Best of LinkedIn: Defense Tech CW 30/31

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about defense tech from CW-Thirtyandthirtyone.

00:00:08: Frenness 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 in

00:00:28: and literally a decade of engineering to build this elite attack helicopter, only to watch it get destroyed in seconds by a four hundred dollar piece of plastic.

00:00:38: Plastic that was printed into civilians kitchen you know?

00:00:40: Right!

00:00:41: It's just wild.

00:00:41: even think about.

00:00:42: Yeah really is.

00:00:43: But That Is The New Very Brutal Reality Of Defense Tech.

00:00:46: And Thats Exactly What We're Unpacking For You Today.

00:00:48: If Your A Digital Transformation Or Tech Professional we are looking at the most critical trends surfacing across professional networks right now.

00:00:55: Yeah, we're cutting through all the noise to give you a blueprint for where this massive industry is heading.

00:00:59: We are going to explore three major shifts today.

00:01:02: First how autonomy is radically expanding the physical geometry of the battlefield.

00:01:07: Second How the conflict in Ukraine is forcing the technology innovation cycle To move at this breakneck.

00:01:13: software like pace.

00:01:15: And finally will examine how massive capital allocation Is pivoting traditional defense industrial base You know legacy metal bashers toward a software-first reality.

00:01:26: Yeah, to understand the tech you really have to start with physical constraints driving it.

00:01:31: all that downstream softer architectures and capital allocations is being dictated by tactical edge.

00:01:37: Okay let's unpack this because the tactical edge itself has fundamentally changed hasn't

00:01:41: it?

00:01:42: Exactly!

00:01:43: If we connect these two to bigger picture You'll look at how much the battlefield physically expanded, there was this post by Patrick Lurz that perfectly illustrates.

00:01:54: He pointed out the back.

00:01:54: in twenty-twenty two The zone of highest risk for a human soldier Was concentrated within just a few kilometers Of the contact line

00:02:02: which makes sense historically speaking.

00:02:04: right but today That danger zone has expanded to tens of kilometers deep.

00:02:09: Wow so it's a sudden massive expansion of the killzone.

00:02:13: And I'm guessing the underlying mechanism for that is just the sheer proliferation of connected sensors.

00:02:19: That's exactly it!

00:02:20: It's driven by deep reconnaissance drones, first-person viewer FPV drones, loitering munitions and unmanned ground vehicles or UGVs.

00:02:28: So there's basically nowhere to hide?

00:02:30: Basically yeah The battlefields become incredibly transparent and hyper connected.

00:02:34: in the past survivability just meant you know slapping heavier armor on a vehicle.

00:02:39: today survivability is an equation of data and distance

00:02:42: meaning You don't go there.

00:02:43: In first place

00:02:44: precisely it means reducing the need for human soldiers to ever step foot inside that expanded zone.

00:02:50: And the defense tech industry is aggressively answering That right by building systems, but keep humans complete completely out of the loop physically while keeping them in the loop digitally.

00:03:00: Yeah,

00:03:00: completely!

00:03:01: Like for example Blake Sedgely and his colleagues just unveiled a new platform at The Farnborough International Air Show called Thunder.

00:03:08: it's built by Andrewle co-developed with Archer Aviation And this is a group five hybrid electric tiltrotor.

00:03:16: Let's actually pause there and define group five for our listeners who might not live in defense procurement day-to-day.

00:03:21: Sure, yeah!

00:03:22: When we talk about drone groups it is a classification of size and capability right?

00:03:26: So Group one is your small backpack sized quadcopter

00:03:30: A kind you may buy at consumer electronics store

00:03:32: Exactly.

00:03:33: but Group Five means massive scale.

00:03:36: these are airplane sized high altitude systems capable carrying Very heavy payloads.

00:03:42: Right, so the Thunder is a heavy-duty asset.

00:03:44: The entire purpose of this aircraft Is to act as fully autonomous wingman.

00:03:49: It has runway independent vertical takeoff and landing And it can navigate GPS denied environments using internal sensor fusion

00:03:58: Which is incredibly hard to engineer.

00:04:00: Oh absolutely!

00:04:01: And it vastly expands the firepower Of crewed platforms like Apache helicopters.

00:04:06: But it does all of this without putting a human pilot in the seat.

00:04:10: And we're seeing this exact philosophy, The Decoupling Of The Human From The Vehicle applied across literally all domains.

00:04:18: Jackson Moses recently highlighted A major milestone In the maritime space.

00:04:22: Oh right!

