Rheinmetall takes 51% of Croatia’s DOK-ING

Rheinmetall has taken 51% control of DOK-ING, Croatia's specialist in unmanned ground vehicles and mine-clearance robots (Hrvatski izvoznici, Rheinmetall). Majority ownership normally means board control, strategic direction and the power to set export policy. Zagreb presented the acquisition as the birth of a "European unmanned-systems hub," but the ownership split hands Rheinmetall the deciding vote, and no public record shows what safeguards limit that control.

What Rheinmetall Absorbed

DOK-ING's core product is the Komodo, a heavy hybrid platform designed as a modular base for fire support, reconnaissance, logistics and mine clearance (Biz Srbija). Founder Vjekoslav Majetić kept 49%. The new entity, rebranded Rheinmetall Unmanned Vehicles and based in Zagreb, folds that capability into a product family spanning armoured vehicles, ammunition and air-defence systems. Rheinmetall is integrating the company under its own roof.

CEO Armin Papperger, at the Zagreb unveiling, promised permanent investment (tportal.hr). He said Rheinmetall would at least double DOK-ING's previous revenue and create new jobs. Croatian media went further, reporting hundreds of millions of euros in planned spending, but those figures remain unconfirmed by Rheinmetall's published documentation or independent verification (Jutarnji list).

A Regional Supply Chain Under One Roof

Place DOK-ING beside Rheinmetall's existing footprint and individual contracts start to look like a supply chain one company can steer. In Romania, Rheinmetall has secured a package spanning vehicles, air defence and ammunition described at roughly €5.7bn, with deliveries through 2028–2030 (DefenseRomania). The air-defence component alone runs above €1.4bn (Adevărul).

Add a Croatian unmanned-vehicle subsidiary and future procurement follows the existing path. The mechanism is concrete: training programmes, maintenance contracts, spare parts, software updates and certification standards all pull toward the incumbent supplier. Switching means retraining crews, rebuilding logistics chains and re-certifying interoperability from scratch. Each contract raises the switching cost for the next one. That is how defence-industrial lock-in works.

Italy Negotiated Harder

The sharpest measure of Croatia's position is Italy's deal with the same company. When Rome's national champion Leonardo partnered with Rheinmetall for land vehicles, it negotiated a 50-50 joint venture, legally seated in Rome and operationally based in La Spezia, with 60% of production activities planned inside Italy (Leonardo). Croatia got a 51-49 split in Rheinmetall's favour, with no publicly documented workshare floor or export-control safeguards.

Italy brought a national champion with existing production lines and political weight in Brussels. Croatia brought a specialist firm and urgency. The terms reflect the leverage gap. Joint ventures where neither side fully controls the company — like the Franco-German KNDS land-systems group, whose planned stock-market listing was recently postponed amid doubts about its industrial capacity (Zonebourse) — move slowly. Majority takeovers close fast.

Who Owes Croatia an Answer

The public record confirms why Rheinmetall wanted DOK-ING. What it does not confirm is whether the company's intellectual property stays meaningfully in Croatia, or whether export decisions will be made in Zagreb or Düsseldorf. No public evidence of Croatian FDI screening (the process by which governments vet foreign control of strategic firms), parliamentary debate or merger review has appeared in any of the reporting cited here (Rheinmetall).

Europe's rearmament spending is rising. Countries without a large national champion face a harder version of the same bargain in every deal: accept integration into one company's production and maintenance network, or negotiate for safeguards that preserve local control over what gets built, sold and exported. Croatia's government has defended the label of a European hub. It has not yet shown the safeguards that would make that label true.