Romania weighs canceling drone contract with Israel’s Elbit Systems

BUCHAREST: Romania is weighing up canceling a 1.89 billion lei ($427.2 million) contract to buy drones from Israel’s Elbit Systems ​due to delivery delays, Defense Minister Radu Miruta said on Thursday.
The deal, signed in 2022, envisaged deliveries beginning in 2025. Miruta said the company had requested three postponements citing force majeure, with his ministry accepting the first two.
He said Elbit had accrued delay ‌penalties totalling ‌about 60 million euros.
“I am ​analizing ‌whether ⁠we want ​to ⁠terminate this contract,” Miruta told reporters. “There are some devices that have technical characteristics, which, if they are received a few years later, are no longer relevant.”
Romania, a European Union and NATO member, shares a 650-km (400-mile) land border with ⁠Ukraine and has had drones breach its ‌airspace and fragments ‌fall onto its territory since ​Russia began attacking Ukrainian ports ‌located across the Danube from Romania.
Romania’s defense ‌budget for 2026 stands at 2.45 percent of economic output.
Under the EU’s new rearmament initiative SAFE, which will begin later this year, Romania has been allotted 16.6 ‌billion euros ($19.2 billion). The country plans to spend about 200 million euros for ⁠drone production.
In ⁠March, the presidents of Romania and Ukraine signed a statement of intent to produce Ukrainian defense systems, including drones, in Romania.
On Wednesday, the Romanian government held a business-to-business matchmaking meeting between domestic defense firms and 15 Ukrainian companies to discuss technical cooperation on drone production.
Miruta said on Thursday that Romania would shortlist Ukrainian drone makers that meet the Romanian army’s requirements ​in the coming ​days and then start commercial talks on potential joint production.