BELGRADE – Israeli Elbit Systems and Serbia’s main state-owned import-export company, SDPR, will co-own a drone factory that is going to be built in Serbia, with the Israeli partner having a majority stake of 51 per cent. This was revealed in a joint article by BIRN and Haaretz, published yesterday.
The factory was announced by the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, back in March, but he did not specify who would be the country’s partner in a joint venture.
According to official documents obtained by BIRN/Haaretz and two independent sources, Elbit and SDPR plan to produce two types of drones for short- and long-range missions.
“The partnership arguably takes defence ties between the two countries to a new level; the value of Serbian arms exports to Israel has already skyrocketed 42-fold since 2023, reaching 114 million euros last year. Most of those exports were carried out by SDPR”, the article says.
BIRN and Haaretz remind that, in a June 2025 report, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese named Elbit Systems among a number of companies profiting from “the ongoing genocide” in Gaza, where more than 70,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli military operations since the October 2023 attack on Israel by the militant group Hamas.
In March, The Jerusalem Post reported that Elbit Systems is now the biggest Israeli firm by market value listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. It has a string of major contracts with the Israeli state and has already done business with Serbia.
