South Korea and Estonia join forces for Romanian ground robot bid

South Korean-based Hanwha Aerospace and Estonian robotics company Milrem Robotics signed a teaming agreement at the BSDA 2026 defense exhibition in Bucharest to jointly pursue Romania’s unmanned ground vehicle program, combining Korean wheeled unmanned platform experience with Milrem’s combat-proven tracked UGV technology in a bid to capture one of Eastern Europe’s most strategically significant ground robotics procurements.

The agreement, signed May 13-15 at BSDA 2026, brings together Hanwha Aerospace, Hanwha Aerospace Romania, and Milrem Robotics under a formal cooperative structure targeting Romania’s evolving UGV requirements, according to the companies’ joint announcement. Representatives present at the signing included Lino Lim, CEO of Hanwha Aerospace Romania; Byungho Park, Head of Unmanned Land Systems Business Division at Hanwha Aerospace; and Kuldar Väärsi, CEO of Milrem Robotics. Viorel Manole, Executive Director of PATROMIL, the Romanian defense industry association, attended as an observer, signaling domestic industry awareness of a program that carries significant implications for Romanian defense industrial development.

Hanwha Aerospace, the defense and aerospace division of South Korea’s Hanwha Group, has established a substantial presence in Romania through its local subsidiary, positioning itself as a committed industrial partner rather than a foreign vendor seeking a one-time sale. The company produces the K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer, which Romania has procured as part of its artillery modernization, and the TIGON armored vehicle, a wheeled 8×8 infantry carrier developed specifically for export markets including Romania. That existing industrial footprint gives Hanwha a credibility advantage in a procurement environment where Romania has been explicit about prioritizing local production and technology transfer alongside capability acquisition.

Milrem Robotics, headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, is Europe’s most prominent UGV developer and the company behind the THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle, a tracked modular platform that has been exported to multiple NATO member states and operationally evaluated in several conflict-adjacent environments. The THeMIS, which stands for Tracked Hybrid Modular Infantry System, is designed to carry configurable mission payloads including weapons stations, logistics cargo, casualty evacuation equipment, and ISR sensors, making it adaptable across the full range of missions that ground forces need unmanned systems to support. Estonia’s experience as a frontline NATO state with a direct border with Russia has given Milrem a development environment shaped by genuine operational urgency rather than theoretical requirements, and that background resonates with Romanian defense planners who face a comparable strategic situation.

The teaming structure pairs Hanwha’s wheeled unmanned platforms and Romanian localization infrastructure with Milrem’s tracked UGV expertise, creating a combined offering that covers both mobility domains and leverages each partner’s strongest capabilities. Wheeled and tracked unmanned vehicles serve complementary roles: wheeled platforms offer higher road speed, lower maintenance demands, and better performance on improved surfaces, while tracked platforms provide superior cross-country mobility, obstacle clearance, and stability on rough terrain. A combined offering that presents both options under a single teaming arrangement gives Romanian defense planners flexibility to select the right platform for different operational requirements without committing to a single mobility solution across the entire program.

The partnership conducted a live Manned-Unmanned Teaming demonstration ahead of BSDA 2026, featuring Hanwha’s TIGON wheeled armored vehicle and GRUNT multipurpose unmanned ground vehicle alongside Milrem’s THeMIS unmanned cargo vehicle in battlefield mission scenarios covering reconnaissance, logistics support, casualty evacuation, and drone-enabled operations, according to the announcement. The MUM-T demonstration format, where crewed and uncrewed systems operate together in coordinated mission profiles, has become the standard evaluation framework for ground robotics programs across NATO, reflecting the doctrinal consensus that UGVs are most valuable as force multipliers operating alongside crewed platforms rather than as independent replacements for them.

The GRUNT, Hanwha’s multipurpose unmanned ground vehicle, is a compact tracked or wheeled platform designed for front-line support tasks in environments too dangerous for crewed vehicles, with configurable payloads that can include weapons, sensors, logistics equipment, and casualty evacuation systems. Demonstrating GRUNT alongside the larger TIGON armored vehicle in a MUM-T scenario illustrates how Hanwha envisions the relationship between its crewed and uncrewed platforms in operational use, with the unmanned vehicle extending the crew’s reach into high-threat areas while the armored vehicle provides command, communications, and direct fire support.

Romania’s UGV program sits within a broader defense modernization effort that has accelerated significantly since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Romania shares a border with Ukraine and hosts NATO infrastructure including the Deveselu missile defense site and a growing rotational allied force presence, giving it both a direct stake in the conflict’s outcome and a strong incentive to modernize its ground forces with capabilities that address the lessons emerging from Ukraine’s battlefields. Unmanned ground systems for reconnaissance, logistics, and casualty evacuation have been among the most operationally significant categories of technology demonstrated in Ukraine, and Romanian planners have been explicit about incorporating those lessons into their procurement priorities.