Best of LinkedIn: Defense Tech CW 28/ 29

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about DefenseTech from CW-Twenty-Eight in Twenty-Nine.

00:00:08: Frenness is a B to B market research company that supports ICT providers with a structured defense market entry framework designed.

00:00:22: All right,

00:00:23: let's jump right in.

00:00:24: Yeah So today we are doing a deep dive into the top defense tech trends that are really dominating The conversation across LinkedIn right now.

00:00:32: and to kick things off I want you just pictured this scenario because it is playing out In real time.

00:00:38: Oh absolutely

00:00:39: so.

00:00:39: A military radar picks up an incoming drone Right?

00:00:42: And It Is Just This Basic Propeller Driven Attacker Like Built With Parts.

00:00:46: You Could Probably Just Source Online Basically

00:00:48: Hobbyist Parts.

00:00:49: yeah

00:00:49: Exactly Costing Maybe I don't know.

00:00:51: fifty Thousand Dollars Max.

00:00:53: And to stop it, the Defender fires this highly sophisticated interceptor missile.

00:00:59: The missile does its job beautifully and destroys the drone.

00:01:02: but that single missile costs a million dollars and the adversary.

00:01:05: They just launched forty more of those cheap drones!

00:01:08: Yeah, I mean it is an economic death spiral.

00:01:11: you are literally watching a highly advanced military run out of expensive ammunition long before the enemy runs out of cheap attackers.

00:01:19: It's

00:01:19: terrifying when you actually do the math...it

00:01:21: really is.

00:01:22: And that specific broken math equation Is at the very core Of what we're unpacking today.

00:01:28: We are looking at the defense tech landscape pulling from some of most critical updates across The digital transformation sector and What is abundantly clear?

00:01:39: From the sources.

00:01:40: Is that Defense Tech has completely exited That phase of you know small-scale experimental height.

00:01:46: yeah, the pilot purgatory phases over.

00:01:47: we're tracking this massive pivot toward heavy industrial scaling.

00:01:51: You know we were seeing the infusion of venture capital moving as software speeds And honestly Brutal operational realities are deploying thousands of autonomous systems out in the field.

00:02:01: Definitely, and I think the best place to start is The Capital right?

00:02:04: Because this sheer velocity or money flowing into space is wild.

00:02:07: Oh it's staggering!

00:02:09: For anyone who was used to the typical defense procurement cycle Which you know historically took like a decade just finalize as basic design.

00:02:17: What is happening now looks more like consumer software build.

00:02:20: It really does.

00:02:21: Sib Johnson posted this perfect example of this, so there's this German drone startup called Stark.

00:02:27: They just raised five hundred million euros and that is at a three point two billion Euro valuation.

00:02:34: Wow Yeah.

00:02:35: And that massive raise happened Just months after they initially hit unicorn status.

00:02:41: We were talking about hardware here like physical motors sensors metal compounding value with the dizzying speed Of Like A Silicon Valley social media app.

00:02:50: The speed is jarring, I mean it really does.

00:02:52: But there's a distinct catalyst behind this maturity.

00:02:54: Jeanette Zufersenberg actually recently pointed us out she was looking at Helsing which as the defense artificial intelligence company.

00:03:00: Oh right they just had massive round too

00:03:02: Huge!

00:03:03: They just secured a one point eight billion dollar raise Which pushed their valuation to eighteen billion.

00:03:11: And she observed this fundamental shift in how governments are behaving now because for years defense tech startups basically just survived on pilot programs.

00:03:20: Right,

00:03:21: or those non-binding letters of intent

00:03:23: Exactly which are essentially government IOUs that say you know we like this but We aren't actually committing to buy it.

00:03:29: Yeah

00:03:29: But now governments are rating actual programs Of record.

00:03:33: they're committing the long term funding To Buy and deploy these systems at scale.

00:03:38: The demand signal is Actually real.

00:03:40: Now

00:03:40: It Is Real.

00:03:40: Yet The demand signal is no longer theoretical.

00:03:43: Defense tech has finally been normalized as a core, reliable asset class.

00:03:48: Okay but wait let's challenge that prevailing narrative here for just a second.

00:03:51: Let's do it

00:03:52: Because if you read the headlines It sounds like venture capitalists suddenly decided to mint a bunch of defense unicorns overnight by writing these massive blank checks.

00:04:00: Right!

00:04:01: Like they just woke up and decided to fund defense

00:04:04: Exactly.

00:04:05: But if you look at the actual trajectory of the heavy hitters in this space, that is largely a myth.

