Covenant Unveils Anthem, a Heavy-Payload Deep Precision Strike Missile System

Covenant Unveils Anthem, a Heavy-Payload Deep Precision Strike Missile System Defense startup Covenant has announced Anthem, a deep precision strike weapon designed to provide heavy payloads and long range at an affordable cost to fill strategic gaps in Western arsenals. Covenant developed Anthem to hit hardened, deep-infrastructure targets that small drones and lightweight missiles cannot destroy. The startup has raised $250 million and conducted over 200 test flights since August 2025, including trials with the U.S. military. Covenant is establishing production facilities across the United States, Germany, and Israel, with plans to deliver thousands of missiles annually starting in 2027. The Western Strategic Strike Deficit Recent conflicts have highlighted that the West lacks sufficient deep precision strike arsenals to face large adversaries like Russia or China. While initiatives such as Replicator have advanced low-cost tactical drones, light munitions cannot disable hardened targets like ports, runways, or weapons factories located hundreds of miles behind front lines. Meanwhile, European efforts to develop long-range strike capabilities remain years away from fielding, leaving a critical deterrence gap. Anthem's Design and Lifecycle Strategy Anthem is engineered to deliver multiples of the range and payload of existing systems in its price tier. Covenant focused heavily on reducing full lifecycle costs, designing Anthem for affordable mass storage and fielding rather than relying on expensive, scarce launchers and bunkers. The company is also supplying mission-planning and command-and-control software to enable large-scale coordinated strike missions. Testing, Leadership, and Global Manufacturing Founded by missile engineers led by co-founder Ofir Dayan alongside President and Chief Growth Officer Abby Denburg, Covenant relies heavily on commercial off-the-shelf components and vertically integrated supply lines. The company has inaugurated a 105,000-square-foot facility in Dallas, Texas, and is adding facilities in Germany (110,000 square feet) and Israel (30,000 square feet) to support mass manufacturing beginning in 2027.

国防科技初创公司Covenant推出远程重型打击武器系统Anthem 国防科技公司Covenant宣布推出名为Anthem的大载荷远程精确打击武器系统，旨在填补西方在低成本、大规模战略级远程打击能力上的空白，并计划于2027年起实现年产数千枚。 Anthem提供显著优于同价位装备的航程与有效载荷，兼顾储存发射等全生命周期成本，并配备配套的任务规划与指控软件。 系统自2025年8月首飞以来已完成超过200次飞行测试，包括多次与美军合作的测试。 Covenant成立不足两年已筹集2.5亿美元，在美国、德国和以色列设立工厂，预计2027年起每年交付数千枚导弹。 弥补西方战略远程打击短板 文章分析指出，西方在面对拥有纵深领土和坚固防空体系的对手时，远程打击弹药储备面临巨大考验。乌克兰前线的实践表明，小型战术无人机和百磅级弹头无法瘫痪港口、跑道或加固工厂。欧洲多国虽已发起长期打击倡议，但见效尚需数年，西方亟需具备大载荷、远航程且能低成本规模化部署的战略威慑手段。 Anthem系统特性与测试验证 针对全生命周期中掩体、发射器等配套设施成本高昂的问题，Covenant设计了便于廉价储存和批量部署的Anthem系统，并同步开发了支撑大规模打击任务的任务规划与指挥控制软件。自2025年8月首次试飞以来，Anthem已执行了200多次飞行测试，其中包括在美国本土及海外与美军合作进行的多次试验。 供应链建设与全球产能规划 公司已完成2.5亿美元融资，主要采用商用现货零部件或协同供应商自建产线。Covenant位于美国得克萨斯州达拉斯的10.5万平方英尺生产基地已落成，年内还将在德国设立11万平方英尺工厂（采用近乎全欧洲供应链），并在以色列设立3万平方英尺设施，目标从2027年开始每年交付数千枚Anthem。

