Ondas has agreed to buy Stemme, the German company whose S12 motor glider is the airframe of ULTRA, a long-endurance spy drone the US Air Force flies. Ondas announced the all-cash deal on 5 November but gave no price.
Stemme builds two-seat motor gliders at Strausberg and Pasewalk in eastern Germany. Its website still presents them to sport pilots. Ondas says the two plants run at about 25% of their capacity.
From glider to spy plane
ULTRA came to Ondas with DZYNE Technologies, which it bought for $875.8 million in July. DZYNE built the drone on the S12 airframe with the Air Force Research Laboratory. Ondas says it flies for more than 70 hours carrying over 400 pounds of sensors.
The purchase puts the airframe, its engineers and its production line inside Ondas. “Our focus now is building more aircraft, faster,” said Ryan Hartman, who runs Ondas Sentinel, the company’s defence division.
Ten a month by 2028
Ondas aims to build 10 ULTRAs a month by 2028. It plans 345,000 square feet of new airframe production space in the US, without saying where, and to use more of Stemme’s 135,571 square feet in Germany. It did not say how many ULTRAs it builds today.
The deal should close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals Ondas did not name. By 6 November it had not filed the agreement with the SEC. Ondas reports third-quarter results on 12 November.