00:04:23: The sea drones

00:04:24: Yes!

00:04:25: Ceronyx Corsair Unmanned Surface Vessels Which Are Essentially Autonomous Sea Drones Successfully Struck An Iranian Naval Base In Bandar Abbas.

00:04:33: Wow

00:04:34: Yeah, and what's historically crucial to understand here is that this marked the very first time American forces have employed sea drones in active combat operations.

00:04:43: But let me push back on the architecture of this strategy for a second, because aren't we just trading human targets for robot targets?

00:04:50: I mean it feels like replacing a knight's heavy solid iron shield with a massive swarm of bees.

00:04:55: I actually love that analogy!

00:04:56: Because it explains the mathematical shift happening in defense right now... Well A Shield stops a sword through pure physical mass much like Heavy Tank Armor but a swarm of Bees survives because there is no single center of gravity to strike.

00:05:13: Okay?

00:05:13: By trading massive crude platforms for autonomous drones, you aren't just hardening a target.

00:05:19: You are distributing the network so widely that incoming kinetic weapons become mathematically and economically useless.

00:05:26: Right,

00:05:26: because you literally can't shoot a million bees with a million arrows.

00:05:29: it would bankrupt to... Exactly!

00:05:31: And the tech in the skies is just getting faster and more decentralized.

00:05:35: to support that Nick Colosmo posted about new electric drone that just broke the world airspeed record.

00:05:41: It hit four hundred thirty-four miles per hour.

00:05:43: That's

00:05:44: incredibly fast for an electric platform

00:05:46: and it's explicitly designed to act as an anti-aircraft interceptor.

00:05:50: And then on the ground, Marquet Weitfeld noted that a German company ARX Robotics is building AI enabled autonomous UGVs to handle military logistics in casualty evacuation.

00:06:00: So we're just flooding the entire zone with Autonomous Distributed Nose?

00:06:04: Exactly.

00:06:04: But here is the critical engineering challenge.

00:06:08: If they flood the Zone With A Swamp of Dees The adversary Is going To Just Sit There With A Bow &

00:06:13: Arrow.

00:06:13: Right, they're gonna find a giant can of bug spray.

00:06:16: Exactly!

00:06:18: The sheer volume of these autonomous systems necessitates a completely new approach to countermeasures.

00:06:24: Aviz Barzohar pointed out that high-power microwave systems are emerging as a vital layer of air defense.

00:06:30: Microwaves like directed energy?

00:06:33: Yes

00:06:34: instead of using kinetic projectiles you know bullets or missiles... These systems emit direct electromagnetic energy.

00:06:41: So they're essentially frying the circuits of drones mid-air.

00:06:44: Precisely They instantly disabled the onboard electronics of entire drone swarms across a wide area.

00:06:49: That

00:06:50: is wild!

00:06:51: Now, kinetic solutions are still evolving alongside this obviously.

00:06:54: Robert Dumonts shared that US Marines were receiving new highly specific type ammunition for their M-IV carbines and M-II rifles designed explicitly to shoot down small drones.

00:07:03: Okay so mix old school and new schools.

00:07:06: Right but broader trend definitely moving from kinetic warfare to electromagnetic and software warfare

00:07:12: Which brings us to fascinating inflection point.

00:07:14: Here's where it gets really interesting.

00:07:16: If countermeasures like high-power microwaves are evolving this quickly to wipe out drone swarms, the only way for the swarm to survive is to iterate its software and frequencies faster than the microwaves can

00:07:27: adapt.".

00:07:28: It's a constant game of cat and mouse...

00:07:29: Exactly!

00:07:30: And see how fast that iteration actually has to happen?

00:07:33: We have to look at the fastest proven ground on Earth right now.

00:07:36: Ukraine….

00:07:37: Yeah.. The economics and speed of innovation coming from Ukraine Daggering yeah, and they completely upend traditional defense models.

00:07:45: Let's talk about the math on that.

00:07:46: Yeah We talked about that hook at the very beginning.

00:07:48: Yeah Justin Nordrum shared The Maths That Should Frankly Make Every Legacy Prime Contractor Pause.

00:07:54: He Highlighted A Recent Event Where a Four Hundred Dollar Ukrainian FPV Drone Took Out A Nineteen Million Dollar Russian Me-Twenty Eight Helicopter?

00:08:03: That Economic Asymmetry Is Just it's Wild.

00:08:05: nineteen Million Against four Hundred Bucks.

00:08:07: It is Paradigm.

