The Norwegian defense group Kongsberg has finalized its acquisition of a 90 percent stake in U.S.-based Zone 5 Technologies, formally bringing the California startup’s low-cost cruise missile portfolio — including the “Rusty Dagger” — under its corporate umbrella. The announcement was made at the ILA Berlin Airshow, where executives from both companies outlined how the deal accelerates the integration of scalable, affordable strike weapons into allied arsenals.
The acquisition cements a strategic partnership first disclosed in December and positions Kongsberg to pair its high-end cruise missile capabilities with Zone 5’s rapidly producible systems designed for mass deployment. Zone 5 will continue operating as an independent subsidiary, but its programs are now structurally aligned with Kongsberg’s broader European and NATO-facing missile strategy.
At the center of the integration effort is the Rusty Dagger, a high-subsonic, low-cost cruise missile already in production at scale and confirmed to be in operational use by Ukraine. According to company officials, the weapon has now been cleared for deployment from four different aircraft types, including the F-16 Fighting Falcon, following successful live-fire trials in the United States.
Executives framed the acquisition as a response to accelerating demand for massed precision strike capabilities, particularly in Europe following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Speaking at the airshow, Kongsberg leadership emphasized that the deal was driven less by technology gaps and more by production philosophy.
“What we’re doing here is combining Kongsberg’s niche, exquisite technologies with a company very capable of designing for cost efficiency and mass production,” said Thomas Akers, founder and CEO of Kongsberg.
Rather than developing an equivalent low-cost cruise missile internally, Kongsberg opted to acquire Zone 5 to compress timelines and integrate an already mature production system. Harald Aarø, executive vice president for business development and strategy, described the decision in pragmatic terms.
“Technically, could we be capable of doing it? Yes,” Aarø said. “But we are not as capable, and we would probably spend a longer time, and perhaps not strike as smart solutions.”
He emphasized that the acquisition is not about replacing existing high-end systems, but about complementing them with attritable, scalable munitions suitable for saturation and distributed strike concepts.
A key pillar of the new portfolio is the operational pairing of the Rusty Dagger with Kongsberg’s flagship Joint Strike Missile (JSM). The JSM is a stealthy, precision-guided cruise missile designed for penetrating advanced air defense systems, particularly when launched from low-observable platforms such as the F-35 Lightning II.
By contrast, the Rusty Dagger is optimized for affordability and volume. It trades signature reduction and sophisticated survivability features for rapid production and flexible deployment modes. Together, Kongsberg argues, the two systems enable a layered strike approach: stealthy penetration by high-end munitions combined with massed saturation attacks from low-cost missiles.
Aarø described the combination as “a very effective future strike solution,” noting that while JSM is designed to survive heavily defended environments, Rusty Dagger is intended to overwhelm defenses through quantity and distributed launch methods.
One of the defining characteristics of the Rusty Dagger program is its modular launch architecture. Unlike traditional cruise missiles optimized for a single delivery platform, the weapon is designed to be employed across air, land, sea, and airborne palletized configurations.
According to Zone 5 chief strategy officer Tom Kanewske, the missile’s design allows a single baseline system to be rapidly reconfigured for different launch modes without major redesign.
“What’s interesting about our missile is that the same base, light cruise missile is field retrofittable for all employment modes,” Kanewske said. “That puts us in a very unique space where a country can purchase the same munition and field retrofit it for surface launch from land, the deck of a ship, pylon launch from a fighter aircraft, or palletized deployment.”
The palletized concept — where cruise missiles are released from cargo aircraft — reflects a broader shift in U.S. and allied experimentation with distributed launch systems designed to expand strike capacity without relying solely on combat aircraft.
Zone 5 confirmed that production of the Rusty Dagger is ramping rapidly, with “well above 1,000 units” expected in its first year of manufacturing. The weapon is also being procured by the U.S. Air Force under the designation AGM-188 as part of the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles (FAMM) initiative.
