Best of LinkedIn: Defense Tech CW 16/ 17

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frenus, based on the most relevant posts on LinkedIn about defense tech in CW-XVI and XVII.

00:00:08: Frenuse is a B to B market research company that supports ICT providers with a structured defense market entry framework designed to move them from European Defense Opportunity Landscape to qualified ministry conversations.

00:00:20: within six to eight weeks you can find more info

00:00:24: And welcome everyone to today's deep dive.

00:00:27: We have got a massive stack of curated analysis to cover today.

00:00:31: Yeah, we really do.

00:00:31: I mean just imagine rolling at ten million pound heavily armored tank onto A battlefield only to watch it get you know completely vaporized by a plastic drone that costs less than a used Honda Civic

00:00:43: Right?

00:00:43: It is just wild!

00:00:45: So today were breaking down the brutal new economics Of defense tech basically synthesizing The most critical insights professionals Were discussing across

00:00:56: And to extract the actual signal from all that noise for you.

00:00:59: Yes, we are organizing these insights into four core clusters.

00:01:02: sounds like a solid plan.

00:01:03: What's the lineup?

00:01:04: Well We'll look at the overarching strategic reframing of modern conflict.

00:01:08: then the evolution of drones is infrastructure.

00:01:11: The immediate reaction were seeing in counter UAS technology and finally the reality of funding and scaling these systems industrially.

00:01:19: Okay, let's unpack this.

00:01:20: Starting with that geopolitical and economic reframing.

00:01:23: there was a post by Glenn McCartan That really set the tone perfectly for this.

00:01:28: Oh yeah I saw that one spot on right.

00:01:30: he argued that Militaries don't actually have at technology invention problem Right now.

00:01:36: they haven't adoption problems.

00:01:37: like we have the capability to build these tools incredibly fast But actually fielding them across an entire military structure is completely different story.

00:01:46: Yeah The

00:01:46: gap Is the infamous Valley of Death between a working prototype and well actual battlefield deployment.

00:01:53: By design, peacetime defense organizations are just optimized for caution

00:01:57: Which makes sense normally right?

00:01:59: I mean sure.

00:02:00: they're built around strict regulatory frameworks keeping up massive legacy systems And this absolute requirement to prove reliability over years of testing.

00:02:09: But in an active conflict the best system is rarely The most advanced one on paper.

00:02:15: it's the when you can actually get your hands-on exactly.

00:02:17: It's the one that can be purchased, learned by an eighteen-year old operator and deployed at scale within just a few weeks.

00:02:23: Which brings us to The Math of Modern Warfare.

00:02:26: And right now That math is completely broken.

00:02:29: James Lawson & Al Cameron shared some really stark numbers regarding what they call the status quo bias in defense procurement?

00:02:36: The reliance on legacy armor?

00:02:38: Yeah We're still leaning so heavily On it.

00:02:40: But operationally A fifty thousand pound strike drone Can reliably track and destroy ten million pound tank.

00:02:47: Whether that's a Challenger III or a Leopard II, it doesn't matter.

00:02:50: The

00:02:50: asymmetry there is just structural.

00:02:53: you are looking at a cost ratio of over two hundred to one.

00:02:56: favoring the offense right

00:02:57: completely favoring this

00:02:59: relying solely on legacy armor in that environment Is like bringing a solid gold sword to modern gunfight?

00:03:07: Yes beautifully crafted multi-million dollar heirloom with an incredible pedigree, but it's going to be rendered entirely useless the second.

00:03:14: It hits them on its just a massive glittering liability.

00:03:18: That's a great way to put it and militaries are finally starting to react to this reality.

00:03:22: Thankfully Matthew Van Wagner noted that Estonia actually halted a planned expansion of new armored vehicles.

00:03:29: really just stopped at

00:03:30: yeah.

00:03:31: Instead they're simply upgrading their existing CV ninety fleet.

00:03:35: That's a direct pragmatic recalibration to a sensor-rich drone heavy battlefield.

00:03:40: If we connect this the bigger picture, looking at it strictly through lens of supply chain mechanics setting aside surrounding politics.

00:03:47: for second Hans Petter Mitton and Dr.

