An American defence start-up with Israeli roots has conducted the first live-fire test of its low-cost, long-range cruise missile in Morocco.
The move is a sign of ever-deepening cooperation between Israel and the Arab states that signed the Abraham Accords in December 2020.
The Anthem cruise missile, developed by Covenant Industries, was fired from a temporary site in the desert near Tan-Tan in southern Morocco on August 6.
The launch exercise was carried out jointly by US Africa Command (Africom) and the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces.
Covenant is legally an American company, incorporated in the United States in 2024 and listed with a US headquarters address. Its capital and branding are US-based.
But its founder and CEO, Michael Kaufman, is a US and Israeli national who served in the IDF. The company has a registered subsidiary, Covenant Technologies Ltd, which is based in Tel Aviv, and much of the research and development is done in Israel.
Although the US Army's announcement avoided any mention of the Israeli connection, Covenant functions in practice as much as an Israeli entity as an American one.
The testing of the Anthem missile took place at the Africa Multi-domain Training and Experimentation Centre (AMTEC), a new joint US-Moroccan military testing and training hub that was formally established in July 2026.
Israel is not a part of AMTEC and no Israeli forces took part in the exercise, but the presence of an Israeli-linked firm testing a long-range strike system on Moroccan soil signals how the Accords are moving from diplomatic normalisation into concrete military-industrial cooperation.
Covenant has reportedly raised hundreds of millions of dollars from major Silicon Valley investors, including Founders Fund – founded by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an early Facebook investor – and Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture capital firms, managing over £70 billion of assets.
Until this summer, Covenant operated in near-total secrecy. It has only just emerged from stealth, it has no official public website, and its managers have largely avoided the press.
The company's pitch is that Anthem is a lower-cost, long-range strike weapon designed for eventual mass production, potentially offering an alternative to larger and more expensive systems such as the US-made Tomahawk cruise missile.
The US fired 850 Tomahawks – a quarter of its overall stocks – during the first weeks of Operation Epic Fury, the war against Iran that started on 28 February 2026, according to the Washington Post.
They are widely quoted as costing $3.6 million (about £2.8 million) each, compared with a reported price tag of “several hundred thousand dollars” for an Anthem missile.
Berlin has also taken a close interest in Covenant. In June 2026, Politico, the US-based political news organisation, reported that Germany's defence ministry was evaluating Anthem as part of a search for lower-cost, long-range strike alternatives to Tomahawk.
As part of its pitch to European governments, Covenant has discussed setting up production lines for Anthem in both Germany and the UK, allowing allies to build a long-range strike arsenal without depending entirely on the US.
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