[America](https://www.a16z.news/t/america) | [Tech](https://www.a16z.news/t/technology) | [Opinion](https://www.a16z.news/t/opinion) | [Culture](https://www.a16z.news/t/culture) | [Charts](https://www.a16z.news/t/charts) In the first five weeks of the war against Iran, the United States fired more than a thousand Tomahawk cruise missiles. It did this against Iran: a mid-sized regional power. The West needs to be prepared for wars against countries such as Russia and China: vast territories with thousands of hardened targets, layered air defenses, and the will and capability to fight for years. The real challenge is not replacing the weapons that have already been consumed. It is building a new arsenal capable of overwhelming scale. Europe’s long-range strike gap is even more pressing. In May 2025, Germany and the UK committed to develop a deep precision strike weapon under the Trinity House Agreement. France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK have banded together in ELSA, the European Long-Range Strike Approach, to field a long-range ground-launched missile. And in July of this year, a host of European countries pledged more than $50 billion to build deep precision strike capabilities. These initiatives are excellent, but they are years away from results. Enormous distances separate European soil from war-winning targets in Russia, and today, Europe has almost no sovereign way to reach them. If Europe wants to deter, it needs the ability to strike. When Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks launched the Replicator initiative in 2023, she made affordable mass a mission: thousands of small, cheap, autonomous systems to offset China’s greatest advantage – its sheer numbers. Arming the West with low-cost drones and munitions is one of the most important defense shifts in a generation. But affordable mass has mostly reached the small end, and while small, tactical drones are deadly, they are not war-winning: Russia and Ukraine have traded them across the front for years, and the line has barely moved. Even the new class of affordable American missiles is not enough. A hundred-pound warhead can destroy a truck, but it cannot close a port, crater a runway, or bring down a hardened weapons plant. Our adversaries have thousands of these targets, often tucked hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, and each of them needs heavy payloads to be destroyed. For the West to reach these targets, strategic weapons need the same revolution as tactical ones. We cannot deter with exquisite, expensive weapons built in the dozens. We need greater reach, heavier payloads, and tremendous mass. Today, Covenant is announcing Anthem: a heavy-payload deep precision strike weapon system meant to fill the biggest gap in the arsenal of the West. **Anthem delivers multiples of the range and payload of anything in its price class.** Crucially, Anthem is more than just its specs; it was designed to be affordably stored and fielded at scale. The reality of many weapons programs is that the sticker price is often a fraction of the lifecycle cost: bunkers and launchers can cost more than the effectors themselves and are often available in quantities too small for mass fielding. We’ve put as much thought into the storage and handling of Anthem as we have into its performance. Beyond delivering end-to-end hardware solutions, Covenant is also delivering the mission-planning and command-and-control software to make mass strike missions a reality. The result is a deep precision strike capability which can be affordably stored, launched, and controlled in the thousands. Since Anthem’s maiden flight in August 2025, Covenant has flown Anthem in over 200 tests, including multiple flight tests with the U.S. military both on U.S. soil and abroad. In just under two years since our founding, we have raised $250 million, hired hundreds of the most talented engineers and operators, and opened factories to produce Anthem in 3 countries – the US, Germany, and Israel. Our priority is getting thousands of Anthems into the field, fast. Anthem was designed to be produced quickly and at scale. Most of Anthem’s parts are commercial off the shelf, and where they are not, we did not wait for a supplier to scale up on their own: we either brought the part in house or partnered with the supplier to stand up an entirely new production line to meet our demand. Today, we cut the ribbon on our new 105,000 square foot production facility in Dallas, Texas, home to our American production line and supply chain. Later this year, we will unveil two more production facilities: 110,000 square feet in Germany, which will feature an almost entirely European supply chain, and 30,000 square feet in Israel. Beginning in 2027, we will deliver thousands of Anthems per year. Building an excellent affordable strategic weapon is hard. At our core are some of the most experienced missile engineers in the world, led by my co-founder Ofir Dayan. Ofir understands our customers’ problems as well as they do and has the tenacity to fight requirements that stand in the way of the best solutions. He leads our band of renegades – the engineers who ran as if with ankle weights inside the American, Israeli, and German primes, and still managed to deliver the most advanced offensive and defensive weapons in service. At Covenant they run free. No less important are the Covenant operations and flight test teams that support them. Flight-testing large missiles is intense and dangerous work, but it’s the way to get a missile into service quickly. Covenant has staged flight tests nearly every week since our founding. Covenant’s relationship with our customers is led by Abby Denburg, our President and Chief Growth Officer. Abby’s job is not just to sell, though she does that as well as anyone. She is the force converting our customers’ urgency into Covenant’s speed. We’re proud of what we’ve built, but the hardest work — producing at scale, delivering reliably, and servicing our customers — is still ahead. We open with Anthem. *This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Furthermore, this content is not investment advice, nor is it intended for use by any investors or prospective investors in any a16z funds. 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