00:03:49: Moritz Brake shared some really eye opening data

00:03:52: about the munitions drain.

00:03:53: Yes,

00:03:54: their data exposes a massive vulnerability for Europe and Ukraine.

00:03:57: it shows that the ongoing US-Iran conflict is rapidly draining the exact precision weapons stockpiles that Allied forces rely on.

00:04:05: The consumption rates are staggering.

00:04:07: just from the reporting they shared over eight hundred Patriot Passy III missiles were fired in just a few days of intercepts.

00:04:13: Wow

00:04:14: To put that into context to you That's more than Ukraine has received in total since

00:04:19: And we saw over a thousand JASS-MER long range cruise missiles expended.

00:04:25: Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin's current production capacity hovers around what?

00:04:29: Three hundred ninety six a year?

00:04:31: that math just doesn't work.

00:04:32: it doesn't mechanically.

00:04:34: neither the US nor the European Defense Industrial Base is scaled for this level of sustained consumption.

00:04:40: building a cruise missile isn't like stamping out artillery shells.

00:04:43: It requires highly specialized raw materials and microelectronics.

00:04:48: Restocking takes years.

00:04:49: Okay, but I have to push back on the logic of what we are doing about those raw materials.

00:04:53: though

00:04:54: What do you mean?

00:04:54: Well if We're so hyper aware Of our supply chain vulnerabilities and we know Our munitions take Years To Replace Why Are We Making Unforced Errors?

00:05:03: Dr.. Jenna Singer Highlighted a truly baffling situation where Germany is planning to sell A critical tungsten mine to an Asian financial investor.

00:05:10: oh wow

00:05:11: yeah that's a problem

00:05:12: Right.

00:05:13: Tungsten is the fundamental choke point for weapons manufacturing, aerospace and semiconductors.

00:05:18: How does a decision like that even happen?

00:05:20: It happens because bureaucratic silos operate independently of strategic reality.

00:05:26: The department handling foreign investment isn't necessarily factoring in the Ministry Of Defense's munitions crisis.

00:05:32: Talk about disconnect.

00:05:34: Exactly.

00:05:35: Singer points this out as profound contradiction.

00:05:38: You cannot continuously preach the necessity of strategic autonomy while simultaneously selling off the raw materials required to actually achieve it.

00:05:46: Yeah, The legacy habits of peacetime globalized trade just haven't caught up.

00:05:50: So if the traditional systems-the ten million dollar tanks and the vulnerable supply chains are failing the economic test of modern warfare Then natural shift is toward those fifty thousand dollars systems driving that change.

00:06:01: Which brings us to our second cluster drones, and autonomous systems.

00:06:06: But the community's understanding of what a drone actually is has matured significantly over the past couple weeks?

00:06:12: Definitely.

00:06:13: Eva Solis shared a framework that fundamentally changes how we should look at this.

00:06:17: She argues that looking at recent conflicts And concluding That We Just Need To Buy More Drones Is The Wrong Lesson.

00:06:23: Entirely

00:06:24: It's not just about numbers.

00:06:26: No because drones are not platforms They Are Infrastructure.

00:06:30: The physical drone itself isn't the defining capability.

00:06:43: or operational picture, it doesn't change the game.

00:07:02: To see what happens when you actually build the right architecture look at the update from Makhailov Fedorov on Ukraine's E-points system.

00:07:10: The scale of that is unbelievable

00:07:12: It really is.

00:07:13: Yeah This system delivered over a hundred and eighty one thousand units including drones an EW tools directly to front line.

00:07:20: in twenty twenty six alone Units order what they need dynamically

00:07:24: Kind like Amazon for the front lines

00:07:26: pretty much.

00:07:27: But the truly crucial detail is the back end data architecture, every engagement requires video confirmation.

00:07:35: this means they aren't just dropping munitions there generating a massive uniquely verified dataset of combat video

00:07:41: which has pure gold for machine learning.

00:07:43: right.

00:07:44: that data feeds straight into their Delta network to train computer vision and AI models.

00:07:48: it's an unprecedented feedback loop.

00:07:50: The weapon acts as a sensor, the sensor trains the AI and the AI makes the next weapon more lethal.

