Rakuten helps Helsing pitch HX-2 strike drone to Japan 

Japanese e-commerce and financial services group Rakuten is helping German defense technology company Helsing pursue a sale of its HX-2 strike drone to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF). 

Nikkei first reported the arrangement on August 17, 2026. Rakuten subsequently confirmed to Reuters that it was helping Helsing navigate the Japanese market. The JGSDF is conducting field tests of the HX-2 until the end of September 2026, according to Rakuten.  

Helsing said it had reached an “initial agreement” with the Japanese authorities earlier in 2026, crediting an unnamed local brokerage partner with making it possible. Neither company disclosed the potential order value or the number of aircraft involved, and Japan is expected to decide whether to introduce the system after the trials conclude. 

HX-2 tested through September 

The HX-2 is an electrically propelled x-wing loitering munition with a stated range of up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) and a weight of 12 kilograms (26 pounds), offered with multipurpose, anti-tank and anti-structure payloads. 

Helsing says onboard artificial intelligence allows the drone to search for, re-identify and engage targets without a continuous communications link, giving it resistance to jamming, with a human operator in or on the loop for all critical decisions. Multiple HX-2s can be networked through the company’s Altra reconnaissance-strike platform. 

Helsing has run military-led trials of the system in four European countries and supplies HX-2 drones to Ukraine under German government funding. The company rejected reports in January 2026 that Ukraine and Germany had suspended further orders following problems during frontline testing. 

Founded in 2021, Helsing began in battlefield software before expanding into strike drones, underwater surveillance and military aviation. It acquired Grob Aircraft in June 2025 and raised $1.8 billion in July 2026, valuing it at $18 billion. 

A retail group enters defense procurement 

Rakuten has little conventional defense experience, making its role as an intermediary between a European strike-drone manufacturer and Japan’s armed forces unusual. 

Hideaki Mukai, chief of staff to Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, told Reuters that startups entering the sector face structural barriers including complex procurement systems, difficulties communicating with government agencies and lengthy acquisition cycles. Rakuten intends to use its network to connect those companies with Japanese government requirements, he said. 

The Helsing arrangement is not its first. Rakuten helped organize an April 2026 demonstration for a Japanese military unit by Swarmer, a US-listed Ukrainian drone-autonomy software company, in which Swarmer’s software coordinated several aircraft in a seek-and-hit mission. 

Mikitani has been among Japan’s most prominent corporate supporters of Ukraine, and the group backed the Ukrainian government defense cluster Brave1 at DSEI Japan in May 2025, where Swarmer was one of six startups exhibiting. 

Japan accelerates its unmanned buildup 

Japan’s FY2026 defense budget totals JPY 9.04 trillion ($58 billion), the fourth annual budget covered by the five-year Defense Buildup Program. Roughly JPY 100.1 billion ($640 million) went to the Synchronized, Hybrid, Integrated and Enhanced Littoral Defense initiative, or SHIELD, a layered coastal architecture built around large numbers of unmanned systems to counter forces approaching Japan’s remote islands. It is due to be operational by the end of fiscal 2027. 

SHIELD includes a new family of small expendable attack UAVs for the JGSDF, a category the HX-2 fits, although the Japanese Ministry of Defense has not publicly linked the current evaluation to the program. The post Rakuten helps Helsing pitch HX-2 strike drone to Japan  appeared first on AeroTime.

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