Perhaps more than any other major automotive player, Daimler is deepening its roots within the defence sector. By Stewart Burnett
Daimler Truck Chief Executive Karin Rådström has extolled the benefits of defence investments in a new interview with the Financial Times, claiming they are generating “positive spillovers” for the company’s traditional business, and pointing specifically to autonomous driving innovation and faster development cycles the truckmaker can learn from defence partners. The comments come as Daimler Truck brings forward its target to double defence revenue to €1bn (US$1.15bn), moving the deadline to 2028—two years earlier than previously planned.
Rådström said the defence business is developing “faster than we expected” and is growing more quickly than Daimler Truck’s commercial vehicle operation. That traditional business generated €45.9bn in sales during 2025 but have seen profits slump and margins tighten under the weight of US tariffs and an overall slower North American market.
Rådström also argued the company’s manufacturing scale gives it an edge over traditional defence contractors accustomed to smaller production runs. She said: “what all the defence ministries need right now is more capacity and quite fast”. Much of what Daimler is producing for defence contracts involves adapted versions of their existing vehicles.
The specific technology crossover centres on autonomous. Militaries are pushing to deploy autonomous trucks in part to reduce personnel needs on the battlefield, both for safety and because recruitment becomes harder in drawn-out conflicts, driving development of remote-controlled driving and “platooning”, where multiple trucks follow a single lead vehicle with a driver.
On this Rådström said that “there are some overlaps on the learnings that we’re doing now with our defence autonomous projects for the civil side as well”. On the commercial vehicle side of the business, Daimler is looking to advance SAE Level 4 autonomy in response to growing fleet demand for self-driving alternatives as they reckon with worsening driver shortages.
Tight logistics margins are also pushing fleets towards autonomy, with driver wage costs representing around 40% of total expenses. Little surprise, then, that Rådström considers autonomous capability the “biggest change” facing the industry—even more than decarbonisation. Daimler Truck aims to start delivering SAE Level 4-capable in designated US areas next year, with a wider rollout planned for 2028. She also praised the defence sector’s development cycles moving faster than Daimler Truck’s own processes, and called the battlefield a genuine testing ground for new software and hardware.
The structural build-out behind these ambitions is already under way. Daimler Truck launched a unified ‘Daimler Truck Defence’ brand in June, consolidating its global defence activities and backing the push with an investment in the hundreds of millions of euros. The portfolio currently draws on Mercedes-Benz Trucks’ existing defence lineup but will expand to other brands inside the group. The Wörth am Rhein plant in Germany, and Molsheim in France, will form the backbone of its European defence manufacturing, integrating military variants directly into existing commercial production lines.
Recent contract wins include a Bundeswehr order for hundreds of logistics vehicles, a deal with the Canadian Armed Forces alongside General Dynamics Land Systems covering at least 1,500 trucks, and a framework agreement with the French Armed Forces via Arquus for 7,000 trucks based on the Zetros platform. Daimler Truck’s global network of roughly 5,000 service locations also gives it a readiness advantage many pure-play that many defence contractors simply lack.
Daimler Truck’s push sits inside a broader pattern of automotive players turning to defence as vehicle demand softens and factory capacity goes underused. In the US, GM is in talks to supply Lockheed Martin, and Ford is discussing militarised F-Series trucks. In Germany, Volkswagen continues to weigh whether to either close or repurpose its Osnabrück plant for Iron Dome components.
Daimler Truck’s position stands out for having already attached a specific, accelerated revenue target and a dedicated global brand to the effort, rather than treating it as an exploratory side project.