00:07:56: But creating that loop requires very specific approach to software.

00:07:59: Which brings up Florian Seibel's point?

00:08:01: Yes!

00:08:02: Florians Seibel pointed out that the software for Europe's unmanned systems must be modular by design because if you build software only works on one specific hardware stack... You create vendor lock-in

00:08:12: And vendor lock in fundamentally kills speed of innovation.

00:08:17: Nima Zakami highlighted a startup called Drone Forge that is actively combating this with their Nimbus Box.

00:08:24: This was such cool concept!

00:08:26: Yeah, it solves massive mechanical hurdle instead of drone streaming high bandwidth video all the way back to command center for analysis which introduces latency and highly susceptible EWA jamming the nimbus box pushes the compute to the edge.

00:08:42: So it's processing right there in the field?

00:08:43: Exactly!

00:08:44: It allows drone swarms, to process computer vision locally on cheap off-the-shelf laptops sending only tiny data packets of real time commands back into drones.

00:08:53: Pushing the Compute To The Edge solves latency and jamming problems brilliantly but introduces a massive compliance hurdle when you try scale.

00:09:02: Adrian Banks provided a pretty harsh reality check regarding beyond visual line of sight or BVLOS operations.

00:09:08: The regulatory side of things, always the headache.

00:09:11: Always hitting higher sale levels which is the safety framework for autonomous flight isn't just a matter of proving the software works today.

00:09:18: it requires rigorous aerospace grade Airworthiness design standards.

00:09:23: Which startups usually don't have?

00:09:25: Right,

00:09:26: most commercial drone start-ups build fast and break things.

00:09:29: they Don't have the years of documentation required to prove To aviation regulators that their AI won't cause a catastrophic accident in shared airspace.

00:09:38: So while the technology is iterating at software speed The regulatory frameworks are still anchored in traditional aviation safety standards.

00:09:46: It creates a fascinating tension!

00:09:48: it does, and if autonomous mass is now the baseline offensive infrastructure... ...it forces a terrifying math problem for the defense How do you destroy an entire offensive infrastructure without bankrupting your own country with three million-dollar interceptor missiles?

00:10:03: Which takes us right into our third theme Counter UAS & Air Defense Evolution.

00:10:08: Because shooting a Patriot missile at a Shahid drone is exactly the kind of bad math we cannot sustain.

00:10:13: Definitely not.

00:10:14: François Labouche summarized The Mechanical solution to this as layered defense, you design an ecosystem that absorbs high volume attacks with equally low cost effectors.

00:10:27: So dealing with mass by using mass?

00:10:29: Exactly,

00:10:30: you use machine guns or AI guided interceptor drones like the Bagnit Quadcopter using Altairi's guidance system to basically take out the trash.

00:10:38: then you preserve your expensive surface-to-air missiles purely for the high value targets that actually warrant them

00:10:45: and electronic warfare is becoming a primary layer in this defense too.

00:10:49: Pascal Am reported on the effectiveness of Ukraine's Lema-Quant EW system.

00:10:53: That is one that spoofs signals,

00:10:55: right?

00:10:55: It is reportedly intercepting up to ninety six percent incoming KAB glide bombs and Shahid drones.

00:11:01: Mechanically it doesn't destroy threat, kinetically its spoof.

00:11:04: their satellite navigation

00:11:05: Just feeds them bad data Yes!

00:11:07: It feeds drone false GPS coordinates forcing it fly harmlessly off course until runs out fuel At about one point two million dollars per unit.

00:11:16: it is infinitely more scalable than firing a physical missile for every single incoming threat.

00:11:21: Here's where gets really interesting though, its not just about jamming known radio frequencies anymore.

00:11:28: drones are increasingly programmed to frequency hop or operate in complete radio silence

00:11:33: which means traditional EW starts.

00:11:38: Angus Bean and Mike Schott posted about Drone Shield's massive Q-One.

00:11:42: twenty, twenty six results showing over seventy four million dollars in revenue.

00:11:47: The reason they are seeing that kind of demand is their AI tackles the problem differently.

00:11:54: It doesn't just scan for an RF signature.

