A New Nature of Warfare Made in Bavaria

Bavaria is known around the world for its Oktoberfest (free-flowing beer and lederhosen), beautiful mountains and well-established industry. Now the state is adding a new facet to that image: military technology.

Billions of dollars from America are flowing into the Bavarian capital, Munich, but the investments may literally backfire.

Munich’s Defense Tech Funded by the U.S.

Munich-based drone-maker Helsing raised $1.8 billion in a Series E round on July 13 and is now valued at $18 billion. Helsing produces thousands of attack drones for Ukraine and improves them with battlefield data. It also deploys AI-driven drone swarms underwater. Axios wrote that day:

The most valuable mainland Europe start-up is now a defense player. … Amid calls for greater tech sovereignty in Europe, the defense tech industry is now running hotter than the AI foundational model scene on the Continent.

EU Observer observed on May 26: “Bavarian defense start-ups illustrate Germany’s transformation and the new nature of warfare. … [T]he Bavarian capital has been turning into a center of an unexpected boom in defense start-ups.”

Part of the reason is the German government’s large investments. Germany has released additional hundreds of billions of euros to fund its military and reach 3.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2030. In “a few years, the German military budget will be larger than the British and French ones combined” (ibid).

But Helsing’s capital “is measured in dollars, not euros,” Eurointelligence observed. “This is U.S. investors who are providing the funding. … In 2023, around 80 percent of European defense start-up investments came from European investors. This number is now down to around half, while U.S. investors raised their share from 14 percent to 38 percent in that period.”

Besides Helsing, Bavaria’s Quantum Systems, which manufactures reconnaissance drones, is also rising quickly, having recently raised $1.2 billion in capital. “There are a number of other start-ups in the tech sector, on defense and energy, that succeeded in raising capital. They are concentrated around Munich,” Eurointelligence noted.

Munich’s start-up ecosystem stands out, with the Unternehmertum entrepreneurship center at the Technical University of Munich. “The tum university in Munich doesn’t just look like a Silicon Valley tech hub, it’s also aspiring to become as successful,” Deutsche Welle wrote June 4, 2025.

Yet its main contribution isn’t about transforming the phone you hold in your hand but how people die on the battlefield

EU Observer lists two more Munich-based companies that rose primarily in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

• Tytan Technologies, which plans to open a factory in the spring and become Europe’s main producer of smart defensive drones, provides a much cheaper alternative to missile defense systems.
• arx Robotics, which claims to be the creator of “the world’s largest connected military robotic fleet” and the leading supplier of unmanned military vehicles to Ukraine. It is also helping to convert traditional military equipment into unmanned, autonomous vehicles.

Together, Helsing, Quantum Systems, Tytan Technologies and arx Robotics represent a new way of conducting warfare—from autonomous drones in the air and sea to robots on the ground.

These start-ups are making their name alongside established defense companies like Hensoldt, headquartered right outside Munich, and automakers like the bmw Group, whose infrastructure they benefit from.

Munich’s Future

Germany’s former defense minister and multimillionaire Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg wrote a profile piece on Helsing’s founders for Handelsblatt in December 2025, stating: “Gundbert Scherf, Torsten Reil and Niklas Köhler demonstrate that European technological sovereignty is possible.”

American investors are funding a company that seeks to enable Europe’s military technological sovereignty.

Guttenberg himself invested in another Munich-based start-up, GovRadar, which seeks to solve the Bundeswehr’s procurement problems. His girlfriend, Katarina Reiche, is currently serving as Germany’s economics minister. “Under her leadership, the government supported emerging defense technology start-ups while encouraging struggling manufacturers and automotive suppliers to pivot toward military production,” the National Interest wrote on May 11.

In the March 2024 Trumpet, editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

Guttenberg is following in the footsteps of Bavarian leaders Edmund Stoiber and Franz Josef Strauss, who harnessed high-tech industry. Strauss and Stoiber helped make Bavaria the high-tech economic powerhouse that it is today. What if Guttenberg enhances this industrial power with artificial intelligence?

American investors are funding Germany’s new military tech. In some cases, they even invite them in.

Trusting the Enemy

On July 14, Helsing announced that West Virginia would become the company’s first U.S. manufacturing base. The planned facility will produce the HX-2, an advanced, AI-enabled strike drone. Rheinmetall’s U.S.-based subsidiary is already delivering autonomous military vehicles to the U.S. military.

Soon German-made drones could be filling America’s sky and autonomous fighting vehicles replacing its troops. Mr. Flurry has warned for decades that America’s military cooperation with Germany is gravely dangerous. In the August 1996 Philadelphia Trumpet, he wrote:

And what if our gamble with Germany today is dead wrong? As Churchill said, It is a mistake you make only once! All Americans would pay the deadly price! It gives us the potential to be attacked and destroyed from within. …

The Germans had a history before World War i of attacking enemies with “rapidity and suddenness”—like a “bolt from the blue”! What if Germany becomes our enemy? What if they never were really a loyal friend? What if they were to attack the U.S. when we only thought they were an ally? Could Germany be our trojan horse?

We have long been assured that Germany isn’t militarily capable of executing such a surprise attack. But with the deep integration into the U.S. and the rapid advancements of military technology, Germany is in a key position to surprise its enemy of the past world wars.

Mr. Flurry wrote:

Hitler said before World War ii that if war came, “I should fall upon my enemy suddenly, like lighting striking out of the night”! The problem is most people didn’t believe him, even after he made the statement! Have we learned anything from history? …

It’s the same old story. Men never learn from history. Again and again and again we make the same mistakes!

In Ezekiel 23:22, God prophesies that He Himself would “raise up thy lovers against you.” This is referring to Germany, ancient Assyria in Bible prophecy.

Isaiah 10:5-7 read: “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.”

America today believes it has nothing to fear. The U.S. still has a far larger military budget, armed forces and much technological innovation. But if God is against America, nothing will save it.

Mr. Flurry explained these prophecies in detail in “Germany Is Arming for World War III” and revealed the profound purpose of these prophesied events.