Earthly ambitions are not enough for Rheinmetall’s Armin Papperger – the boss of the German arms group has set his sights on space.

Papperger, who said the artillery and tanks specialist had “no idea” about satellites until a few years ago, looked at the German military’s planned €35bn in space technology spending over the next four years – part of Berlin’s drive to reduce dependence on the US.

While stressing that “he’s not saying” the company will win everything, he told the FT Rheinmetall is considering bidding with partners for three space programs worth more than €20bn.

German MPs in December approved the company’s first satellite production contract, worth up to €2bn as part of a joint venture with Finland’s Iceye. The FT last week Revelation the company is also in talks with a joint bid to build an equivalent to Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service for the German military.

Rheinmetall is pushing a dizzying array of technologies and geographies while Papperger seeks to turn it into a multi-domain group akin to major US defense contractors.

Revenues are forecast to rise to €10bn by 2025, more than double the level of 2021, ahead of the whole of Russia. invasion of Ukraine. But Papperger has bigger ambitions and is targeting €50bn by 2030 as he positions Rheinmetall to benefit from a surge in The EU is on the defensive spending and a “buy European” bias.

Upon taking office last spring, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz promised to build the most powerful conventional army in Europe and released unlimited borrowing to finance it.

Papperger, who estimates that his company has secured about €40bn of a €100bn special fund announced in 2022 for the overhaul of the country’s neglected armed forces, reckons he could “catch” about €300bn worth of contracts in Europe by 2030.

That would represent 15 percent of the estimated €2tn in defense spending by EU countries during that period if they uphold their NATO commitments, according to European Commission estimates.

For supporters, the expansion of the group was a natural consequence of Germany’s decision to go beyond the military standstill period after the second world war.

“In Rheinmetall we have a player who can handle large orders, produce at scale and stand on equal footing with the world’s defense companies,” said Andreas Mattfeldt, a Christian Democrat MP on the budget committee and defense spending specialist. “The scale of the expansion seems extraordinary. But these are extraordinary times.”

For others, it is a source of anxiety.

Moritz Schularick, head of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and an adviser to the German economy ministry on the defense industry, said: “What Rheinmetall is offering now is a solution to the coordination problem that the defense ministry has. They say, ‘don’t worry, we will do everything’. It is clear from the point of competition that it is not very healthy.”

The 136-year-old company’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed through various periods of German history.

After the first world war the cannon maker turned to making plows and typewriters when the country was ordered to demilitarize, but became an important part of the Nazi war machine. During the cold war it supplied gun turrets for West German war vehicles. But the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 forced it to invest in production for the motor sector.

Now, with Germany boasting the fourth largest defense budget in the world, Rheinmetall is preparing to sell its car division to focus on weapons and is expanding in many directions.

Last year it began making fuselages for F-35 fighter jets, branched out into in-house production of armed drones and announced a deal to buy its first shipyard.

At the same time, the company expanded geographically, using local manufacturing to build capacity and gain political support. It produces ammunition and armored vehicles throughout Europe and is also trying to enter the US market.

Benjamin Heelan, an analyst at Bank of America, said Papperger had done “a very good job of expanding and diversifying” Rheinmetall, citing its joint ventures with companies ranging from Italy’s Leonardo to US drone maker Anduril.

But the expansion has alarmed rivals big and small.

Cassi Welling, chief operating officer of the German start-up Constellr, which provides thermal imaging through satellites, said: “By investing in a player who has become ‘mega prime’, you start to lower the stability of the entire ecosystem and risk losing innovation”.

Mattfeldt and other MPs ANGRY when officials awarded Rheinmetall a contract to build a marine laser system without an open tender, even though the rival had a ready solution. The satellite deal was also awarded without competition.

Iceye chief executive Rafał Modrzewski, whose company helps Rheinmetall produce satellite reconnaissance radars, said “no other company in Europe can easily provide such capabilities”.

But Green MP Sebastian Schäfer, another member of the budget committee, said that sometimes it seemed that Berlin “built Rheinmetall into a European champion without being clear about it”.

The German defense ministry said that although it did not comment on individual companies, procurement decisions were determined by the needs of the armed forces in a process “subject to strict regulations and close political control”.

Rheinmetall cannot win everything. It recently lost a competition to build a 6×6 armored vehicle to Finland’s Patria. But the decision prompted the heads of five German states to urge the defense ministry to reconsider – a sign of Papperger’s political power.

Some people resent the Rheinmetall boss’s trust. The company partly suffers from “tall poppy syndrome”, according to defense industry analyst Sash Tusa, who said rivals are often jealous of its success.

Papperger, who joined Rheinmetall in 1990, became CEO in 2013 and earned €4mn in 2024 in salary and bonuses, has little time for political correctness. He referred to industry players as “big boys” and “boys”, and continued the company’s hunting tradition, having himself killed two deer and a wild boar at the company’s annual gathering in November.

Company insiders say they are focused on their biggest challenges – capacity and speed.

Rheinmetall is building ammunition plants across Europe with the goal of producing 1.1mn 155mm artillery shells a year by 2027 — up from 70,000 by 2022. “The biggest challenge now is building all the new sites,” said an executive.

Another emphasized the dramatic scale-up of production required from small suppliers of niche parts while a third admitted that a planned factory in Ukraine had been delayed and a tank repair and maintenance center in Lithuania had become “relatively slow”.

Germany’s skeptics worry that Rheinmetall is slow to deliver on its promises. An order for Skyranger anti-drone cannons has been delayed due to lengthy discussions with procurement officials about the type of chassis required.

The company was also involved in an ill-fated €20bn attempt to digitize the German ground forces’ communications system.

Schäfer, the Green MP, said: “Rheinmetall is very good at promising things but not very consistent in producing on time and without errors.”

Critics fear that Papperger, who leads negotiations on major German contracts, is running rings around procurement officials. “For the company it doesn’t really matter if a project is delayed,” a European official said. “Once they’ve got the contract it can’t be taken away.”

Entering the notoriously difficult shipbuilding business with the purchase of Naval Vessels Lürssen has puzzled insiders and analysts. Papperger expressed a willingness to take on a mess frigate program from the Dutch shipyard Damen, but some wonder if he is biting off more than he can chew.

He said the move was about providing new “platforms” that would enable Rheinmetall to integrate its existing sensors, electronics and weapons. “We can combine technologies,” he said. He hopes to translate cross-platform sales into higher profits, targeting an operating margin of more than 20 percent by 2030 – compared to 15 percent by 2024.

Tusa, the defense analyst, said that while Rheinmetall made “some big promises, I don’t think they can deliver on everything”. However, he added, “what is important in general is that Europe is re-arming – and for that you need companies with ambition”.

The company’s share price – up 21 times since early 2022 – has been rocking recently, especially during US President Donald Trump’s efforts to force Kyiv into a peace deal with Moscow.

Papperger said he felt “very safe” in terms of orders until 2030 or 2032. He used last year’s dips to personally buy €2.8mn of stock. Trump’s threats to take over Greenland last month gave the shares new impetus.

Analysts also remain bullish. Morgan Stanley recently named Rheinmetall Europe’s top defense pick for 2026.

For their part, German officials are relaxed about the company’s growth.

Speaking at the inauguration of a new Rheinmetall ammunition plant in Lower Saxony in August, defense minister Boris Pistorius pointed directly at Papperger and said: “We want you to succeed because your success means security for our country.”