00:08:08: Shifting Ukraine's unmanned systems forces are reporting a cost per kill ratio of just eight hundred seventy-eight dollars.

00:08:14: Wow,

00:08:15: under a thousand bucks!

00:08:16: Right and to sustain that kind of math against the massive adversary, Ukraine is producing hundreds of thousands of FPV drones every single month.

00:08:25: Hundreds of thousands?

00:08:26: Yes.

00:08:27: And their supply chain looks absolutely nothing like traditional Western defense manufacturer.

00:08:32: They're relying on organizations like Dukarmija which is a volunteer network utilizing three and half thousand civilians.

00:08:39: Wait, civilians?

00:08:40: Civilians!

00:08:41: These people run one-thousand dollar Three D printers right for their kitchen tables to manufacture drone casings.

00:08:46: in parts.

00:08:47: I mean...for our tech listeners just think about the logistical architecture required to make that work.

00:08:52: You have thirty five hundred civilians printing parts.

00:08:55: This isn't just chaotic tinkering in a garage.

00:08:58: No, not at all!

00:08:58: You need a highly orchestrated tech stack to manage that.

00:09:01: you need secure cloud distribution for the CAD files so everyone is printing the exact right specifications... ...you need rigorous QA and QC feedback loops which are likely managed via secure messaging apps.

00:09:14: And you need dynamic logistic software to aggregate thousands of disparate parts from residential addresses, move them to frontline assembly hubs and get them deployed in days.

00:09:24: It's incredible!

00:09:25: It really is.

00:09:26: it has decentralized micromanufacturing managed like an agile software platform Exactly...and

00:09:33: the shift from centralized heavy industry.

00:09:36: Decentralized software-managed rapid manufacturing has caused the whole sector to just explode.

00:09:42: Valeria Ionen pointed out that Ukraine's domestic drone sector is grown from just seven companies, to nearly six hundred in only a few years.

00:09:49: Seven to six hundred?

00:09:50: That's a start up broom happening at the middle of war zone.

00:09:53: and that unprecedented speed of iterations forcing western allies completely rethink how they handle intellectual property right?

00:10:00: Oh massively!

00:10:01: Richard Gulliam posted about profound shift.

00:10:05: Britain has agreed to transfer the intellectual property for its stone-cloak electronic warfare technology directly to Ukraine.

00:10:11: Wait, they just handed over the IP?

00:10:13: Yes and For decades defense exports were a strictly one way street right.

00:10:18: A country designs a system builds it locks down The IP and sells the hardware...a

00:10:24: black box basically

00:10:25: Exactly.

00:10:26: but this deal allows Ukraine to manufacture modify And evolve the Stone Cloaks System Right on the front line

00:10:33: I mean, if they're giving them the blueprints and letting them modify the code locally.

00:10:37: Britain is essentially outsourcing their R&D testing to a live battlefield.

00:10:42: that's

00:10:42: exactly what you're doing.

00:10:43: Ukrainian

00:10:44: engineers are adapting the AI in electronic warfare frequencies against a thinking adversary every single day.

00:10:51: And Britain gets to ingest That real world battlefield proven combat data back into its own domestic capabilities.

00:10:58: It's massive high stakes feedback loop.

00:11:01: It is the ultimate agile development environment.

00:11:03: Their innovation cycle was measured in days, whereas Western procurement cycles are traditionally measured.

00:11:19: This decentralized lightning fast innovation cycle is incredible from a systems engineering perspective, but we have to acknowledge it comes with the brutal physical cost.

00:11:29: Like this is not a sterile software sprint happening in a cozy Silicon Valley office?

00:11:34: No you're absolutely right.

00:11:35: what's fascinating here is how The Physical Reality of War constantly intrudes on the technology narrative.

00:11:42: Mark K. reported on a Russian strike that destroyed the facility in Kyiv owned by Terminal Autonomy and That's

00:11:49: an American company, right?

00:11:50: Yes This is United States Company that produces The AQ-Four Hundred Scythe and A Q one hundred bayonet drones.

00:11:56: The destruction of this factory proves a really stark rule Of modern warfare.

00:12:02: Foreign corporate ownership offers absolutely zero deterrence when a facility Is producing a tangible battlefield advantage.

00:12:08: Wow So the threat to infrastructure is just

00:12:11: constant.

00:12:11: It's entirely persistent.

00:12:13: Artemira shared that the massive Defense Tech Valley twenty-twenty six summit, which was slated to be Ukraine's largest international defense tech gathering had been postponed.