00:11:56: It interprets kinematic behavior, it analyzes flight patterns and movement anomalies in congested airspace...it's the difference between looking at a specific license plate versus looking for car driving erratically…they call that speed of

00:12:09: insight.".

00:12:09: That is brilliant!

00:12:10: And the traditional defense primes see this shift and are scaling massive capital to absorb these capabilities?

00:12:15: Yeah

00:12:15: they aren't sitting still

00:12:16: Not at all.

00:12:17: Daniel Mutan and Stephanie Seahill both discussed Lockheed Martin Ventures expanding into one billion dollar fund A billion.

00:12:24: Wow!

00:12:25: Yeah, a prime example of this strategy is their twenty-five million dollar investment into Fordham Technologies.

00:12:31: Fordham builds low cost AI driven kinetic drone interceptors.

00:12:36: Lockheed's embedding that startup capability directly in to the sanctum ecosystem.

00:12:41: So pairing the cheap interceptor with there massive radar network?

00:12:44: Exactly

00:12:44: creating an instantaneous kill chain.

00:12:46: We are also seeing primes radically adapt their legacy platforms to fit this layered defense model.

00:12:52: Joseph Rank highlighted Lockheed's Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, or JAGM.

00:12:57: By developing a vertically launched variant they eliminate the need for forward firing art.

00:13:01: Meaning that it can fire from anywhere?

00:13:03: Right!

00:13:03: Mechanically you can pack these low cost counter UAS interceptors into highly confined spaces like deck of small ship and back of tactical ground vehicle giving mobile units their own air defense bubble.

00:13:16: And Daniel Morado Perez shared another fascinating adaptation of Legacy Mass, focusing on the Airbus A-Fourhundred M. Airbus is developing a variant in this heavy transport aircraft that uses palletized payloads and cargo hold.

00:13:29: Wait

00:13:29: like dropping them at back?

00:13:30: Yes!

00:13:31: Effectively, they are turning a cargo plane into flying mothership capable of launching up to twelve tourist cruise missiles or fifty drones.

00:13:40: Okay I hear you on the palletized drops but let's be realistic for a second.

00:13:44: isn't that just shifting the vulnerability?

00:13:46: Instead of losing a tank You now risk loosing massive slow moving transport aircraft full highly trained crew and expensive drones.

00:13:54: The Second an enemy gets radar lock.

00:13:57: Well That would true if it flew in disputed airspace.

00:14:00: But that is the mechanical genius of standoff capability.

00:14:03: They pull the pallets out-the-back ramp with a parachute hundreds of miles away from threat ring.

00:14:08: Ah,

00:14:08: so they never get close?

00:14:09: Exactly!

00:14:10: The munitions drop, ignite midair and fly themselves into contested zone.

00:14:15: It preserves massive range in fuel efficiency at transport aircraft while providing sudden firepower for specialized attack formation

00:14:22: without risking the mothership.

00:14:23: That's a brilliant workaround, but you know none of this incredible tech.

00:14:26: whether it is AI interceptors edge compute algorithms or A-Four Hundred M mother ships... None of that matters if the innovators building can't navigate the funding ecosystem to reach scale.

00:14:36: which brings us our final theme bridging gap between industrial base and procurement.

00:14:42: Yeah, this is the invisible machinery that actually dictates who wins.

00:14:46: Stephen Sawyer's and Nicholas Wallace broke down the European funding maze.

00:14:50: they outlined The European Defense Fund for R&D UDIs For Startups an E to P for scaling up.

00:14:56: So the capital was there?

00:14:57: It

00:14:57: IS!

00:14:57: But Sawyer has pointed out a structural flaw known as the double gate problem...the Double Gate is what crushes small-and medium enterprises.

00:15:06: It's not enough for a startup to just be eligible for EDA funding based on having great tech.

00:15:12: You also need the National Ministry of Defense to formally sponsor you,

00:15:15: which is huge barrier.

00:15:16: Huge!

00:15:17: You cannot self-nominate.

00:15:18: so if your are a nimble start up with an idea that a natty hasn't explicitly asked yet?

00:15:24: You simply stall out waiting for bureaucratic champion.