The U.S. Air Force has signaled a major expansion of this concept, with budget projections indicating plans to acquire nearly 28,000 FAMM-class munitions over the next five years. Parallel procurement efforts by the U.S. Department of Defense include a broader target of at least 10,000 low-cost cruise missiles over the next three years.
These initiatives reflect a doctrinal shift toward “affordable mass,” intended to address the high expenditure rates of precision munitions observed in Ukraine and anticipated in a potential high-end conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.
Zone 5 confirmed that the Rusty Dagger is already being supplied to Ukraine under the Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) program. Although specific aircraft integration details remain classified, the missile is believed to be compatible with Ukrainian-operated Soviet-era platforms such as the MiG-29, Su-27, and Su-25, as well as Western-supplied F-16 aircraft.
Kanewske highlighted rapid integration timelines as a key differentiator. During trials at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, integration onto the F-16 reportedly required just 72 hours.
“We’re the only affordable mass munition currently on contract with an export international customer,” he said, referring to Ukraine.
The weapon’s clearance across multiple platforms — including the F-16 and contractor-operated test aircraft such as the A-4 Skyhawk — underscores its design emphasis on interoperability and rapid fielding.
Beyond platform flexibility, Kongsberg and Zone 5 are also exploring networked employment concepts that would allow Rusty Dagger missiles to operate in coordinated groups alongside JSMs. These “cooperative behaviors” could include shared targeting updates, adaptive routing, and distributed engagement sequencing.
The concept aligns with emerging U.S. experimentation in autonomous munitions coordination, including programs such as “Golden Horde,” which explored AI-enabled collaborative behaviors among weapon systems.
In a notional operational scenario, stealthy JSMs launched from F-35s would penetrate defended airspace first, while large salvos of Rusty Daggers would be launched from stand-off ranges via fighters and cargo aircraft. The combined effect would be designed to saturate enemy air defense networks, increasing the probability of successful target engagement.
A central selling point of the Rusty Dagger program is its open-architecture design philosophy. This allows customer nations to integrate sovereign subsystems, sensors, or software features without long procurement delays.
Kanewske contrasted this with traditional missile development cycles, where customization could take up to five years. With the Rusty Dagger, he claimed, modifications can be implemented in under 12 months.
Zone 5 also promotes a “franchise manufacturing model,” where production capability is effectively exported to partner nations. Instead of expanding a single centralized factory, the company provides tooling, design packages, and quality control frameworks that allow allied countries to establish local production lines.
Aarø identified Germany as a potential anchor site for European production, citing its advanced industrial base and alignment with NATO supply chain resilience goals.
The acquisition reflects a broader shift across Europe toward rebuilding missile stockpiles and strengthening domestic production capacity. NATO members have increasingly acknowledged that existing inventories of long-range precision weapons are insufficient for sustained high-intensity conflict.
The war in Ukraine has underscored the importance of maintaining stockpiles measured in thousands rather than dozens of missiles, particularly for standoff strike operations. Low-cost systems such as the Rusty Dagger are increasingly seen as essential complements to higher-end systems like the JSM.
Kongsberg executives argue that this dual approach will become a defining feature of future Western strike doctrine: high-end stealth missiles for penetration, combined with low-cost mass systems for attrition and saturation.
As global demand for affordable cruise missiles accelerates, competition among Western defense firms is expected to intensify. Kongsberg’s acquisition of Zone 5 positions it as one of the few companies attempting to span both ends of the strike spectrum — from advanced stealth cruise missiles to rapidly produced attritable weapons.
The companies believe that the combination of combat-proven deployment in Ukraine, expanding U.S. procurement programs, and multi-platform flexibility will give the Rusty Dagger a strong foothold in emerging markets.
Ultimately, the partnership reflects a structural change in defense procurement priorities: speed, scalability, and cost efficiency are becoming as important as range, precision, and survivability. In that environment, the Kongsberg–Zone 5 alliance is betting that the future of cruise missile warfare will not be defined by a single exquisite system, but by a blended ecosystem of high-end and high-volume weapons working in concert.
