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Romania’s OVES Enterprise Unveils Sahara AI-Enabled Cruise Missile for Long-Range Precision Strike.
On 17 February 2026, Cluj-Napoca-based OVES Enterprise unveiled the Sahara Autonomous System in Bucharest, marking Romania’s first privately developed cruise missile. The AI-enabled platform signals a shift in the country’s defense industrial base, with implications for NATO deterrence and regional long-range strike capability.
On 17 February 2026, Cluj-Napoca-based company OVES Enterprise publicly presented Sahara Autonomous System in Bucharest, the first cruise missile developed in the private sector in Romania. According to business daily Ziarul Financiar, the system marks a qualitative leap for the country’s emerging defence-industrial base, showcasing how a software company can move into complex weapon systems. In a regional context shaped by high-intensity war on NATO’s borders, a domestically engineered, AI-enabled cruise missile has clear relevance for deterrence, long-range precision strike and allied interoperability. The Sahara project resonates well beyond Romania’s borders as an example of how smaller allies can contribute niche, high-tech capabilities to the Euro-Atlantic ecosystem.
Romanian software firm OVES Enterprise has unveiled the Sahara Autonomous System, the country’s first privately developed, AI-enabled cruise missile, marking a notable step in its defense industrial evolution (Picture Source: Ziarul Financiar)
Announced in November 2025 and now in an advanced stage of development, Sahara Autonomous System is described by OVES as the result of several years of work in complex software, artificial intelligence and aerospace and defence projects. The company has deliberately approached the missile as a complete weapons system rather than a stand-alone airframe: guidance, mission software, electronics and flight-control architecture have been conceived together from the outset. For CEO Mihai Filip, the objective is to field a robust system aligned with international standards that demonstrates Romanian expertise in strategically sensitive domains and meets the technical expectations of allied customers and partners.
At the heart of the design is Nemesis AI, OVES Enterprise’s in-house artificial intelligence platform. In Sahara, Nemesis AI operates on-premise on the missile’s own processing infrastructure, allowing rapid configuration of mission-specific AI models, tailored flight profiles and operational parameters directly within the facilities that employ the system. Before launch, the weapon can be loaded with an AI model optimised for a particular target set or scenario; in flight, the onboard algorithms are able to adjust trajectory and reaction in real time, giving the missile a high degree of autonomy in contested airspace and in environments where satellite navigation may be degraded or intermittently unavailable.
From an airframe and propulsion standpoint, Sahara is a compact, turbojet-powered cruise missile optimised for low-observable flight profiles. The missile has an all-up mass of approximately 55 kg, including a 10 kg payload section, indicating a class suited to precision strike against high-value tactical targets rather than heavily hardened strategic infrastructure. The installed turbojet generates around 310 newtons of thrust, and with about 20 kg of fuel the current configuration is expected to deliver an operational radius on the order of 200 km. Design studies foresee follow-on variants in the medium-range band of roughly 500–600 km and a long-range configuration reaching approximately 900–1,100 km, which would place Sahara firmly in the family of deep-strike assets of interest to modern joint forces.
Survivability is built around a very low-level flight regime. Sahara is designed to cruise at about 50 metres above ground level, adapting its trajectory to the underlying terrain to reduce radar cross-section exposure and exploit masking from ground clutter, much like other modern land-attack cruise missiles. Apart from the turbojet engine and optical sensors, all major internal components, including fuselage, electronic boards, processing units, control systems and the computing infrastructure that hosts Nemesis AI, are developed by OVES on Romanian soil. This high level of local content gives Romania greater control over upgrades, software assurance and configuration management, and it supports secure supply chains for any future integration into national and allied force structures.
OVES has already invested more than one million euros in Sahara, with a further budget of around two million euros planned for optimisation and testing phases. The initial live demonstration is scheduled for May 2026, while a full presentation of the system’s capabilities is envisaged for the end of next year. In other words, the missile is transitioning from concept and initial prototyping toward flight validation and system-of-systems integration. For a private company founded in 2015 and rooted originally in software development, assuming this level of financial and technological risk illustrates the growing role of agile tech actors in Europe’s defence innovation landscape.
If it reaches maturity and enters service, Sahara could offer the Romanian Armed Forces a sovereign, AI-enabled long-range strike option that complements existing NATO capabilities on the eastern flank. Romania has been a member of NATO since 2004 and has consistently positioned itself as a front-line contributor to allied deterrence and defence, particularly in the Black Sea region. A domestically controlled cruise missile family, designed from the outset to align with alliance standards, would give Bucharest more flexibility in tailoring its strike doctrine, from counter-battery and interdiction missions to the suppression of critical enablers such as command posts, logistics hubs and air-defence nodes in a joint, multinational environment.
More broadly, Sahara fits into a wider pattern of Romanian efforts to revitalise its defence industry and expand its role in NATO’s industrial base. Recent initiatives include major ammunition and energetic-material investments, such as the new gunpowder plant developed with Rheinmetall, and naval modernisation plans aimed at reinforcing Black Sea presence. In this ecosystem, a locally engineered cruise missile, especially one leveraging modular AI and an indigenous electronic architecture, positions Romania not only as a consumer of Western capabilities, but as a potential supplier of niche systems, technology bricks and software-defined effects into allied programmes.
For OVES Enterprise, Sahara consolidates a trajectory that has moved from AI and cybersecurity solutions into aerospace and defence integration. The company’s choice to develop almost the entire internal architecture in-country creates an engineering school around complex guidance, navigation and control, real-time processing and safety-critical software. These are precisely the disciplines NATO wants its members to strengthen as it moves towards more distributed, autonomous and resilient force structures. In the medium term, such competencies can feed not only into the missile’s evolution, towards extended range, alternative payloads or new launch platforms, but also into unmanned systems, counter-UAS architectures and other networked effectors that allies are fielding at scale.
Sahara Autonomous System represents far more than a new Romanian hardware prototype: it is a signal that private industry in a frontline ally is ready to assume a share of the technological burden for long-range precision strike and AI-enabled weapons. Built around an indigenous digital architecture, a low-altitude cruise profile and a scalable range roadmap, the missile underlines Romania’s intention to act as a credible contributor to NATO’s deterrence posture in the Black Sea and along the Alliance’s eastern flank. If the upcoming 2026 demonstrations confirm its promised performance, Sahara will open a new chapter for Romania’s defence-industrial autonomy and for the integration of agile, software-driven cruise missiles within NATO’s future force structure.
Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.