00:04:10: Chris and Cooper put out his great analysis debunking this... None of those companies started their journeys with massive VC mega rounds.

00:04:28: No, they absolutely didn't.

00:04:30: They had to survive the valley-of-death in defense procurement first

00:04:33: exactly.

00:04:34: they bootstrap Their early growth through specific government innovation vehicles like.

00:04:40: they relied heavily on SBR a small business Innovation Research Program along With contracts from DIU the Defense Innovation Unit and AFWORKS.

00:04:49: Which is the Air Force's innovation arm, right?

00:04:51: Right!

00:04:52: So these companies essentially used government grants in small-scale testing contracts to fund their R&D.

00:04:58: They proved that military tech solved a real problem And they proved that the military actually wanted buy it long before institutional capital felt safe enough.

00:05:07: And that sequence is basically the defining investment thesis of modern defense tech now.

00:05:12: Like you have to prove government traction before the massive institutional money flows, but once that traction is clear The capital structure scales so rapidly.

00:05:22: we are seeing European institutional money dedicate itself entirely To dual use and defense Tech Now.

00:05:28: Michelle Matei highlighted That Lakestar recently closed its resilience high fund at over two hundred and sixty-two million euros.

00:05:36: Wow, just dedicated to defense.

00:05:38: Exclusively!

00:05:39: It represents Europe's largest venture fund completely dedicated to this space.

00:05:43: so the capital ecosystem is finally mature enough to support the hardware ecosystem.

00:05:47: But

00:05:47: this brings us right back to that broken math equation.

00:05:49: we started The Deep Dive With Ah...the

00:05:51: million dollar missile.

00:05:52: Yes

00:05:53: Because billions of dollars don't just flood into a market because tech is cool Right?

00:05:58: Capital flows toward massive structural inefficiencies.

00:06:02: and right now the most glaring inefficiency on The modern battlefield is the economics of counter drone warfare.

00:06:09: Oh, without a doubt David Graf outlined this perfectly when he was looking at Adler Aerospace.

00:06:15: militaries Right Now are just relying On legacy air defense architectures to fight Modern asymmetric threats

00:06:22: which Just doesn't work

00:06:23: it Doesn't.

00:06:24: When you use a million-dollar Patriot missile to shoot down a fifty thousand dollar Shahid drone, You have already lost the economic war even if you win the tactical engagement.

00:06:34: Yeah...you will just empty your national treasury trying to keep the skies clear!

00:06:37: Exactly and Adler Aerospace was built specifically to fix this exact disparity.

00:06:43: In just two and a half years, they developed the Talos J Jet Interceptor.

00:06:48: It boasts at two hundred kilometer range And it can reach a target one hundred fifty kilometers away in twelve minutes

00:06:55: which is incredible speed?

00:06:56: It Is!

00:06:57: And most importantly... ...it does this at fraction of cost of traditional interceptor missile.

00:07:01: So the strategy's really shifting from building thicker shield to manufacturing much cheaper bullet.

00:07:08: Basically yeah

00:07:09: Aviv Barzohar noted that Nero technologies taking very similar approach.

00:07:13: They're focusing on low-cost autonomous interceptor drones.

00:07:19: It is just an economic battle of mass versus mass at this point, right?

00:07:23: You have cheap attackers swarming in and they are met by affordable mass produced interceptors going out.

00:07:29: And the legacy defense primes are recognizing this existential threat to their business models too There moving a speed that was frankly unthinkable.

00:07:39: Just a few years ago Luke Leone shared this update on Airbus.

00:07:43: Oh, the bird of prey thing?

00:07:44: Yeah!

00:07:45: They took their Bird-of-Pray Autonomous Counterdrone System from a mere concept onto whiteboard to physical demonstration flight in nine months.

00:07:53: Nine months for an aerospace

00:07:54: prime?!

00:07:54: That is

00:07:55: insane!!

00:07:55: Right!!!

00:07:56: For massive traditional aerospace contractor like Airbus... A nine month development cycle is practically light speed.

00:08:02: It just shows how panicked it's about drone threat.

00:08:06: But, you know adapting legacy systems is really only part of the solution here.

00:08:09: Some companies are starting with a completely blank slate.

00:08:11: Oh definitely Pascal

00:08:13: M highlighted an Israeli startup called Scappian that just emerged from stealth With thirty six million dollars in seed funding.

00:08:21: They aren't trying to modify and old missile system.

