Policy
11 Feb 2026
4 min read
Why we publish the list of countries we won’t sell to
A reconnaissance aircraft is only as trustworthy as the people flying it. So we say, in public, who those people will never be.
armed variants
0
checks before a sale
3
list review
Yearly
since Feb 2026
Public
Today we published the list of countries Vantrel will not sell to, and the criteria behind it. It lives on our website and will be reviewed every year by our board and an independent ethics adviser.
The criteria
We do not sell to governments under EU or Swiss arms embargoes, to states that have used surveillance technology against journalists or peaceful protesters in the last ten years, or to any buyer that will not accept our end-use terms. Those terms forbid arming the aircraft, modifying it to carry a payload, or passing it to a third party.
Why make it public
Most defence companies keep these decisions private. We think that makes it too easy to quietly change them. A public list gives our staff, our investors and our customers something fixed to hold us to.
“We build the eyes. Never the weapon. That sentence only means something if you can check it.”
— Lena Brunner, CEO
What it costs us
We have already turned down two enquiries that would have been worth more than our Series A. We expect to turn down more. We would rather be a smaller company that our own engineers are proud to work for.
