mothership" vehicle; Valinor supplies a vehicle-launched Condor drone that drops breaching charges; DroneShield and HII cover electronic warfare and counter-drone; Pearson and Globetech provide breaching payloads; SafePro supplies obstacle intelligence. The award is scoped as a capability set, assessed with an Army unit in early 2027. A startup sits as prime over HII. Integration is what an autonomy-software company now sells to the Army, and breaching, among the most casualty-prone tasks engineers perform, is an early place the Army is paying for it. COMPANY-REPORTED · Source

Prime awards: $6.2bn of ceilings, obligations to follow order by order.

Northrop Grumman took about $6.2 billion in potential value: an Army IDIQ for M1156 precision guidance kits for 155mm artillery shells ($862.85 million, to 2031), a Missile Defense Agency follow-on for test-target support ($508.49 million, to 2035), and a $4.84 billion Army IDIQ ceiling for CIRCM helicopter infrared countermeasures (to 2035, sole bidder), while Lockheed Martin took an $826 million modification for its JASSM cruise and LRASM anti-ship missiles. The long dates lock in production and test-support capacity five to nine years out, and obligations will arrive order by order, well below the headline figures. DOCUMENTED · Source

Sourcing & notices

On the sourcing

Load-bearing: amounts and stages confirmed against a filing. Contested: valuations where the company and the tracker disagree, cited as a range. Unverified: participation, use of proceeds, and any first-close figure, carried as company-reported until a filing appears. Aggregate market totals vary by tracker and are directional. Items carried forward from a prior week are dated as such. Talks reported by a single outlet are carried as talks, not closes. The Ukraine in Focus section is produced in partnership with Defender Media. This brief reports flows. It doesn't introduce parties.

How to read an entry

Record

What the evidence shows, with its source named.

Assessment

What we take it to mean. Ours, not the record's.

Evidence grade

How far the cited evidence carries the claim it follows.

Who they are

Company primer. Runs on first appearance only.

Tag row

Type, segment and geography. A scanning aid; it adds no claim.

Evidence grades this issue

DOCUMENTED

The Swarmer–Ratel structure (SEC filing); the HII agreements; the Croatia and Sweden orders; the Northrop and Lockheed awards; the defence tax bill (passed, awaiting signature).

COMPANY-REPORTED

Covenant's ~$150m booked, test-flight and production figures; Ukrspecsystems' 450+ targets; AeroVironment's cost-per-shot; Ground A's round; the Fedorov fund details.

SINGLE-SOURCED

Uforce's ~$500m at ~$5bn (Bloomberg); Mach's $600m at $3.7bn (TechCrunch).

Terms used

OTA — Other Transaction Agreement, a faster purchasing route than a standard defense contract. IDIQ — indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity: a ceiling on what the government may order, not a commitment to order it. DCS — direct commercial sale; bought from the company rather than through the U.S. government's Foreign Military Sales channel. Earnout — the contingent part of an acquisition price, paid only if agreed targets are met. C-UAS — counter-uncrewed aircraft systems; drone defense.

Notices

No investment advice. This brief is published for information only. It is not investment, legal, tax or accounting advice, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security or to enter into any transaction. Nothing in it constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or interest in any fund. Readers should obtain their own professional advice before acting on anything set out here.

Sources and accuracy. The brief draws on public filings, contract notices, company and firm statements, third-party trackers and our own research. Third-party information has not been independently verified and is reproduced as reported, with its source named. Figures described as company-reported or firm-reported are unverified at the date of publication. Statements are current as at the date of the issue and are not updated.

Assessments and forward-looking statements. Content marked ASSESSMENT is our interpretation, distinguished from the underlying record by design. Confidence marks describe how far the cited evidence carries the specific claim they follow, not a probability. Forward-looking statements are estimates subject to change and to risks outside our control; actual outcomes may differ materially.

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