Daimler Truck is targeting €1 billion in defense revenue by 2028, betting that European armies scrambling for trucks since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine will favor a manufacturer whose military vehicles roll out of the same plants and parts bins as its commercial fleet.

The company consolidated its military work into a single global brand, Daimler Truck Defence, in June. It plans to invest a mid-three-digit million-euro sum over the coming years, according to its June announcement. Around 1,000 employees work in the business today, and Daimler expects headcount to grow, particularly at its Wörth am Rhein plant in Germany.

"Scaling is one of the key challenges in the defense industry these days," Dennis Kinzelmann, CEO of Daimler Truck Defence and head of Mercedes-Benz Special Trucks, told a media roundtable at IAA Transportation in Hanover.

"Unfortunately, with the, I would say, full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, it has shown, especially in Europe, that Western societies and governments have to be prepared for widespread and longer-lasting conflicts," Kinzelmann said. "This means that we also have to have the ability to provide the right equipment at the right time and also at the scale that is needed."

Two programs anchor the order book

France anchors the pipeline. In January, the Ministry of the Armed Forces selected Daimler Truck and French partner Arquus for the PL6T program, with deliveries running more than 10 years. Daimler builds the chassis at Wörth and Molsheim, France; Arquus handles militarization, protected cabs and integration at its French sites. Kinzelmann said the framework covers up to 7,000 Zetros-based trucks.

"This will basically be the new platform for the land forces of France, with very different applications," he said.

In Canada, Daimler is supplying more than 1,500 Zetros logistics trucks under the Logistics Vehicle Modernization program, where General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada is prime contractor and Marshall Canada builds the mission modules. Chassis are built at Wörth and shipped to Canada, where partners add the bodies and what Kinzelmann called a "substantial" share of local content.

Germany's Bundeswehr has ordered military logistics vehicles in the three-digit unit range. France will most likely become the unit's largest defense customer on the strength of PL6T, Kinzelmann said, "closely followed by Canada," with Germany "still on a very important level."

Civil parts on military trucks

The lineup runs from the Unimog at the light end through the Zetros to the Arocs, a severe-duty vocational truck sold in Europe. The Arocs operates in applications above 100 tons gross combination weight, and the range covers "from 10 tons to 100 tons," Kinzelmann said.

On a military Arocs, Daimler shares the axles, some transmissions, the engine and the cab design with the civil version. Kinzelmann estimated shared content could run "north of 70, 80 percent," while admitting he had not counted the parts.

"Those vehicles and the components that we use typically have been deployed a hundred thousand times already, so well established in the field," he said.

Capacity is the other half of the pitch. "Once you're going to see the Wörth plant, it's one of the largest truck plants in the world," Kinzelmann said. "We can switch quite flexibly the volumes depending on the situation."

A service network for decades-long fleets

Defense customers keep vehicles in service for 20 to 30 years, so every order ships with aftersales support. Daimler Truck's aftersales network spans more than 160 countries, and the defense unit uses that civil parts backbone to move spares at commercial speed.

The Unimog, which turns 80 this year, is the durability case in point. Argentina placed new Unimog orders, and when the country's defense minister visited Wörth, the delegation showed him photos of Unimogs from the 1960s and 1970s still running in Argentina.

"I asked my engineers, how long does a Unimog last?" Kinzelmann said. "And they say, we don't know because we've only been building it for 80 years."

Procurement still runs country by country

"It's still very much a national procurement effort in Europe," Kinzelmann said. He hopes for more European alignment over time to close capability gaps faster.

Where Daimler lacks a capability, it partners — as with Arquus in France and GDLS in Canada. Kinzelmann named Rheinmetall among the established defense players in Europe and noted Scandinavian truck manufacturers also supply military vehicles.

"To us it's probably less about competition, but more also about team sport, especially in Europe," he said. "We need the capabilities now."

In the U.S., buyers are moving toward commercial off-the-shelf procurement — for Daimler, a baseline truck already in production that it can modify and integrate with partners' equipment.

"It's always easier to start with what you have available and what might be requested on top of it, instead of just sending a 600-page spec book and then try to meet each and everything," he said.

Every page a buyer drops from the spec book is a part Daimler can pull from a civil line.

Unmanned work and the U.S. market

The unit also starts development before a tender exists when it judges a capability strategically relevant. Unmanned trucks are the current example. Daimler works with partners and already offers its first remote-controlled vehicles, with teleoperation and then full autonomy to follow on what Kinzelmann called a mid-term timeline. He did not give a year.

"We're convinced that unmanned definitely is one of the fields, especially on the defense side, to protect lives where we want to contribute," he said.

Daimler sells into Ukraine now, mostly Zetros trucks. On the U.S. military, Kinzelmann said the country is one of many markets under assessment and that the company does not discuss unannounced tenders or deals.

"A product is not just the new vehicle," he said. "It's the whole ecosystem around it, including the after-sales, spare parts, partner ecosystem, technology development that we do globally."

With up to 7,000 trucks for France, 1,500-plus for Canada and a €1 billion revenue target four years out, Daimler's defense push now rests on whether Europe's fragmented national procurement can keep feeding production lines built to flex with demand.