Europe’s Military UGV Programmes: Which Armies Are Buying

Military UGVs in Europe have left the laboratory. Ukraine contracted more than 22,000 unmanned ground vehicles in the first eight months of 2026 and logged over 100,000 robot logistics and evacuation missions by late August. Two European builders supply most of the Western share: Milrem Robotics, whose THeMIS is now assembled in the Netherlands as well as Estonia, and ARX Robotics, whose Gereon is built by DEUTZ in Ulm and at a new British plant. NATO armies move more slowly: Britain placed a first Gereon order in April 2026, France is surveying the market for about 100 armed robots, and the Bundeswehr’s first tender covers 28 four-legged reconnaissance machines.

Why Europe wants ground robots now, and what Ukraine has proved

The case for the military UGV in Europe was made in the mud east of the Dnipro, not in a Brussels white paper. Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in April 2026 that the ministry would contract 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles in the first half of the year, more than double the whole of 2025, with a simple end state: every frontline logistics run done by a machine. Defense News reported that the Brave1 cluster had grown from zero ground-robot companies in 2022 to about 300.

The numbers that matter most are the mission counts. According to the DELTA battle-management data published by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and reported by The Defense Post, ground robots carried out 7,511 missions in January 2026, 9,072 in March, 14,059 in May and 19,969 in July, passing 100,000 for the year by 20 August. Most of those runs delivered ammunition, food and water, or brought wounded soldiers out of positions a crewed vehicle could not reach. Some carried weapons: DevDroid’s tracked Droid TW-12.7, with a 12.7 mm machine gun and night optics, is the type The National reported in use in May 2026, and it explains the search interest in “devdroid unmanned ground vehicle combat”.

That is the proving ground European planners now cite. The lesson is about scale and attrition rather than any single platform: Ukraine buys robots in the thousands because it expects to lose them. Milrem’s chief executive Kuldar Väärsi put it bluntly at Eurosatory in June 2026, arguing that unmanned systems should “make first contact, absorb losses, and buy time for decision-making”. Whether European procurement agencies can buy on those terms is the open question, and it is why the cluster’s overview of European Defence Tech Startups: Who Funds Them and Who Buys keeps returning to ground robotics.

Who builds them: the companies winning UGV contracts

Three European industrial poles have emerged. Estonia’s Milrem Robotics, majority-owned by the UAE’s EDGE Group since February 2023, is the incumbent with the widest operator base. Munich-based ARX Robotics is the challenger that built its reputation in Ukraine and now manufactures in three countries. Rheinmetall, through its Canadian subsidiary, sells the Mission Master family that Western armies have trialled for longest. Around them sit KNDS and Safran in France, and a swarm of Ukrainian workshops that have become exporters in their own right.

Milrem Robotics: THeMIS, Type-X and the iMUGS2 consortium

THeMIS is the European UGV with a genuine production line. Milrem said in September 2025 that it was deployed in 19 countries and that 15 units had operated in Ukraine since 2022 before a European government funded a “record fleet” donation that autumn. The Netherlands then pledged more than 100 vehicles and a final-assembly line with VDL Defentec at Born, which handed over its first THeMIS on 4 June 2026. When Janes toured the Tallinn plant on 23 September 2026, sand-coloured hulls stood at every stage of build, the company said it expected to pass 150 THeMIS deliveries to Ukraine by year end, and it insisted that an arson attack on the factory on 18 August had not affected output. The Tallinn line builds one vehicle a day and, according to Milrem, could reach 500 a year. The Milrem Robotics company profile has the corporate background.

The heavier Type-X robotic combat vehicle is a different maturity story. Its only firm customer is the UAE, which signed a contract worth more than $200 million in January 2024 for 20 Type-X and 40 THeMIS under a trial programme led by Milrem. At IDEX in February 2025 the company unveiled an 8×8 sibling, Havoc, and promised a full demonstration for IDEX 2027. In Europe the Type-X remains a prototype without a launch army. Milrem’s European growth is coming instead through partnerships: a teaming agreement with Hanwha Aerospace Romania in May 2026 for Romania’s UGV programme, agreements with Poland’s PGZ companies ZMT, PCO and PIT-RADWAR at MSPO in September 2026, and the €55 million iMUGS2 project, of which the European Defence Fund pays nearly €50 million, which Milrem coordinates for 29 partners including KNDS France, KNDS Germany, Diehl Defence, Safran, FN Herstal, John Cockerill Defense, Kongsberg and Huta Stalowa Wola.