00:08:23: they're building A native AI counter swarm System From The Ground Up Because

00:08:27: a Swarm Is A Totally Different Beast.

00:08:29: Exactly Defending Against This Warm Isn'T Just About Shooting Down One Drone.

00:08:33: It'S about Network Level Computing.

00:08:35: You need a system that can track, prioritize and neutralize dozens of incoming targets simultaneously.

00:08:42: That is the only way to drive the cost-per-repell drone down to a sustainable

00:08:46: level.".

00:08:46: And the sheer scale of this problem is exactly why Angus Bean noted that NATO has committed more than forty billion dollars to counter drone capabilities over next five years alone.

00:08:56: It has a massive signal.

00:08:58: Huge!

00:08:59: They're even establishing dedicated counter drone marketplace to fast track these acquisitions.

00:09:04: The problem is so vast that it literally requires multinational funding structures to address.

00:09:09: Yeah, it really does.

00:09:11: And hey quick side note If you are finding this insight into digital transformation and tech scaling valuable Make sure hit subscribe So don't miss future deep dives.

00:09:19: Definitely Subscribe Because we are really just scratching the surface of how hardware and software are colliding here.

00:09:25: Yeah, because building cheap interceptors in autonomous drones is only step one.

00:09:30: The moment you move from laboratory to real world You hit this massive wall of logistical reality.

00:09:37: Deploying tens of thousands of autonomous systems into the wild is an absolute nightmare.

00:09:41: It really it's the least glamorous and honestly, the most critical part of the conversation.

00:09:47: Coley Richard William brought up Project Beehive recently.

00:09:50: that was a demonstration where The Royal Navy successfully air-dropped Krakens k three scout which has autonomous surface vessel out at back of A four hundred m transport plane.

00:10:01: Wow so they just dropped a robot boat on a plane.

00:10:03: Yeah its incredible visual.

00:10:05: And the drone itself might cost somewhere between Two hundred and fifty to six hundred thousand pounds.

00:10:11: Which, in defense terms is practically a rounding error?

00:10:14: Right but William's core point Is that you aren't just buying the physical boat.

00:10:18: You are buying an entire ecosystem.

00:10:21: To make that drone functional... ...you need the strategic airlift to fly it there!

00:10:26: You need highly specialized parachute systems to drop It..You need dedicated satellite communications encrypted networks And constant software support to actually control The

00:10:37: thing.

00:10:38: So if a government only budgets for the cost of hardware, they are in for a rude awakening.

00:10:43: Exactly!

00:10:44: They're ignoring massive hidden icebergs of capability costs required to actually operate it.

00:10:51: And especially when you talk about ocean... The Ocean is just unforgiving.

00:10:54: Oh

00:10:55: brutal.

00:10:55: Austin Gray and Robert DeMond had this fascinating exchange that completely punctured the whole autonomy hype balloon.

00:11:02: we throw word unmanned around and all assume no humans require.

00:11:06: Right

00:11:06: like

00:11:06: magic.

00:11:08: But unmanned surface vessels, or USVs — they are still physical machines sitting in saltwater.

00:11:14: They suffer from rapid corrosion.

00:11:16: Barnacles and sea growth foul up their sensors and their hulls... ...they have mechanical engines that need oil changed!

00:11:23: You can't just deploy a fleet of USV's into the Pacific….

00:11:26: …and expect them to operate indefinitely without physical maintenance?

00:11:29: No—the environment degrades hardware way faster than software can compensate for it.

00:11:34: Exactly Yeah, which led to this brilliant concept from Robert Dumont.

00:11:38: He compared these massive fleets of unmanned surface vessels to flocks of sheep.

00:11:43: Okay I like that analogy

00:11:44: yeah and if you have a flock You need a shepherd.

00:11:46: he proposed using the independence variant literal combat ship Which is a fast highly maneuverable Navy vessel design for near shore operations as a repair Shepherd?

00:11:56: That is fascinating

00:11:58: right?

00:11:58: These ships have massive modular interior cargo bays.

00:12:03: You could load those bays with tailored shipping containers full of diagnostic tools, replacement parts and crucially human repair teams.

00:12:11: So the Shepard ship would sail alongside the flock of drones pull them in for maintenance And send them back out because at the end of day unmanned systems still require Human hands to fix them.

00:12:21: And honestly that reliance on humans is The single greatest vulnerability In this entire technological shift.

00:12:27: How so?

00:12:28: Well, Amika highlighted a statistic that should honestly stop every tech optimist in their tracks.