00:12:22: The reason for this was a tragic missile strike on training ground in the Kiev region That claimed lives of people deeply embedded within the defense tech community.

00:12:31: This awful It is.

00:12:33: The innovation cycle we are marveling at, the daily software pushes and hardware iterations... ...is quite literally measured in human lives

00:12:41: And that urgent high-speed reality in Ukraine is sending absolute shockwaves through Western defense capital.

00:12:49: I mean, the massive demand for cheap autonomous rapidly iterating systems is forcing massive prime contractors and venture capital firms to radically restructure their portfolios.

00:13:01: Yeah we are witnessing the defense industrial based transition from a legacy of metal bashing you know building massive exquisite incredibly expensive hardware platform forms over decades to an era of software-defined infrastructure.

00:13:14: The story a company called Darkhive, which was shared by Weston Moyer perfectly captures this pivot.

00:13:26: He had to hike in to recover it, walked back completely blind his surroundings and took machine gun fire as a result.

00:13:34: Oh my god!

00:13:35: Right?

00:13:35: he literally carried the problem home from The Dirt...he realized that legacy drones the military was using were too big Too slow And way too fragile for the tactical edge

00:13:45: Which is common complaint From operators.

00:13:47: Exactly So he co-founded Darkhive To build AI-powered, three D printed NDAA compliant drones like their yellow jacket and red queen models that a soldier can fly using voice commands from a smartphone.

00:14:00: Let's translate a couple of those terms for our tech listeners because the business mechanics here are crucial.

00:14:06: building NDA compliant drones means the hardware adheres to The National Defense Authorization Act.

00:14:12: right.

00:14:13: In practical terms, it means the drone contains absolutely no components from adversary nations.

00:14:17: No Chinese batteries...no hidden microchips.

00:14:20: It is a completely secure sovereign supply chain

00:14:23: Which I imagine is incredibly hard to build from scratch!

00:14:25: It's remarkably difficult But its paying off

00:14:28: Right because Darkhive just won A record forty nine point seven million dollar APAP contract The largest in that program history And they raised thirty million dollars.

00:14:39: Series B

00:14:40: And for context, APAT stands for Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies.

00:14:46: It's a specific Department-of-Defense funding mechanism designed to bridge the infamous Valley Of Death.

00:14:52: The Dreaded Valley of Death?

00:14:54: Yes!

00:14:55: That is the perilous period where a tech startup has fantastic working prototype but basically starves to death waiting for slow moving government contract materialize.

00:15:03: Right.

00:15:04: APP bridges that gap with rapid cash.

00:15:07: so these solutions actually reach soldiers.

00:15:09: The market is aggressively rewarding solutions built for the tactical edge.

00:15:13: Yeah, the capital flowing into these software-first defense companies is reaching massive scale.

00:15:18: Harold Kappa posted that Munich based startup Helsing reached an eighteen billion dollar valuation in just five years.

00:15:24: Eighteen billion and five years!

00:15:26: And they achieved that mark not by building classic kinetic weapons or heavy armor...

00:15:30: What are they building?

00:15:31: They achieved it by focusing entirely on AI, software and autonomous systems like AI co-pilots for fighter jets.

00:15:39: If you think about the business model, traditional defense primes rely on hardware margins and fifty-year product life cycles.

00:15:46: Slow and steady!

00:15:47: Right... But defense tech software companies like Helsing operate with saucelike margins in daily iteration cycles.

00:15:54: That economic asymmetry is exactly why valuation is so astronomical

00:15:59: And they are expanding that software edge into physical manufacturing too.

00:16:03: Al Cameron noted that Helsing is even building a resilience factory in West Virginia.

00:16:08: Oh wow!

00:16:08: Yeah, they are setting up shop to manufacture the very drones and software integrations that have been proven in Ukraine bringing battle-tested rapid iteration technology directly into US industrial base.

00:16:20: It's not just the agile startups doing this either.

00:16:22: The traditional prime contractors see writing on wall and pivot hard.

00:16:27: Johanna Hutchinson detailed BAE systems half-year results, and she explicitly called out their evolution from a traditional platform manufacturer into an AI enabled defense tech company.

00:16:37: Which is huge.

00:16:38: shift in messaging for A Legacy Prime.

00:16:40: Massive!

00:16:44: autonomous collaborative combat aircraft.

00:16:46: This is essentially a loyal wingman drone where AI isn't just an add-on support feature, the AI software architecture is intrinsic to the platform itself

00:16:57: and we are seeing massive sweeping consolidation in the maritime domain.