ARX Robotics: from Munich start-up to three factories

ARX Robotics has done what few European defence start-ups manage: turn Ukrainian battlefield demand into industrial capacity at home. Its Gereon, a tracked platform for cargo, casualty evacuation and sensor carriage, is by ARX’s own account the most widely used Western UGV in Ukraine, and Soldat & Technik reported on 6 May 2026 that a new contract for “several hundred” additional vehicles would multiply the fleet fivefold. To build them, ARX signed a production partnership with engine maker DEUTZ in October 2025; series production began at the DEUTZ plant in Ulm in June 2026, and the first Ulm-built Gereon left for Ukraine on 29 September, twelve weeks after the line started. A joint venture with Ukraine’s Roboneers followed in June 2026 to mass-produce the smaller Rys Pro.

The British Army became ARX’s first NATO customer of record in April 2026 with an initial order of UK-built, ISR-configured Gereon placed through Task Force RAPSTONE, the Army’s rapid-acquisition cell. ARX committed £45 million to British facilities with a stated capacity of up to 1,800 vehicles a year. Eight Gereon then ran with 11 Brigade and 3rd Deep Recce Strike Brigade at the US Army’s Project Convergence-Capstone 6 in August 2026, carrying L3Harris and MyDefence counter-drone payloads, and at DVD 2026 at Millbrook in September a Gereon appeared under a Babcock Vigil launcher with Frankenburg’s Mark 1 missile. That configuration is a demonstration, not an order. A collaboration with General Dynamics Land Systems-UK, announced on 16 September 2026, will explore pairing ARX’s wheeled HECTOR with Ajax, and a Polish market entry was announced at MSPO the same month.

Rheinmetall Mission Master, KNDS and the Ukrainian exporters

Rheinmetall’s Mission Master has the longest trial record of any Western UGV, and the thinnest European order book. The British Army used it in its Robotic Platoon Vehicle experiments, the Royal Netherlands Army’s 13th Light Brigade ran a two-year concept-development programme with it from late 2020, and the Bundeswehr tested it beside THeMIS and Diehl’s Ziesel in the 2019 to 2020 infantry trials supported by Fraunhofer FKIE. At REPMUS 2025 in Portugal the Mission Master SP2 worked alongside drones and a quadruped robot, the ground-sea teaming covered in the cluster’s piece on Unmanned Surface Vessels in Europe: Who Builds, What Works. The hardest recent contract came from Quantico: on 10 September 2026 American Rheinmetall announced a $7.28 million order for 12 Mission Master SP and five amphibious kits for the US Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. The Rheinmetall company profile puts that small deal in context.

KNDS France and Safran Electronics & Defense hold the DROIDE framework agreement from the French DGA, notified at the end of December 2024, to design a multi-mission ground robot demonstrator with an initial performance level expected in 2027. The Ukrainian side of the market is meanwhile arriving in Western Europe as supplier rather than customer: Babcock signed a memorandum with Ark Robotics at DVD on 16 September 2026 to explore British manufacture of the A1, a small resupply and smoke-laying UGV already fielded with more than 20 Ukrainian units. Here the money tells the story. Companies that have shipped hundreds of robots into combat can offer European armies something the primes cannot, which is a vehicle with a loss record.

Which armies are testing or buying: programme map

The table below uses the maturity labels this site applies across the cluster. Only Ukraine’s fleet and the THeMIS and Gereon lines feeding it qualify as operational at scale; everything a NATO European army has bought for itself sits between field trial and limited procurement.

Britain is the NATO European army moving fastest, through side doors rather than a single programme of record. Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis, twelve days into the job on 23 June 2026, said the coming Defence Investment Plan would include “investing in the uncrewed ground vehicles the Army requires”, but no quantities have been published. What exists today is a patchwork: the RAPSTONE Gereon buy, the Robotic Platoon Vehicle lineage that started with Mission Master, the Project Theseus resupply experiments that gave QinetiQ its THeMIS-based Titan, and Project ATILLA, a £12 million trial contract running from January 2026 to March 2028 to turn up to six surplus Warrior hulls into optionally crewed minefield-breaching vehicles. Minister Luke Pollard confirmed in September 2026 that the conversions were under way.

Germany is the puzzle. The Bundeswehr’s 2019 to 2020 trials concluded that cargo UGVs were “ready to enter procurement” and sized the need at just over 200 vehicles by 2027. Six years later there is no such order. Instead, BAAINBw published the MoSeS tender on 5 May 2026 for up to 28 quadrupedal reconnaissance robots, after the WTD 41 test centre at Trier found that no commercially available wheeled or tracked UGV met its mobility requirements. German industry, in other words, builds Gereon for Ukraine at Ulm while the German army waits for a doctrine and a budget line. France has a clearer path: the DGA’s June 2026 request for information for about 100 armed robots under three tonnes, with 24 planned from 2028 and 72 from 2031, is tied to a first robotised combat unit due in summer 2027 and to the 2024 to 2030 military programming law’s €5 billion envelope for drones and robots.

