On 2 April 2026 KNDS France completed the acquisition of Texelis’s defence business, the supplier of the mobility platform for the French Army’s Serval vehicle, in a transaction that from its announcement in January 2025 required Texelis to be split into separate defence and transport companies. A defence carve-out of this kind changes ownership faster than it changes the machinery of production. A business can have a new shareholder, legal entity and management while still depending on its former group for procurement records, engineering data, enterprise software, supplier interfaces, quality processes, technical licences, guarantees, specialist personnel and customer support. Those dependencies are not necessarily defects: some can be deliberately retained under supply agreements or transitional services. The relevant question for European defence is therefore not whether a separated activity has become self-contained, but whether the new owner has effective authority over the functions required to manufacture, release, deliver and support the product, and whether any dependencies that remain are enforceable, replaceable and compatible with continuity of output. That question is answered not at legal completion but in the operating systems, rights and people behind it.