00:17:12: billion euros.

00:17:13: That's a huge acquisition!

00:17:14: Right, meanwhile Jean-Yves Schmitt highlighted that Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri just acquired four different tech firms specializing in seabed mapping acoustic communications autonomous underwater drones and surface drones.

00:17:28: so they aren't Just buying shipyards anymore.

00:17:30: no They are buying the entire tech stack to build a vertically integrated European Underwater Technology Champion

00:17:36: because they recognize that The hardware is just a vessel for this software

00:17:40: exactly.

00:17:41: But wait, I have to push back on the hype here for a second.

00:17:43: Okay go ahead.

00:17:43: It honestly sounds like the defense sector is completely transforming into Silicon Valley overnight.

00:17:48: We're talking about agile sprints sauce margins and software speeds but how fast Is the actual government bureaucracy moving tech moves in days?

00:17:58: But government procurement usually moves decades.

00:18:02: this raises an important question And it is these central friction point For anyone trying to operate sell or build-in defense tech.

00:18:09: today

00:18:10: i would imagine.

00:18:11: Madeleine Hart analyzed U.S procurement data and provided a really sobering reality check.

00:18:17: Despite all the talk of innovation, The percentage of spending on commercial technology has actually been completely flat at around twenty percent for last thirteen years.

00:18:25: Wait!

00:18:25: Really?

00:18:26: Flat for thirteen years?

00:18:27: Flat.

00:18:28: Only a fraction of the defense budget is available For new annual procurement starts because so much capital Is inextricably tied up In legacy cost plus hardware programs.

00:18:36: That is a massive architectural disconnect.

00:18:39: We have software updating daily based on live combat data, but the budget has locked up in rigid multi-year appropriations.

00:18:47: It gets even more stark when you look at the physical hardware timelines.

00:18:51: Luke Chen provided a brilliant historical perspective On this.

00:18:55: he pointed out that The US Navy Is currently designing the Columbia class submarine.

00:18:59: Okay

00:19:00: now This is A massive piece of engineering.

00:19:02: it's five hundred and sixty feet long with sixteen missile tubes.

00:19:06: But here's the kicker.

00:19:08: It is designed for a fifty year lifespan with a planned retirement year of twenty eighty.

00:19:13: Twenty eighty?

00:19:14: I mean the sailors who will eventually decommission that submarine haven't even been born yet.

00:19:18: Exactly,

00:19:19: Chen asks us to imagine standing in the year nineteen seventy six when Pong was an absolute state-of-the art and graphics And the Apple Eye computer was just shipping and trying design complex machine.

00:19:30: they would fight war in twenty twenty six.

00:19:31: That's

00:19:31: impossible Right

00:19:32: But is precisely what the twenty eighty plan represents today.

00:19:36: So from technology perspective How do you even build a piece of hardware today that has to run software in twenty seventy five?

00:19:41: You have to fundamentally decouple the hardware from the software.

00:19:45: It requires a radically open architecture, The Steel Hall and the Nuclear Reactor are your fifty year hardware platforms but the sensors ,the combat systems .The data processing nodes.

00:19:56: those have to be essentially plug-and-play modules.

00:19:59: I see if a sonar system in twenty sixty needs to integrate with an AI processor built in twenty thirty.

00:20:05: you need standardized APIs containerized software and massive data lakes right on board that submarine.

00:20:10: The most difficult challenge isn't the metallurgy anymore,

00:20:14: it's the data integration across generations of technology.

00:20:17: yes this clash between a fifty-year hardware procurement mindset in days to weeks software iteration cycle is the defining engineering and business challenges our era.

00:20:27: so what does all mean for you If you're a technology professional trying to build, invest or simply operate in this space.

00:20:33: You are caught right in the middle of this.

00:20:35: You have the urgent lethal realities of an expanding kill zone demanding software speed solutions pushing up against a legacy procurement system that's still laying out hardware blueprints for the year twenty eighty.

00:20:46: navigating That gap requires a completely new paradigm of system integration and frankly human trust.

00:20:53: I'll leave you with this final thought to mull over.

00:20:55: What's here?

00:20:55: If the future of warfare relies heavily on AI enabled autonomous systems, Systems whose underlying software brains and threat recognition models are updated every few days based online decentralized combat data How does a human military successfully train its flesh-and-blood soldiers To implicitly trust a robotic teammate Whose internal logic might literally change Every single morning.

00:21:18: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:21:21: Also check out our other editions on cloud insights and sovereignty...