Berlin — US defence contractor Covenant plans to set up a production facility for long-range cruise missiles in the German state of Saxony, the company said on Wednesday.
“We will be producing roughly 1,000 in our first year and then scaling to 5,000,” Covenant chief Abigail Denburg said, outlining the company’s “target for annual production.”
Covenant also operates a production facility in Texas to supply the US armed forces, as well as a location in Israel.
“Covenant’s facility in northern Israel supports engineering and manufacturing, and the company draws heavily on Israeli defence tech talent,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “a foreign cargo aircraft” picked up equipment in Israel ahead of a secret weapons test in Morocco last month.
Production of the Anthem cruise missile for European customers is to begin next year at the German facility to be set up near Leipzig.
It comes as Germany and other European states are in the process of massively ramping up their defence industry in response to a growing threat from Russia.
“When you look at our adversaries, you see thousands of hardened targets, beyond the range of current capabilities,” said Michael Kaufman, Covenant’s co-founder and chief executive said in a press release.
“Anthem was built to credibly hold those targets at risk in a prolonged conflict. If our stockpiles run thin, so does our deterrence.”
Anthem missiles can carry a 200-kilogram warhead and are designed for precision strikes deep within enemy territory. Covenant has not commented on media reports suggesting Anthem’s range is 1,500 kilometres.
The company says it plans to offer the weapons system at a significantly lower price than those currently available on the market. Covenant said Anthem would cost a six-figure sum, meaning less than $1 million, while other weapons systems of this kind typically cost several million dollars per unit.
Mass production has military significance and is intended to improve customers’ staying power. Denburg said: “Deterrence is a calculation by the enemy and that calculation changes when you have extensive weapons arsenals. If you can reach a target and strike once, that does not necessarily deter the enemy.”
Covenant is already in talks with the Bundeswehr and the procurement agency, according to dpa information, though this has not been officially confirmed.
Denburg said, without directly referring to Germany, that there was already a production contract for deliveries from Germany starting in the first quarter of 2027.
“This European customer will decide for themselves when they want to make this public,” she said.
Company raises more than $250 million
Covenant was founded in 2024 and is headquartered in Washington. The company said it has raised more than $250 million from investors in three funding rounds.
Backers include Founders Fund, which counts Peter Thiel among its co-founders. He is known for his libertarian and right-wing conservative positions, his closeness to US President Donald Trump and his criticism of liberal democracies.
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius of the Social Democrats has in the past “explicitly” shared concerns about Thiel. There has also been public discussion of whether new dependencies could arise or whether the risk is greater of finding oneself without sufficiently stocked ammunition depots in a crisis.
Covenant said German retired Lieutenant General Andreas Marlow is an adviser. He was deputy inspector of the army until 2025 and from 2022 also led the EU training mission for the Ukrainian armed forces.
A long-range missile programme produced in Europe was “the missing piece of the puzzle in our deterrence architecture”, Marlow was quoted as saying.
Germany and its European NATO allies are currently seeking to procure long-range weapons systems as a response to the Russian threat as well as develop their own. At the NATO summit in Ankara, the German government agreed with the United States to buy US Tomahawk cruise missiles.
At the beginning of September, the German navy successfully completed a previously secret test of the Israeli missile system Lora, a ballistic missile. Germany already has the Taurus cruise missile made by defence company MBDA, but it is far from being mass-produced.
European NATO states also do not yet have their own intermediate-range weapons. In the medium term, several allies want to procure their own weapons system for long-range precision strikes. To that end, the Elsa project, the European Long-Range Strike Approach, was launched in 2024 at the NATO summit in Washington.
©2026 dpa GmbH. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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