00:12:34: The Pentagon is currently planning to acquire two hundred thousand lethal drones by twenty-twenty seven.

00:12:38: Okay

00:12:39: Two hundred thousand.

00:12:40: But look at the data coming out of Ukraine right now.

00:12:43: They successfully contracted two point three million drones.

00:12:46: However they only have twenty thousand trained operators To fly them.

00:12:49: Wow so That Is A Ratio Of Over One Hundred Drones For Every Single Trained Pilot.

00:12:54: It is a hard operational wall.

00:12:56: Instructors on the ground are very clear about this too, training a proficient drain pilot takes six to twelve months...

00:13:03: it's not like playing a video game!

00:13:05: Not at all.

00:13:05: and MAKA pointed out a brutal reality here.

00:13:08: If an adversary strikes a drone manufacturing facility, the machinery can be replaced and factory back online in weeks.

00:13:17: But when a Drone Training Academy was struck in Ukraine resulting in loss of sixty-five cadets instructors that capability is permanently destroyed.

00:13:26: you cannot replace human expertise on assembly line if we don't factor into human scaling bottleneck.

00:13:33: buying

00:13:33: millions machines entirely pointless.

00:13:36: That's chilling.

00:13:38: So the obvious question that is how do you fix?

00:13:39: That ratio?

00:13:41: How, do.

00:13:41: You take The mundane repetitive tasks off the humans plate so they can focus purely on the mission right

00:13:46: automation of the logistics

00:13:48: exactly matte bags post shed light On a specific technology.

00:13:52: trying to solve this Valinar dispatch recently won a DIU selection to provide modular charging nodes for drones, because right now if the military unit wants persistent drone overwatch for twelve hours.

00:14:03: A human operator is physically catching the drone swapping out of battery every forty minutes and launching it back into the sky.

00:14:09: Sounds

00:14:09: exhausting!

00:14:10: It's exhausting manual labor.

00:14:12: but Valinar solution.

00:14:14: in this infrastructure layer they make charging nodes that can be bolted onto an unmanned ground vehicle or attached to a convoy, so the drones can launch fly their sortie return to the node and autonomously recharge without a human ever needing to intervene.

00:14:29: Oh that's clever!

00:14:30: You are fundamentally removing the human from the sustainment loop.

00:14:34: And really?

00:14:35: That is only way one operator can realistically manage a swarm of multiple drones at once.

00:14:40: Yeah...that infrastructure layer is absolutely vital.

00:14:43: But to build those charging nodes and the repair shepherds we talked about, you need a physical industrial base capable of handling that output.

00:14:56: Exactly!

00:14:57: This is the final heaviest piece forcing a massive renaissance in heavy industrial manufacturing.

00:15:07: Yeah, Keith King reported on this scale-up with Suronic.

00:15:10: they aren't just renting a bigger warehouse They're planning to build at three point two billion dollar shipyard called Port Alpha down in Brownsville Texas.

00:15:18: Three

00:15:18: point two Billion.

00:15:20: that is massive

00:15:21: massive their targeting operations by twenty twenty eight.

00:15:24: and This facility's being designed from the ground up To construct autonomous vessels that could exceed twelve hundred feet in length.

00:15:31: Wow Wait, hold on.

00:15:33: If we just establish that the ocean eats metal... Yeah.

00:15:36: And maintenance is a total nightmare, isn't building a twelve hundred foot robot ship just creating a massive floating target for corrosion and logistical headaches?

00:15:47: It does sound counterintuitive at first but the shift toward mass of autonomous vessels is really about resilience and payload capacity like small usb's are great for distributed sensing But to carry meaningful strategic capabilities Like heavy radar arrays or large missile magazines Or acting as those shepherd vests we discussed, you need mass.

00:16:08: Okay that makes sense!

00:16:08: You can't put missile silo on a dinghy?

00:16:10: Exactly and traditional shipyards are backlogged for a decade just maintaining the manned fleet.

00:16:15: right now so you have to build entirely new specialized industrial infrastructure to support the autonomous fleet.

00:16:21: And it isn't just happening in maritime construction either.

00:16:24: The physical scale-up is incredibly aggressive...and its global.

00:16:29: Jim Teichlet noted that Lockheed Martin They are adding roughly seven hundred jobs specifically to accelerate the production of munitions, addressing that very magazine depth issue we talked about earlier.

00:16:44: Right trying to fix the broken math?

00:16:45: Exactly and David Roberts highlighted a major move in Europe where ARX Robotics and Roboneers have formed a joint venture called ARX Industries.