The Netherlands and Estonia are the early adopters. Estonia is Milrem’s home customer, the Royal Netherlands Army has run a robotics unit in 13th Light Brigade since 2020, and both governments have moved from user to industrial sponsor: The Hague by funding the Born line and the 100-plus vehicles for Ukraine, Tallinn through the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments, which coordinates member-state interests in iMUGS2. Poland is arriving through industry, with PGZ companies integrating a 12.7 mm remote weapon station and TUGA radar on THeMIS at MSPO 2026 and ARX opening an office there. Sweden’s FMV chose the innovation route, issuing a call in April 2026 for open-architecture UGVs under 500 kg for logistics and reconnaissance in poor-communications terrain. Romania, unusually, has a formal programme with localisation demands that drew Hanwha and Milrem into a joint bid.

Where Türkiye fits

Türkiye is relevant here as a producer rather than a European customer. HAVELSAN’s Barkan, a medium-class armed UGV with a 12.7 mm remote weapon station, entered Turkish Armed Forces service in 2023, and the Barkan 3 unveiled in May 2026 is running swarm trials with eight vehicles, according to Breaking Defense. Export talks cover the Gulf and North Africa, but no foreign contract has been announced and Barkan has not appeared in a European tender. FNSS, whose Shadow Rider converts a tracked armoured vehicle into an optionally crewed platform, is covered in the site’s Shadow Rider explainer. Envanter Medya keeps a technical page on Barkan. For European procurement, the Turkish firms are competitors in third markets, not suppliers to NATO armies.

The bottlenecks: why armies buy dozens, and Ukraine buys thousands

Start with autonomy, or rather the lack of it. Every serious European programme still assumes a human operator with a controller and a video link, because on-board autonomy that can cross a ploughed field in November or pick its way through a forest block without help does not yet exist at an affordable price. iMUGS2’s charter lists “operational limitations in complex terrain” as the problem to solve, and Sweden’s FMV wrote its 2026 call around “demanding environments with limited communications”. The Bundeswehr’s WTD 41 concluded that no wheeled or tracked vehicle on the market could circumnavigate obstacles the way its reconnaissance troops need, which is why Germany’s first tender is for a robot with legs. Ukraine solves the same problem with people: one operator, one robot, a radio link and a willingness to write the vehicle off.

Communications are the second constraint, and one this site will not detail beyond the policy level. A radio-controlled logistics robot depends on a link that a contested battlefield degrades. That is why ARX, Milrem and the iMUGS2 partners talk about “resilient communications” and AI-enabled autonomy that lets a vehicle finish a route when the link drops, and why the European Defence Fund put nearly €50 million into architecture rather than another hull. The firms in the cluster’s survey of Europe’s Defence AI Companies: Who Is Building What in 2026, Helsing among them through its work with ARX, are competing for that software layer.

Doctrine and price close the loop. A NATO army buys a UGV the way it buys a truck: to a requirement, with a support contract, a training pipeline and a place in an established unit. That process yielded 12 Mission Master for the US Marines, six Warrior conversions for the Royal Engineers, 28 quadrupeds for the Bundeswehr and 24 French robots in a first tranche two years away. Ukraine buys a UGV the way it buys ammunition, in lots of thousands from 300 competing workshops. The European builders are caught between the two models and have chosen to build for the second while selling into the first. ARX’s 1,800-a-year British capacity and Milrem’s 500-a-year Tallinn ceiling make sense only if a European army eventually orders in the hundreds. Until the British Defence Investment Plan or a German 25-million-euro submission puts a number on paper, Ukraine remains the only customer buying ground robots at the scale the factories were built for, and the drone-mass story told in Drone Swarms in Europe: Countries, Companies and Programmes has not yet reached the ground.

Frequently asked questions

Which European countries actually operate military UGVs?

Ukraine operates them at scale, with more than 100,000 logistics and evacuation missions logged by 20 August 2026. Among NATO members, Estonia and the Netherlands have fielded THeMIS for years, the British Army has bought ISR-configured Gereon and runs Mission Master and Warrior-conversion trials, and Milrem says THeMIS is in use or on trial in 19 countries. Germany, France, Sweden and Romania are at the tender, demonstrator or request-for-information stage rather than in operational service.

