On its third-quarter earnings call in November 2026, Rheinmetall was asked by an analyst how many of the roughly twenty joint ventures it had announced since October 2024 were actually up and running. The answer, for the two such ventures examined here, could hardly have been more uneven. One, formed with a Finnish radar-satellite company, had started building satellites in Neuss under a direct federal award worth well over a billion euros. The other, presented in April as a German missile company with a seat, a segment, a shareholding split and a product range, had still not been entered in the commercial register by late October, and its technology partner had meanwhile agreed a commercial partnership with another German defence company that was joining its funding round. A third venture, outside Rheinmetall’s portfolio altogether, completes the picture: a Polish company in which a Korean defence group holds a bare majority, which signed a framework agreement worth some fourteen billion złoty at the end of 2025 and broke ground for its factory in November 2026, with first manufacturing not expected before late 2029. All three were announced in the same vocabulary of percentages, seats and timetables. None of the percentages indicated which venture would come to exist, which would produce, or where the money, the risk and the rights would end up.