The European Defence Agency (EDA) has selected five companies to advance to the next stage of the Sentinel Strike Challenge, in which various so-called loitering munition systems will be tested under realistic military conditions in Portugal later this year.
According to EDA, the tests will be conducted at the Santa Margarida training area as part of EU OPEX26. The systems will be evaluated under controlled but operationally relevant conditions by military users from EU member states.
The five companies that have advanced are Helsing (Germany), Destinus (Netherlands), C-Astral (Slovenia), UAVision (Portugal) and Spirit Aeronautical Systems (Greece). Each company is awarded a first prize of 30,000 euros and proceeds to the field tests. A further five companies, Renegade UxS (Denmark), Robotto (Denmark), Cerberon Defence Systems (Germany), THALES LAS (France) and ALTUS LSA (Greece), each receive 10,000 euros following the first evaluation round.
According to EDA, advancing to the next stage does not mean the systems are ready for procurement or operational use. Instead, the purpose of the competition is to provide member states with comparable data on how different systems perform under the same conditions ahead of future capability development.
During the second phase of the competition, the five finalists will compete for prize money totalling 1.8 million euros. The final winners are expected to be announced during 2027.