STARK and Flensburger Shipyard Sign a Vanta USV Series-Production Declaration, No Volumes Yet
Flensburg, 2 September 2026
Key points
- STARK and Flensburger Shipyard (FSG) signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly manufacture and scale series production of STARK's Vanta-platform unmanned surface vessels (USVs) in Flensburg
- No production volumes, investment figures or delivery schedule were disclosed; both sides say concrete steps follow "in the coming months"
- STARK's Max Berger (Director Maritime): "With Flensburger Shipyard we are creating the industrial base to build unmanned maritime systems in the necessary quantity in Germany"
- FSG's Frank Mallon: the declaration adds "a field of the future" to a portfolio built on "over 150 years" as an "innovation shipyard"
- Follows STARK's delivery of the six-metre Seetaube USV, on the same Vanta platform, to the Bundeswehr's Cyber and Information Space Command at Eckernförde in August
STARK and Flensburger Shipyard signed a memorandum of understanding on 2 September to build Vanta-platform unmanned surface vessels at series scale in Flensburg — a declaration of intent, not a contract, with no volumes, investment or delivery dates attached, three weeks after STARK delivered the first Vanta-based Seetaube to the Bundeswehr's Cyber and Information Space Command at Eckernförde.
The document commits both sides to nothing specific. STARK, the Munich-based maker of AI-enabled autonomous maritime systems, brings the Vanta family and its software; FSG — a roughly 150-year-old yard now owned by the Heinrich Rönner Group after a 2025 insolvency that saw it pass from Lars Windhorst's control, — brings hull construction and yard capacity. Berger's framing is the honest one: the memorandum exists to "create the industrial base," not to place an order. Scale, cadence and cost are deferred to unspecified future talks.
The step it follows is dated and delivered, not declared. In August, STARK handed the German Navy and Cyber and Information Space Command a six-metre Seetaube USV built on the Vanta platform, developed with the Cyber Innovation Hub and the Bundeswehr's Digitalization Center to close reconnaissance gaps in coastal waters and around critical maritime infrastructure. That was one delivered unit; the FSG memorandum is the logical next move — a domestic yard to turn a prototype into a producible class — but it is not yet that move completed.
FSG has been on the other side of this instrument before. The yard's 2025 insolvency, which ended Lars Windhorst's ownership, is the caution against reading yard capacity as commitment; nothing in the memorandum obliges either side to a hull, a quantity or a price. Großwald's Signal No. 137 carried it as a card without a customer. Eckernförde remains the only delivered Vanta, and Flensburg is a plan until a production contract names a number.
Related · STARK's uncrewed surface vessels
