Alpine Eagle scales counter-drone production as European demand for drone defence accelerates

Munich, Germany, 19^th March 2026: Alpine Eagle, the European counter-drone defence technology company, is scaling production of its Sentinel counter-drone system as governments seek rapid, deployable solutions to defend against large-scale drone threats.

The company has seen accelerating demand across Europe. Sentinel was first deployed with the German Bundeswehr in 2024 as a launch customer, and Alpine Eagle has since secured contracts with three new European customers and has expanded to the UK and the Netherlands.

Sentinel combines Alpine Eagle’s airborne radar and sensor network with a software-defined defence architecture to detect and track hostile drones across wide areas and defeat them with onboard airborne interceptors.

Alpine Eagle is now participating in a defence innovation programme in the Netherlands, and over the past year, it has also conducted counter-drone trials in Ukraine and participated in Project Vanaheim, a counter-UAS trial involving the US and UK armed forces.

The company’s rapid growth reflects increasing demand for counter-drone capability across allied defence markets. Alpine Eagle has expanded its team from 12 employees in 2024 to 50 in 2026, with plans to reach 100 employees this year as production scales.

Reshaping modern air defence

The growing demand comes as drone warfare reshapes modern air defence – from Ukraine to the Middle East – driving governments to prioritise systems that can be produced and deployed at scale and at lower costs than legacy defence platforms.

To support scalable production, Alpine Eagle integrates its technology with the DeltaQuad Evo, a UAV platform produced by Dutch manufacturer DeltaQuad. The partnership provides access to industrial-scale production capacity while strengthening a resilient European supply chain. By combining proven hardware with proprietary sensing and defence software, Alpine Eagle can deliver deployable counter-drone systems faster than traditional defence programmes.

The company is also planning to open a 2,000-square-metre production facility for its own-developed interceptor near Munich, supporting its next phase of industrial scaling.

Tested in hostile environments

Alpine Eagle’s technology has already been tested in operationally relevant environments, including trials conducted in Ukraine, where counter-drone systems face constant pressure from mass drone attacks and must function reliably under disrupted GPS conditions.

Recent conflicts have underscored the urgency of scalable counter-drone capability. Large-scale drone strikes in Ukraine and across the Gulf show how inexpensive drones can overwhelm traditional air-defence systems and force defenders to expend far more costly interceptors. In recent Middle East attacks, analysts estimate defenders spent over $1.5bn intercepting drones that may have cost attackers around $250m to launch. This imbalance is accelerating demand for systems designed to counter large volumes of low-cost threats.

Jan-Hendrik Boelens, Founder and CEO of Alpine Eagle, said: “Defence ministries are increasingly looking for systems that can be delivered quickly and scaled as operational demand grows. By building on existing industrial capacity and integrating it with our own sensor and software architecture, we can provide counter-drone capability that is both deployable and scalable.

I’m incredibly proud of what the Alpine Eagle team has achieved over the past year. The reality is that threats facing Europe are higher than they have been for decades and drones are transforming the battlefield faster than traditional defence systems can adapt. Our mission is to ensure democracies have the tools they need to defend their airspace in this new era of warfare.”

Alpine Eagle

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