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Defense tech company Helsing to produce 6,000 additional strike drones for Ukraine

The company is also planning to build multiple ”Resilience Factories” across Europe, to provide countries with local and sovereign manufacturing capacities.
byBenjamin Looijen
13/02/2025
3 minute read
The company's HX-2 attack drone, photo via Helsing.
The company’s HX-2 attack drone, photo via Helsing.
Defense tech company Helsing to produce 6,000 additional strike drones for Ukraine

Helsing, a European defense technology company, announced that it is producing 6,000 HX-2 attack drones with artificial intelligence for delivery to Ukraine.

These relatively low-cost, swarm-capable drones – immune to electronic warfare thanks to onboard AI – could help address Ukraine’s numerical disadvantage against Russian forces. Furthermore, the establishment of “Resilience Factories” across Europe, capable of producing thousands of units monthly, also signals a broader strategic move to strengthen European defense manufacturing independence and rapid-response capabilities.

As can be evidenced from the official announcement on the company’s website, the HX-2 is an electrically-powered, high-precision X-wing strike drone with a range of up to 100 kilometers. It is enhanced with on-board artificial intelligence that provides full immunity to electronic warfare.

Another feature is that operating as part of Helsing’s reconnaissance and strike software (Altra), multiple HX-2s can be combined into swarms controlled by a single human operator.

The company notes that the HX-2 has been designed to be mass-producible and at significantly lower unit cost than conventional systems, thus filling a growing capability gap in modern land warfare.

Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of Helsing, said: “We are scaling up production of HX-2 in response to additional orders from Ukraine, where precision mass is offsetting a numerical disadvantage in legacy systems on a daily basis. It is clear that NATO has important lessons to learn, and fast.”

This announcement follows a previous order of 4,000 HF-1 strike drones which are currently being delivered to Ukraine, in partnership with Ukrainian industry.

Building ”Resilience Factories” across Europe

In addition, Helsing is announcing the completion of the first so-called ”Resilience Factory” in Southern Germany.

According to the company, Resilience Factories are Helsing’s high-efficiency production facilities designed to provide nation states with local and sovereign manufacturing capacities.

Helsing is set to build Resilience Factories across the European continent, with the ability to scale manufacturing rates to tens of thousands of units in case of a conflict. The first Resilience Factory (RF-1) is operational in Southern Germany and has an initial monthly production capacity of more than 1,000 HX-2.

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