00:15:27: This raises important question about our cultural differences in acquisition frameworks.

00:15:32: Belka Iconin contrasted this European approach with the US Defense Innovation Unit, or DIU.

00:15:38: They do things very differently right?

00:15:39: Very!

00:15:40: The DIU uses commercial solutions openings instead of publishing a massive predefined specification sheet that only legacy primes have lawyers to navigate...the DIU just publishes a problem

00:15:52: like a bounty.

00:15:53: basically they say we need away to stop boat swarms and commercial companies pitch their existing solution.

00:16:01: It completely bypasses the restrictive technical requirements that lock out agile innovators.

00:16:06: Compare that to The Friction in Europe, Alex Mathar noted.

00:16:10: a country like Denmark has absolutely incredible world-leading capabilities in robotics and autonomy Like technology is already there but they lack institutional ecosystem.

00:16:20: hand over from commercial innovators to military producers.

00:16:24: The ideas just die on transition

00:16:26: Exactly because procurement architecture isn't built to absorb them.

00:16:30: Catherine Wolfe offered a necessary reality check on this dynamic, though.

00:16:34: She noted that the defense industrial base must stop expecting the government to front one hundred percent of the cost for research and development.

00:16:41: Private capital needs to step up

00:16:43: right?

00:16:43: To stay relevant and move at the speed of the modern battlefield companies need to leverage their own commercial ideas and put their own private capital at risk rather than just waiting around for a rigid government contract

00:16:55: And the capital shifting into this space to support that kind of industrial scaling is monumental.

00:17:00: Gaspar Tardi and Luca Leone reported that Europe's twenty-twenty five defense spend has hit three hundred eighty one billion euros, with Germany alone accounting for a hundred six point nine billion.

00:17:11: those numbers are staggering.

00:17:12: we're looking at the largest sustained rearmament cycle since the Cold War.

00:17:17: The question is no longer whether Europe will spend money or whether they'll spend it smartly on scalable modular tech more solid gold F-One cars.

00:17:28: To actually absorb that demand and turn it into operational reality, you need a fusion of agility in massive industrial depth.

00:17:35: Mikhail Kokorich posted the perfect example this.

00:17:37: Ryan Medall & Destinus forming joint venture to build tactical missiles.

00:17:41: Startups and primes working together?

00:17:43: Exactly!

00:17:44: Destinous is start up bringing high speed propulsion.

00:17:47: an advanced drone tech.

00:17:49: Rheinmetall brings the regulatory qualification strength, testing ranges and true industrial manufacturing scale required in Germany.

00:17:57: It's an essential marriage of start-up innovation with prime production capacity.

00:18:01: We've covered incredible ground today.

00:18:03: I mean we started by changing economics to a fifty thousand pound drone neutralizing tank moved through the necessity edge compute and AI countermeasures finished with massive restructuring European capital procurement.

00:18:17: Synthesizing all of these threads really brings me to an insight shared by Lukasz Drakowski.

00:18:22: He summarized the modern reality, stating that victory and conflicts today no longer belong to the side with most exquisite expensive

00:18:29: platform.

00:18:30: It belongs to one who can build fastest?

00:18:32: Yes!

00:18:33: He called it having command-of-the reload.

00:18:36: Success is entirely defined by speed iteration rapid adoption scaled production.

00:18:41: The factory itself has become primary weapon system.

00:18:44: So what does this mean?

00:18:45: We began this deep dive discussing how the status quo of warfare is broken, and we've explored the incredible technologies racing to replace it.

00:18:53: But Elka Schwartz posed a philosophical thought that naturally emerges from.

00:18:59: It's

00:19:00: a tough question to sit with.

00:19:02: As we rapidly accelerate our adoption of AI, edge compute and autonomous tech to achieve ultimate efficiency in lethality are we inadvertently normalizing the large-scale application of lethal force as core defense ideology?

00:19:16: By focusing so heavily on optimizing the automation of violence do risk making warfare more ubiquitous?

00:19:22: The sobering but really vital lens through which to view incredible pace at this technological evolution The tension between necessary deterrence and the normalization of automated war is something anyone building

00:19:51: or buying.