How to become a defence supplier: what's true, and what to settle first.

Germany is spending €108.2 billion on defence in 2026: €82.69 billion from the regular budget and €25.51 billion from the Bundeswehr special fund. The 2027 draft, read for the first time in September 2026, provides €139.6 billion.

Behind this is a commitment every NATO member made at the Hague summit: 5% of GDP by 2035, with at least 3.5% on core defence and up to 1.5% on resilience, critical infrastructure and the industrial base. The figures are not in a speech. They are in the budget.

Austria's Aufbauplan 2032+ aims for 2% of GDP by 2032. The national defence report, however, shows a gap of €12.6 billion through 2031: in 2027 and 2028 spending sits at 1.19% of GDP instead of the planned 1.4% and 1.55%. For an Austrian supplier, the bigger customer is in Germany, and usually it is a prime contractor there.

The most visible cases are plants that until recently made parts for the car industry or the railways. Every one here has been publicly reported, and each names its source.

At the same time Rheinmetall is selling its civilian division, about €2 billion in revenue and some 6,250 staff, to the investor AEQUITA. The country's largest prime contractor is leaving the car business while the car suppliers head towards it.

At the start of 2026 the German Chambers of Commerce (DIHK) surveyed about 5,000 industrial companies. 17% are already in the defence value chain: 2.5% make military goods, 6.9% dual-use goods and 7.6% supply parts. Another 12.3% see the market as interesting. Vehicle building is the most involved at 36%, ahead of electrical and mechanical engineering at 25% each.

Among some 200 executives of automotive suppliers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, almost 64% see defence as the best prospect for new revenue, according to a Roland Berger survey. In Austria, a survey for the Federal Economic Chamber (WKO) found 53% of the public in favour of expanding the security and defence industry, and 75% want domestic suppliers involved when the Bundesheer buys abroad.

Since 14 February 2026, Germany's new Bundeswehr procurement acceleration act has been in force. It removes the duty to split contracts into lots. The consequence, as the law firm CMS puts it: mid-sized companies will increasingly have to work as subcontractors. The act also lets buyers limit bidding to companies from the EU, and it allows advance payments.

The industry association BDSV describes large programmes running through a few prime contractors with established, certified supply chains: a “closed shop”. Suppliers have to invest before any reliable order volume is secured. In the European Defence Fund, small and medium-sized companies make up 43% of participants but receive about 20% of the money.

So your first customer is rarely the procurement office. It is the purchasing team of a prime contractor, and they check a new supplier differently from a carmaker.

Two prime contractors publish their requirements. They show what a supplier audit comes down to:

• KNDS Deutschland Mission Electronics requires quality management to DIN EN ISO 9001:2015. Orders may be subject to official quality inspection under AQAP 2110, and inspectors then get access to all premises and records. Circuit boards to IPC-A-610 class 2, documentation kept for twelve years.
• Rheinmetall Air Defence requires ISO 9001 or similar, plus environmental and occupational safety management, a stable financial position and the ability to meet AQAP. Suppliers apply with a dossier. And no supplier should make more than 25% of its annual revenue with Rheinmetall Air Defence.

The Bundeswehr's quality inspection takes place at the supplier's site, and responsibility for quality stays with the supplier. The 25% limit is the rule people miss most often: a company that bets its move on one prime contractor fails that contractor's own test.

In Germany, being taken into the state's classified-information programme (Geheimschutzbetreuung) is often a condition for bidding. According to Bitkom it can usually only be started by a government customer. Companies cannot qualify in advance, and security checks often take several months.

The lowest level, VS-NUR FÜR DEN DIENSTGEBRAUCH (restricted), needs no security check of staff, only minimum organisational measures. That is the part a company can prepare before it has an order.

In Germany, BAFA licenses exports of military and dual-use goods. For weapons of war, the War Weapons Control Act requires a licence even to manufacture and to move them within the country. In Austria, import, export and transit of war material need a permit under the Kriegsmaterialgesetz.

Across the EU, dual-use goods fall under Regulation 2021/821. Annex I items need a licence to leave the EU, and Annex IV items need one even within it. In Austria the licensing authority is the BMWET.

The classification decides more than what you may ship. It also decides which technical documents may go on the website for anyone to read and which only named, vetted recipients may see. Settle that before the first data sheet goes online. What that means for the website and the dealer area is in our article on digital presence.

The European Commission has made clear that under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation the defence industry is treated like any other sector. Extra disclosure applies only to controversial weapons such as cluster munitions or anti-personnel mines.

The European Investment Bank loosened its rules in 2024 and 2025 and raised its security and defence lending from €1.2 billion in 2024 to more than €4 billion in 2025; weapons and ammunition remain excluded. Through KfW Capital, Germany's KfW now finances dual-use as well as weapons and ammunition for companies based in the EU, Norway, Switzerland or the UK.

ZF is cutting up to 14,000 jobs. Experts estimate that defence can replace fewer than 10% of the car jobs being lost. IG Metall says the cuts can never be absorbed by defence.

The move is also a question of identity, not only of capacity. Bosch's CEO puts it plainly: “Defence is also about our identity.” The converted plant in Berlin-Wedding was blocked for the fourth time within a few weeks in May 2026.

Staff, neighbours, the bank and civilian customers will ask. A company that does both needs an answer it can stand behind in public, and a presence that speaks to both kinds of customer correctly.

Before a prime contractor's purchasing team calls, they look. A website built for carmakers answers the wrong questions. From the requirements above, this is what it has to show instead:

• The defence or dual-use line as its own area: easy for the buyer to find, without unsettling the civilian customer.
• Certificates as documents with an expiry date, not as logos: ISO 9001, environment and safety, where you stand on AQAP.
• Technical documents according to their classification: open what may be open, the rest behind access with approval and country checks.
• One version of each data sheet, from one source, the same on the website, in the catalogue and on the stand.
• Hosting and supply chain answered before the questionnaire arrives: where the data sits, who can reach it, which subprocessors are involved.
• A trade-fair presence planned backwards from the fair date, from the same data as the website.

1. Have your goods classified: the national export list, Annex I and Annex IV of the dual-use regulation. When in doubt, ask BAFA or the BMWET.
2. Pick two or three prime contractors and read their supplier requirements. Many are public, like the KNDS and Rheinmetall ones above.
3. Close the gaps in quality management: ISO 9001 as the base, AQAP 2110 as the goal.
4. Plan revenue so that no single customer becomes too large. The 25% limit is a rule, not an exception.
5. File the self-disclosure on the Bundeswehr's G2B portal; it also lists the platforms where tenders are published.
6. Prepare the minimum organisational measures for restricted (VS-NfD) material, so a first order does not stall on them.
7. Only then adapt the presence, in this order: classification, documents, access, website, trade fair.