00:16:55: Their sole focus is the mass production of The Ryze Pro.

00:16:58: That's a ground vehicle, right?

00:17:00: Yeah it's heavy unmanned ground vehicles designed for logistical transport and medical evacuation.

00:17:05: They're scaling up manufacturing specifically to back Ukraine's goal of fielding fifty thousand UGVs by twenty-twenty six.

00:17:12: Fifty Thousand Ground Vehicles!

00:17:14: that Is A Massive Industrial Lift.

00:17:16: It IS.

00:17:17: And perhaps the most staggering metric on industrial scaling comes from Ariel Peretz regarding UAE's edgies group.

00:17:23: Six years ago this Defense conglomerate didn't even exist.

00:17:26: Wait,

00:17:27: really six years ago?

00:17:28: Six years ago they didn't exist.

00:17:30: today They employ nineteen thousand people and sit on a twenty billion dollar order backlog There.

00:17:36: are successfully exporting advanced systems deep into the European market.

00:17:40: See, this scale-up forces a complete reevaluation of macroeconomic priorities.

00:17:46: Historically, a lot of political discourse just framed defense spending merely as a sunk cost like money diverted away from domestic programs.

00:17:55: but as Sir Stuart's Etha pointed out he was referencing the UK Strategic Defense Review.

00:18:01: we have to view The Industrial Base is strategic national asset.

00:18:04: now it has an investment in sovereign capability

00:18:07: because software needs hardware to run.

00:18:09: Exactly!

00:18:10: An advanced AI targeting algorithm is completely useless if you lack the factory floors, the shipyards and the skilled machine as required to physically build the hardware that carries it.

00:18:19: Your industrial capacity is inseparable from your defensive posture.

00:18:23: So man we have charted a wild course here today.

00:18:26: We started with venture capital valuations moving at software speeds You know driven by that shift from pilot programs To real funded government contracts.

00:18:34: We looked at the broken economics of using million dollar missiles against fifty thousand dollar drones and this rush to build cheap native AI interceptors, to fix that math.

00:18:45: Yep

00:18:46: Then we explored the grueling reality of deployment The fact every drone requires a massive ecosystem of strategic airlift, secure networks And those maritime repair shepherds To combat ocean corrosion.

00:19:00: Right We saw the human wall where the lack of trained operators is forcing innovations like autonomous charging nodes just to keep humans out of a sustainment loop.

00:19:09: And finally, we looked at billions being poured into raw heavy industry shipyards and munitions plants... ...to physically build this

00:19:16: future.".

00:19:16: It's totally comprehensive technological shift.

00:19:20: but I want you with one final sobering thought that loops right back on our discussion about human operator being the ultimate bottleneck here….

00:19:29: Tim Desider shared a highly concerning update about a company called Farsight Vision.

00:19:33: What do they do?

00:19:34: Well,

00:19:34: we think of a drone's video feed as a tactical advantage right its eyes in the sky for The Operator.

00:19:40: well farsight vision has unveiled software that completely weaponizes That concept.

00:19:45: by intercepting an enemy drones video feed.

00:19:48: their software analyzes the individual frames Of the video in real time.

00:19:52: it looks at the visible terrain like The specific curve of a dirt road, the layout of tree line and shape of building instantly matches those visual pixels against global geospatial satellite data.

00:20:04: Just by looking at the video that Drone is broadcasting, The software figures out exactly where in the world that camera's pointed.

00:20:10: Instantly!

00:20:11: It plots the drone's precise position and its flight route on a map without needing any specialized radio direction finding equipment.

00:20:18: it just uses the video itself.

00:20:20: And if you can instantly track a drone's flight path based on the terrain it is looking at You can extrapolate digital trail right back to launch point.

00:20:28: Think about implications of this.

00:20:30: We just established that the trained human operator is a most vital, irreplaceable asset in this entire ecosystem.

00:20:37: But now...the very tool that operator uses to see the battlefield....is acting as a homing beacon!

00:20:43: The camera feed is simultaneously providing situational awareness and painting a target on the operator's back.

00:20:50: That is a terrifying operational reality to mull over!

00:20:54: The speed of digital transformation means that todays greatest tactical advantage can truly become tomorrow s most fatal vulnerability.

00:21:01: Well,

00:21:02: in that cheerful note we are out of time.

00:21:03: if you enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:21:06: Also check out our other editions on cloud, ICT and tech.

00:21:09: Digital products & services Artificial Intelligence Sustainability in Green ICT And HealthTech.