Germany is weighing a new major arms purchase from Israel, but this time the potential supplier is a little-known startup rather than one of the country’s established defense giants. According to Politico, the German Defense Ministry in Berlin is examining whether to buy long-range cruise missiles from Covenant Technologies as a substitute for American Tomahawks.
The move comes after the Biden administration pledged to deploy Tomahawks in Europe to deter further Russian aggression, only for President Donald Trump to cancel the plan. Berlin is now choosing between proposals from two Ukrainian companies and Covenant’s offer. Germany has already bought billions of dollars’ worth of Israeli weapons in recent years from Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael and Elbit Systems.
Covenant was founded two years ago to work in defense tech by CEO Michael Kaufman, an Israeli-American. According to TheMarker, it has raised more than $200 million from a long list of U.S. funds and investors, but remains in a secretive stage. The company operates from offices in Tel Aviv and employs several dozen people.
The startup is trying to solve a major ammunition-cost problem by making advanced missiles far cheaper to produce. A single Tomahawk, with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers, costs several million dollars, while Covenant aims to build a comparable cruise missile for only a few hundred thousand dollars. Germany is also trying to buy a limited number of Tomahawks directly from the United States, but the production line is already full of Pentagon orders to replenish stocks after hundreds were launched at Iran. Berlin wants the cheaper missile by 2027, although Covenant’s development stage is unclear and it is not known to have production or test facilities. If Germany chooses its design, it may partner with a German defense company to manufacture the missiles locally, as Rafael and Elbit already do in Germany with local partners.
