EU prepares Sentinel Strike Challenge for real-world loitering munition testing, with downselect to five companies

Slovenia's C-Astral was one of five EU companies downselected for the EDA's Sentinel Strike Challenge for real-world loitering munition testing on 29 July 2026. (European Defence Agency)

The European Union (EU) has downselected its Sentinel Strike Challenge to develop loitering munition technologies to five companies.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) announced on 29 July 2026 that the five companies will take the programme through to its second phase from the autumn (Q3) of 2026.

“[The] EDA has now completed the first stage of the challenge, which attracted more than 140 expressions of interest from organisations across Europe,” the agency said. “Following a competitive evaluation, the five highest-ranked submissions came from Helsing (Germany), Destinus (Netherlands), C-Astral (Slovenia), UAVision (Portugal) and Spirit Aeronautical Systems (Greece).”

For the five selected companies, the competition now moves to the real-world testing, where they will compete for EUR1.8 million (USD2.1 million) in awards. “During the EU OPEX26 operational experimentation campaign at the Santa Margarida military training area in Portugal, their systems will be tested under controlled, realistic and contested operational conditions. Military users from EU Member States will assess not only whether the technologies work, but also how they perform across the full mission cycle, how resilient they are under operational conditions, and how they compare when tested under the same scenarios,” the EDA said.