“We want to become the European defense champion”: the ambitions of Michal Strnad, boss of the Czech defense phenomenon CSG

No one really saw it coming. Long remaining under the radar of the European arms industry, the Czech group CSG (Czechoslovak Group), a specialist in munitions and land equipment, is now one of the largest defense groups on the Old Continent. With 6.7 billion euros in turnover in 2025, and around 7.5 billion expected this year, it is already bigger than the Franco-German giant KNDS or the missile maker MBDA, is now close to the size of Dassault Aviation, and has even filed, according to the Financial Timesan offer to take a stake in KNDS.

In an exclusive interview with Challengesthe group’s boss, Michal Strnad, 33, says he sees even bigger things. “We want to become the European defense champion, with a global presence, and that is exactly what we are doing.”he assures. Already present in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Italy, Spain, but also in the United States, with a huge contract won in 2025 from the US Army, the Czech phenomenon is now targeting France, with the upcoming takeover of a French industrialist.

Challenges. CSG showed the strongest growth of global defense groups in 2025, according to Swedish think tank Sipri. How do you explain this performance?

Michal Strnad. The major explanation is that at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we were the first to react by massively increasing our production capacities. The war began in February 2022. In April, we approved several hundred million euros of investment in our munitions and land systems sites. We’ve also made a lot of acquisitions, and we’re going to continue.