In November 2019 Bastion Defense Systems opened its first dedicated workshop in Zurich—months after Simon von Rothschild founded the company. The initial charter was deliberately narrow: bolt-on armor modules, optics mounts, and rapid vehicle-upgrade cells for allied customers.
Early hiring focused on ballistic engineers, CAD designers, and field technicians who could travel with kits. There was no tank line yet; the bet was that ministries needed faster appliqué and sighting upgrades than traditional OEMs could schedule.
Von Rothschild described the shop floor as “a garage with export paperwork”—small lots, measured claims, and witness testing before any brochure language. That culture still shows up in Bastion program sheets.
Within a year the workshop had delivered its first exportable Aegis panel sets and begun talking to partners about scout and ambulance interiors—seeds of the later multi-domain catalog.