Signal No. 186 · KNDS: EUR 6.6 billion for half

The price the federal government agreed last week for the Wegmann families' 50 per cent of KNDS, the Franco-German land systems group, is EUR 6.6 billion, Handelsblatt reported late on Monday from parliamentary circles; Reuters confirmed the figure on Tuesday from government and coalition circles. Der Spiegel gives the breakdown: half of the EUR 11.2 billion at which KNDS was valued before its abandoned listing, EUR 5.6 billion, plus a premium of EUR 1 billion, justified in part by the families' share of the profit expected for 2026. The purchase contract is to be signed in November. A briefing for the Bundestag budget committee had said only that the price was below the ceiling of EUR 7.2 billion reserved in the summer for a 40 per cent stake; it mentioned a package premium for a strategic stake and an unquantified premium for the families' forgone dividends.

The listing was postponed in July, when investors would not back a valuation above EUR 12 billion against the families' floor of EUR 12.5 billion, and the families shelved it in September; the state's entry price was to have followed the issue price, Reuters reports. A confidential finance-ministry briefing to parliament, quoted by Der Spiegel, says the families then considered selling to foreign investors, which the government says would seriously endanger German security interests in protected and armoured vehicles; the Czech CSG was among those interested, Der Spiegel reports. The purchase leaves the German and French states with half of KNDS each, where the June plan had 40 per cent each and 20 per cent floated. KNDS could try again for a listing next year, with Germany and France each selling 10 per cent, Reuters reports.

The armament office has held up the first Arminius tranche, 1,800 Boxer wheeled armoured vehicles and potentially KNDS's largest order, over disagreements on price and scope, Der Spiegel reports in a story Reuters carries. Agreement next year is possible "if industry moves", people in Berlin told the magazine. Rheinmetall counts Arminius in its own forecast: on 5 November Klaus Neumann, its chief financial officer, told analysts the delays came solely from processes on the customer's side and that he expects the order in the first quarter of 2027.

The Bundeswehr is retiring the commercial Chinese drones its commanders had been allowed to buy off the shelf for training, because they are considered a security risk, Der Spiegel reported late on Tuesday afternoon; cars from some Chinese manufacturers are also barred from barracks. Soldiers at a drone exercise at Husum in early November were already working without Chinese aircraft, the magazine says. The public part of the report names no manufacturer or model.

In November 2023 Lieutenant General Martin Schelleis, then Inspector of the Joint Support Service, ordered that drones from states with particular security risks, "currently only China", were no longer to be used, because an outflow of protected data to Beijing could not be ruled out. In June 2024, on the recommendation of Wolfgang Jordan, then head of the Bundeswehr's drone task force, eight DJI models, the Matrice M30 among them, were cleared for use, and in November 2024 the Bundeswehr signed a framework contract with Droneparts for 500 DJI Matrice M30T, Correctiv reported in August from documents it obtained. The Chinese types were chosen because German or European alternatives of comparable quality and price were lacking, it reported.

On cars, a ministry spokesman said in January that there were "access bans for certain vehicle types for special security areas", and "at present" no blanket bans on private use by service members. In February t-online reported that the barriers at the Operational Command in Schwielowsee stayed down for Chinese cars more and more often.

There is "a green light from the Pentagon" for a permanent US base in Poland, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the defence minister, said in Washington on Tuesday evening after meeting Pete Hegseth; the final decision, he said, will rest with Donald Trump. He called the visit a breakthrough. At the start of the talks he said the two ministries were holding a fruitful dialogue on strengthening the permanent US presence, that details would be made public soon, and he thanked Hegseth for work on implementing Trump's announcement of an additional 5,000 US soldiers in Poland. On Monday he described it as the visit that "precedes the final stage" of the review of US forces in Europe, which is due to end at the close of the year. At least four option sets were due with Hegseth by 6 November under the review's terms of reference, which Reuters saw in August. On 17 September Trump posted that "major progress" was being made toward a US Army base in Poland and that "if this happens, the location will be announced very soon"; Warsaw has said it is prepared to spend around USD 4 billion on a base, Stars and Stripes reported.

Hegseth's reported remarks dealt with industry. He said he would sign a declaration of intent with Kosiniak-Kamysz on closer defence-industrial cooperation, that the United States was proud Poland had been chosen to host the PAC-3 missile service centre, and that the two countries were developing component production lines and examining joint production of ammunition both need. Defence24's account of his remarks does not mention the base.

