Global Defence ETF (ARMR) — Review & Analysis

ARMR is BetaShares' answer to the global defence theme, with AUM of $256.61 million as at May 2026 and a 0.55% p.a. management fee — 10bp cheaper than DFND and 5bp above DTEC. The fund listed on 4 October 2024, just three weeks after DFND, and the two went head-to-head competing for the early flows into the ASX defence theme. ARMR's portfolio is concentrated — the top 10 holdings make up 66.7% of assets, much more concentrated than DFND. Compare ARMR across the full defence cohort on our defence and aerospace ETF page.

The composition tells the most useful story when comparing ARMR to its peers. ARMR's top 5 holdings are all US defence primes — Lockheed Martin (9.7%), Northrop Grumman (8.2%), Raytheon (8.0%), Safran (7.2%, French), General Dynamics (7.2%) — a much more traditional Western-defence-prime tilt than DFND, which spreads heavily into Korean, Italian, Swedish and Israeli companies. ARMR captures the institutional defence-incumbent thesis: large prime contractors with multi-decade government supply relationships, deep moats, and long-cycle revenue visibility.

ARMR sits at 85.3% Aerospace & Defence with the remainder in application software (Palantir at 5.6% being the main name), research and consulting services, and a small slice of construction and transport machinery (Rheinmetall sits in this classification). The thesis is straightforward: NATO defence budgets are rising structurally, replenishment cycles are accelerating after Ukraine-related drawdowns, and US primes are the dominant suppliers in those procurement chains. Lockheed Martin's F-35 program, Northrop's B-21, and Raytheon's missile portfolios all sit at the heart of that build-out.

The 0.55% p.a. fee makes ARMR the middle option on cost — meaningfully cheaper than DFND's 0.65% but 5bp above DTEC's 0.50%. For investors who specifically want concentrated US-prime defence exposure rather than the broader geographic spread DFND offers, ARMR is the cleaner expression. The fund is unhedged. Our best ETFs in Australia 2026 guide ranks thematic options alongside core funds and covers where defence has sat in the leaderboard during the post-Ukraine rerating.