Is the Milrem THeMIS in serial production?

Yes. Milrem’s Tallinn plant builds about one THeMIS a day and the company says it can scale to 500 a year. A second final-assembly line with VDL Defentec at Born in the Netherlands handed over its first vehicle on 4 June 2026 and is building 100 of the more than 150 THeMIS Milrem expects to deliver to Ukraine by the end of 2026. The heavier Type-X remains a prototype under a UAE trial programme.

What is iMUGS2 and who is in it?

iMUGS2 is the European Defence Fund’s follow-on to the 2020 to 2023 iMUGS project. It began on 20 November 2025 with about €50 million of EU money in a €55 million budget, brings together 29 partners from 15 member states under Milrem Robotics as coordinator, and aims to deliver an interoperable, secure architecture for manned and unmanned ground platforms, with AI-enabled autonomy and resilient communications as the technical priorities.

Why has the Bundeswehr not ordered cargo robots?

Bundeswehr trials in 2019 and 2020 with Mission Master, Ziesel and THeMIS concluded the vehicles were ready for procurement and sized the need at just over 200 units. No such contract has followed. The first formal tender, published on 5 May 2026, is MoSeS, a framework for up to 28 quadrupedal reconnaissance robots, after the WTD 41 test centre found no wheeled or tracked commercial UGV met its mobility requirements.

Does Türkiye export unmanned ground vehicles to Europe?

Not so far. HAVELSAN’s Barkan has served with the Turkish Armed Forces since 2023 and the Barkan 3 was unveiled in May 2026, but the company’s export discussions are with Gulf and North African customers and no foreign contract has been announced. FNSS’s Shadow Rider and other Turkish UGVs have not featured in any published European tender as of September 2026.

Sources

• Janes: Milrem expects to deliver over 150 THeMIS UGVs for Ukrainian army by end of 2026 (September 2026)
• Defense News: Dutch plant for combat-zone robots offers fresh supply pipeline for Ukraine (June 2026)
• Defence Industry Europe: Milrem Robotics to supply Ukraine with record fleet of THeMIS UGVs (September 2025)
• European Commission DG DEFIS: Kick-off meeting of iMUGS2 (November 2025)
• Milrem Robotics: European consortium launches iMUGS2 (November 2025)
• Shephard: Milrem to supply large armed UGVs under a $200 million deal with the UAE (January 2024)
• European Security & Defence: IDEX 2025, Milrem Robotics unveils Havoc 8×8 RCV concept (February 2025)
• Milrem Robotics: Hanwha signs teaming agreement with Milrem Robotics for Romanian UGV programme (May 2026)
• Milrem Robotics: Milrem Robotics expands cooperation with PGZ Group companies at MSPO (September 2026)
• Soldat & Technik: ARX Robotics verfünffacht Gereon-Flotte in der Ukraine (May 2026)
• bundeswehr-journal: Deutz und ARX Robotics starten Gereon-Serienproduktion für die Ukraine (June 2026)
• ARX Robotics: Newsroom, first GEREON delivered from DEUTZ Ulm and partner announcements (September 2026)
• ARX Robotics: ARX Robotics begins UK manufacturing for British Army (April 2026)
• Calibre Defence: Gereon UGV trials counter-drone payloads at Convergence (August 2026)
• UK Defence Journal: Warrior conversion under way for uncrewed mine breaching (September 2026)
• UK Defence Journal: Army to invest in uncrewed ground vehicles, Jarvis confirms (June 2026)
• UK Defence Journal: Babcock to explore building Ukraine-proven ground robots (September 2026)
• Rheinmetall: American Rheinmetall delivers Mission Master to the U.S. Marine Corps (September 2026)
• Naval News: Rheinmetall deployed Mission Master during REPMUS (November 2025)
• Fraunhofer FKIE: Bundeswehr test series UGV (January 2021)
• Grosswald: BAAINBw MoSeS tender on TED for up to 28 quadrupedal reconnaissance robots (July 2026)
• Forces Operations Blog: Eurosatory 2026, un pied dans la robotique de combat pour l’armée de Terre (June 2026)
• Nordic Defence Sector: FMV wants to invest in unmanned ground vehicles (April 2026)
• Defense News: Ukraine to field 25,000 ground robots in push to replace soldiers for frontline logistics (April 2026)
• The Defense Post: Ukraine uses ground robots for 100,000 frontline missions (August 2026)
• The National: Rise of the machines, Ukraine’s ground robot army (May 2026)
• Breaking Defense: Havelsan unveils Barkan 3 unmanned ground vehicle, to be part of autonomous swarm (May 2026)