Hensoldt set out a revenue ambition of EUR 10 billion for 2035 at its capital markets day in London on Tuesday and confirmed EUR 6 billion for 2030, against about EUR 2.8 billion expected this year. It now expects revenue to grow by 15 to 20 per cent a year in 2027 and 2028 and by more than 20 per cent towards the end of the decade, with the adjusted EBITDA margin rising by about 50 basis points a year to about 21 per cent in 2030. The order backlog stood at a record EUR 10.37 billion on 30 September, little changed from EUR 10.36 billion at the end of June, and the company puts its unweighted pipeline for 2027 to 2032 at about EUR 110 billion. Capacity is to step up by mid-2027, including a new air-defence radar site starting series production in the second quarter of 2027, and staff are to rise from about 10,600 to about 14,000 in 2029.

The release grounds the plan in NATO's 3.5 per cent core-defence commitment and the federal financial plan, which provides more than EUR 180 billion for defence in 2030 against about EUR 108 billion this year, and the company expects its addressable market in defence electronics to grow by about 10 per cent a year to about EUR 76 billion by 2031. Exports from Germany made up just over 30 per cent of group revenue in 2025; in the long term about half of revenue is to come from customers outside Germany, with the rest of Europe, India and Canada named, helped by stronger government support for government-to-government sales. "Decisions on many of the programmes that will shape our business in the 2030s will be taken soon," said Oliver Dörre, the chief executive. Last Thursday Hensoldt raised its 2026 guidance after a 77 per cent rise in nine-month orders.

The first day in Abu Dhabi opened with a meeting of the Ukrainian team, the US envoys and representatives of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission, said Rustem Umerov, who leads Ukraine's delegation. The US–Ukraine–Russia talks that followed ran for nearly four hours, RIA Novosti reported, and resume on Wednesday, according to Ukraine's foreign intelligence service; no meeting between the Europeans and the Russian delegation has been reported. The Commission's statement says the first meeting was held "ahead of the upcoming trilateral discussions with Russia" and covered "how to build upon existing European security institutions and agreements following the conclusion of the war in Ukraine". It lists as shared objectives "a practical and mutually reinforcing security framework" for Ukraine that "builds the confidence necessary to reach a negotiated settlement", and "broader multilateral discussions involving European partners"; it records support for security guarantees "as part of any settlement". Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the trilateral constructive and fairly substantive; it covered prisoner releases and the content of security guarantees for Ukraine, he wrote.

Jared Kushner told the opening session that the aim was "a new framework and a new understanding building upon the different institutions and understandings of the past". On Monday he had written that the talks would set the stage for direct engagement between Russia and the Europeans "to begin in the near future, as part of a broader multilateral process"; his post of last Thursday had called creating the right structure "critical to ending this war". On Friday Stefan Kornelius, the German government spokesman, said the war must end before a European security order is discussed. Russia has objected to European involvement in the three-way format but said EU representatives could join at a later stage, NBC reports. Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, rejected European demands for a ceasefire and accused Brussels of trying to "buy time" for Kyiv. Kęstutis Budrys, Lithuania's foreign minister, called any return to "the era of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe", the 1990 treaty capping tanks, artillery and combat aircraft in Europe, which Russia left in 2023, fundamentally unacceptable and said talks on new European arrangements should begin only after a ceasefire and agreement on peace terms and security guarantees for Kyiv.

Two Ukrainian citizens, aged 24 and 25, detained by the Internal Security Agency (ABW) in Mińsk Mazowiecki on 3 November, have been charged with espionage and sabotage on behalf of Russian intelligence, the agency said on Tuesday. According to the investigation, they reconnoitred critical infrastructure and military sites across Poland on the services' instructions and set vehicles on fire after changing the number plates to resemble those of Ukrainian army vehicles. The ABW says this may have been meant to hide the real background and direct suspicion at the Ukrainian side; the National Prosecutor's Office says the arson was "aimed at fueling anti-Ukrainian sentiment". The two were paid partly in cryptocurrency. The sabotage charge carries ten years to life, and a court has ordered three months' pre-trial detention.

In a separate case, four men, three Ukrainians and a Belarusian, are on trial in Warsaw, accused of arson attacks in Poland and Lithuania on Russia's behalf, Notes from Poland reports.