Europe Counter-Drone Market 2026 Forecast

NATO defence-spending architecture has fundamentally shifted in 2024 and 2025. EU member states collectively spent approximately €240 billion on defence in 2022, rising to €279 billion in 2023, €326 billion in 2024, and estimated to have exceeded €360 billion in 2025. All 23 EU states that are also NATO members are now firmly above 2 percent of GDP on average, with forecasts pointing toward continued increases into 2026 and beyond.

The military and defence segment is forecast to lead the European counter-drone market through 2030. Procurement focuses on protecting forward operating bases, critical national infrastructure, and high-value mobile assets including armoured vehicles and naval platforms. The Ukraine war has driven the operational requirement set: counter-FPV-drone capability, counter-Shahed loitering-munition defence, and integration of counter-UAS with broader short-range air defence are the three principal capability priorities.

Sweden's NATO accession in March 2024 has materially expanded the procurement landscape. Saab products are now eligible for full NATO procurement framework agreements across the alliance, and Saab has begun establishing those frameworks across its counter-UAS portfolio. The accession also normalises Swedish defence-industrial integration with Germany, France, and Italy in ways the country could not pursue while non-aligned.

Germany is the most explicitly counter-drone-focused national procurement market in Europe. The Rheinmetall–Diehl–Hensoldt consortium produces the RCWS 320C-UAS remotely controlled weapon station, contracted to the German Bundeswehr as the primary effector for the Boxer Nahbereichsschutz vehicle. The system combines Rheinmetall's RCWS hardware with Hensoldt's sensor fusion and Diehl's air defence integration; the production architecture mirrors Germany's broader strategy of coupling traditional ground combat platforms with new counter-drone capability.

TYTAN Technologies is the German venture-stage counter-drone manufacturer most operationally aligned with the procurement opportunity. The company unveiled a new production site in Bavaria in 2025 and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hensoldt that links TYTAN's interceptor-drone manufacturing to Hensoldt's sensor portfolio. The combined production ambition, up to 3,000 interceptors per month by end-2026, is the largest counter-drone production target announced by any European company. AXON Enterprise's acquisition of Dedrone in October 2024 added North American sensor capability into the broader counter-UAS supply ecosystem.

European counter-drone procurement is dominated by traditional defence primes rather than venture-stage scale-ups. Leonardo (Italy), Thales (France), MBDA (France), Saab (Sweden), Hensoldt (Germany), and Rheinmetall (Germany) collectively account for the majority of programme-of-record awards across European national defence ministries. The structural reason is that European procurement frameworks favour established prime contractors with multi-domain integration capability over single-capability specialists.

Specialist counter-UAS vendors, UK-based Blighter Surveillance Systems, ART (Spain), Drone Defence (UK), TYTAN Technologies (Germany), compete in detection layer and interceptor categories where they can offer differentiated technical capability. The market structure favours specialist–prime partnerships over standalone specialist sales. The TYTAN-Hensoldt MoU exemplifies this pattern; Diehl Defence partnerships across multiple specialist sensor and effector vendors follow the same logic.

British counter-UAS specialists occupy a distinct position post-Brexit. UK-headquartered companies retain access to NATO procurement but face additional regulatory complexity for EU-only programmes. The UK Ministry of Defence remains the largest single national procurement market for British counter-UAS specialists, and the cross-border partnership structure with European primes remains the principal route to broader European market access.

The Netherlands has opened a new front in European counter-drone procurement: warships. On 24 August 2026 the Dutch Ministry of Defence signed a contract to fit the existing fleet with a kinetic counter-UAS capability against medium-range drone threats, consisting of a base station and a launch platform that fires a drone interceptor, with a land-designed C-UAS converted through further testing into a variant for operational use at sea. The ministry says the medium-range drone threat is increasing, based on both operational analyses and the current threat picture during maritime operations, and describes the system as supplementing existing shipboard armament. The official release does not name the supplier, ship classes, quantities, or contract value.

Defense News, citing a company statement, reports that Destinus will develop the capability around its Hornet B2 interceptor, with delivery, integration with several warships, and support towards a possible initial operating capability, and the programme slated for completion in the second quarter of 2027. The company describes an interceptor launched from a sealed canister by rocket booster before transitioning to electric-powered flight, and says the earlier Hornet B1 is already in serial production. The programme matters beyond the Netherlands because it addresses the gap every NATO navy now faces between electronic countermeasures and expensive missiles for medium-range drone threats, and because it is a live test of whether a land-designed interceptor system can be marinised by the second quarter of 2027.

Greece is now the clearest European example of counter-UAS being bought as one layer of a national air-defence architecture rather than as a standalone anti-drone purchase. On 31 August 2026 Israel and Greece signed a €3 billion ($3.5 billion) agreement under which Israel will build a multi-layered air-defence system for Greece, supplying the David's Sling and SPYDER systems produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the BARAK MX system made by Israel Aerospace Industries and MMR multi-mission radars manufactured by IAI unit ELTA Systems, plus a new national command-and-control system developed by Rafael to integrate the country's air-defence capabilities, as reported by Reuters. Israel's defence ministry called it Israel's largest-ever defence export deal with Greece.

The counter-drone element sits beside that architecture as a separate and much smaller line: a supplementary €26 million agreement will see Israel supply Rafael's Drone Dome systems to protect strategic sites against drones and reinforce existing defences, per the same Reuters report. The proportion is the point for buyers and vendors alike. Dedicated C-UAS is under 1 per cent of the signed value, yet it is the layer that engages the low-altitude threat the missile tiers are not built to answer economically, and it plugs into the same national command-and-control layer. Reuters reports that Athens plans to spend about €28 billion by 2036 on the wider Achilles Shield multi-layer anti-ballistic, anti-aircraft and anti-drone programme, and that Israel will expand defence-industrial cooperation with Greece including transfers of technology and expertise to local industry. What the public reporting does not disclose: Drone Dome quantities, which strategic sites, system configuration, or a delivery timetable.

Counter-UAS is also being demonstrated on individual high-value platforms. On the final day of the fifth K9 User Club, hosted by the Estonian Defence Forces from 2 to 4 September 2026, a K9 self-propelled howitzer fitted with a counter-drone jammer was demonstrated at Tapa military base, presented as a means of disrupting hostile drone attacks and improving the artillery platform's survivability against uncrewed aerial systems (Defence Industry Europe, 5 September 2026). Delegations from the seven K9 user countries, South Korea, Estonia, Poland, Norway, Finland, Romania and Australia, attended, with Spain and Sweden as observers, among more than 200 military and industry representatives.

The demonstration is a display, not a product announcement. Neither of Defence Industry Europe's two reports on the event, including its account of Hanwha Aerospace's presentation, names the jammer, its supplier or its performance, and no procurement decision or fleet rollout has been announced. Hanwha used the same gathering to set out its next K9 concept: a vertical take-off and landing fire-guidance drone for target detection and battle-damage assessment, a wheeled variant carrying the K9A2's automated turret, and the TOMMS sustainment portal for digitised spare-parts logistics. For the European market the significance is that the European members of the user delegations present, Estonia, Poland, Norway, Finland and Romania, have now seen a demonstrated reference for counter-drone protection mounted on their own artillery type, and the next User Club is scheduled for Australia in 2027.