Germany is preparing to give defense start-up Helsing a half-billion-dollar contract to begin developing software to allow drones, aircraft and other sensors to operate together.

Germany was originally planning to develop the software as part of a sixth-generation fighter jet program with France and Spain. The jet program was recently canceled, but the three countries were still open to developing the combat cloud system together.

Internal documents, however, now reveal that Germany is pursuing its combat cloud system independently, Politico revealed last week. They are preparing a $580 million contract for Helsing to develop the Combat Fighter System Nucleus (cfsn).

The most likely explanation is that Germany has been able to draw on lessons from the Ukraine battlefield, putting it ahead of France and Spain in this area. Helsing has notably been engaged on the Ukrainian battlefield since 2022.

• Helsing is tasked with delivering “two experimental uncrewed combat aircraft, two ground control stations, a ground segment, operating system software, autonomy software and a government-owned reference architecture that other systems could plug into,” Politico reported.

It’s unusual to trust a start-up with such a vital project. If successful, this cloud system will be the backbone of Germany’s, and possibly all of Europe’s, future warfare. Politico wrote, “[T]he ministry is treating cfsn as more than a narrow research project. One paper describes it as a backbone for future networked air warfare.”

German secrecy: Politico wrote:

In other documents seen by Politico, the contract favors Helsing despite the Defense Ministry’s concerns about locking the development to a single contractor. The ministry also indicates it plans to avoid additional parliamentary scrutiny. …

The ministry is also citing a national-security exemption from normal EU procurement rules, arguing that a standard tender would risk Germany’s security interests.

Germany is up to something big, and it doesn’t want even its European partners to know about it.

There are real risks in betting on a five-year-old start-up for something this critical. But Germany is taking that risk—and our world is taking an even greater one by simply watching it happen. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry warns in “Germany is Arming for World War III,” Germany isn’t arming to deter or defend but to surprise.

“Beware! Germany is a country fertile in military surprises,” Winston Churchill once warned. We are about to experience its biggest military surprise ever.