• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

EUROSPIKE GmbH Launched at EuroSatory

New Company, EuroSpike GmbH, Established at EUROSATORY

15 June 2004 -- DIEHL Munitionssysteme GmbH (DMS), Rheinmetall Defence Electronics GmbH (RDE) and RAFAEL Ltd. signed an agreement today establishing a new company, EuroSpike GmbH, which will serve as the prime contractor for the EuroSpike Family of missiles for European customers.

The EuroSpike Family, the most advanced anti-armor/ multi-purpose missile systems available today, covers ranges between 200m and 8000m in three types of missiles (SPIKE-MR, LR and ER) with high technical commonality. These systems have several unique features which the Israeli Defence Forces, Singapore Armed Forces, Finnish Army, Dutch Army, Polish Army and others, have found to be the most suitable system for the modern battlefield and military operations in urban terrain (MOUT).

As part of the effort to market and to establish the logistic infrastructure in Europe, RAFAEL, DMS and RDE established the EuroSpike Consortium in 1997. The cooperation between the above mentioned parties had significant success in terms of receiving and managing several contracts in the last few years. "Due to the intensive business activity, it became clear that a Joint Venture between the parties was necessary," said Dr. Eitan Yudilevich, VP Marketing and Business Development at RAFAEL. "The result has been the establishment of EuroSpike GmbH."

The signing event was conducted today at the Eurosatory exhibition. From this point on, EuroSpike GmbH will be the prime contractor for SPIKE Family missile systems in Europe. "We are very pleased with this new joint enterprise and see it as a positive step towards multi-national relations" said Mr. Heinz Dresia, CEO of RDE . Mr. Frank Gutzeit, CEO of DMS emphasized: "We found that this system gives new and unique capabilities to Armed Forces which were not available until now".

The EuroSpike GmbH company shareholders are Diehl Munitionssysteme (40%), RDE (40%) and RAFAEL via ERCAS B.V (20%). ERCAS B.V. is a Dutch holding company owned 100% by RAFAEL. EuroSpike GmbH will be located in Roethenbach/Peg. (Germany ) and has full backing of the mother companies. The concept of EuroSpike GmbH is to give the European customer a superior alternative for such a system, with a fair price, excellent service and full system-life cycle support.

For further information please contact
RAFAEL public affairs. Tel: 972-4-8791244