Best of LinkedIn: Defense Tech CW 38/ 39

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas L. Geyer and Frennis, based on the most relevant posts on LinkedIn about defense tech in CW-E-A and thirty-nine, Frennis is a B to B market research company that equips product and strategy teams with market and competitive intelligence across the defense industry.

00:00:17: Welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:19: Today, we're really zeroing in on the defense tech world, looking at the key trends, the big conversations happening on LinkedIn over calendar weeks, thirty-eight and thirty-nine.

00:00:28: Yeah, and this is definitely for you if you're trying to keep up with the big shifts in defense tech and related industries.

00:00:33: Absolutely.

00:00:34: So, what jumped out from the source of these couple of weeks?

00:00:36: What are the main currents?

00:00:38: Well, looking through the posts, three things really stand out.

00:00:41: First, there's this huge push, and it feels like it's accelerating, towards European strategic autonomy.

00:00:47: Second, you see this constant tension around scaling up industry, moving from peacetime levels to, well, potentially wartime demand.

00:00:55: It's a massive challenge.

00:00:56: Like the capacity

00:00:57: issue.

00:00:57: Exactly.

00:00:58: And third, it's unavoidable now, this fundamental pivot to software, software-defined capabilities where speed getting feedback from the battlefield and iterating quickly, that's becoming the key metric.

00:01:13: Interesting.

00:01:13: That idea of speed seems to tie a lot of this together, doesn't it?

00:01:17: Policy production.

00:01:17: It really does.

00:01:18: So

00:01:19: let's start with the policy side then.

00:01:20: You mentioned strategic autonomy.

00:01:22: Sounds like there's a big signal from Germany.

00:01:25: Oh, absolutely.

00:01:25: A huge signal.

00:01:26: If you look at what people like Max Villmann and Dr.

00:01:29: Rudolph Mock were highlighting, Germany's putting down eighty billion for the wind as swear.

00:01:33: Wow.

00:01:34: Okay.

00:01:34: But it's not just the amount, it's where it's going.

00:01:37: The really strategic piece here is that over ninety percent of that is specifically tagged for European industry.

00:01:43: Over ninety percent.

00:01:43: So that's a deliberate shift away from, say, US suppliers.

00:01:47: Massively deliberate.

00:01:48: Marine Marcus pointed this out too.

00:01:50: You know, there are a few exceptions, like Patriot missiles, maybe, but those just underline the main point.

00:01:56: Right.

00:01:56: Berlin is basically saying loud and clear, Europe's security is going to be built in Europe by Europeans.

00:02:02: That's a fundamental change in.

00:02:04: What about making it happen faster?

00:02:05: Because procurement is usually slow,

00:02:07: right?

00:02:07: Yeah, that's the perennial problem.

00:02:09: But they are talking about mechanisms, things like multinational framework contracts, joint purchase guarantees.

00:02:15: The idea being to share the load, speed things up.

00:02:18: Exactly.

00:02:18: And also to change how they buy.

00:02:21: They want procurement frameworks that actually reward, you know, faster development, iterations, systems that talk to each other, upgrades throughout the life cycle, not just buying a box that stays the same for twenty years.

00:02:32: Okay, you can want all that.

00:02:35: industry actually deliver.

00:02:36: You mentioned the scaling issue earlier.

00:02:38: And that's the brick wall, as Dr.

00:02:40: Rudolph Mach put it quite bluntly.

00:02:42: Demand is sky high.

00:02:44: The money's there, but the supply chain just isn't built for it right now.

00:02:48: How bad is the mismatch?

00:02:49: Well, think about it.

00:02:50: He noted many suppliers are geared for maybe, what, thirty to sixty complex systems a year?

00:02:55: Low rate peacetime production, the new demand signals, they're talking about needing maybe five thousand to eight thousand units a year.

00:03:02: The scale is just completely different.

00:03:04: All right, you can't just flip a switch on that kind of capacity.

00:03:07: You really can't.

00:03:08: The checks can be written, but the factory floor needs time, investment, restructuring.

00:03:14: That's the real bottleneck.

00:03:15: Okay, so that industrial challenge leads us straight into the second big theme, doesn't it?

00:03:19: This new tempo on the battlefield, driven by drones, and the desperate need for counter drone tech, CUAS.

00:03:27: Absolutely.

00:03:28: And this is where the whole thinking about military kit is changing.

00:03:31: Austin Vogel had a great line.

00:03:33: Drones are becoming flying non-assets.

00:03:35: Flying non-assets.

00:03:37: Meaning disposable.

00:03:38: Pretty much.

00:03:39: Simple, cheap, effective.

00:03:41: Complexity is actually a disadvantage.

00:03:44: Nathan Weeks really hit this point home too.

00:03:45: The focus isn't on the perfect prototype anymore.

00:03:48: It's

00:03:48: about speed again.

00:03:49: It's about fielded by Tuesday.

00:03:51: That's the new benchmark.

00:03:52: Getting something useful out there now beats getting something perfect out there eventually.

00:03:56: And we're seeing this urgency not just in the military sphere, but civilian too.

00:04:00: Like airports.

00:04:02: Definitely.

00:04:02: Airports are on the front line here.

00:04:04: Casey Lam Evans mentioned drone shield system, the sentry sieve.

00:04:08: It's interesting because it's deployed on subscription.

00:04:10: like software as a service.

00:04:11: Kind of, yeah.

00:04:12: It gives real-time alerts, tracks the drone, and crucially, tracks the operator, too, gives you that dot on a map.

00:04:19: And people are actually using this.

00:04:20: Oh,

00:04:20: yeah.

00:04:21: Christian Emmaus pointed out Newcastle Airport is using the drones tech for exactly this kind of airspace security.

00:04:27: It's a real-world need.

00:04:29: Okay, so back to the military side.

00:04:31: Countering these drones is critical.

00:04:34: How are they thinking about that?

00:04:35: Well, Jonas Singer had this really interesting framing.

00:04:38: He said, you need to build a drone wall, but manage it like a startup.

00:04:41: Like

00:04:42: a startup?

00:04:42: How does a military organization do that?

00:04:44: That sounds optimistic.

00:04:47: Yeah, it's a challenge, culturally and structurally.

00:04:50: But the logic is about agility.

00:04:52: He highlighted a few key things.

00:04:54: Like what?

00:04:54: A single mission lead cut through the bureaucracy.

00:04:58: a really tight latency budget.

00:05:00: We're talking milliseconds from detect to response.

00:05:03: Okay, speed again.

00:05:04: And maybe the most disruptive idea, outcomes-based procurement.

00:05:09: Outcomes-based.

00:05:10: What does that mean in practice?

00:05:11: Paying for results.

00:05:12: Exactly.

00:05:13: Instead of just paying for delivery of a system, you pay based on performance.

00:05:17: Like, how fast can your system detect a threat?

00:05:19: Or what's its time to kill against a specific type of drone?

00:05:23: Right.

00:05:23: That shifts the risk onto the provider to actually deliver capability, not just hardware.

00:05:29: Precisely.

00:05:30: It forces faster innovation.

00:05:31: And what about the tech for actually doing the intercepting?

00:05:33: What's emerging there?

00:05:34: The big push is for low cost, scalable interceptors, things you can use in large numbers without breaking the bank.

00:05:42: Matt Limberry mentioned the TRX, twenty six to one experiments.

00:05:45: They're looking hard for CUAS options that are basically ready to go TRL five or higher.

00:05:51: So new term solutions.

00:05:52: What about more advanced stuff?

00:05:53: Lasers.

00:05:54: Yep.

00:05:54: High energy options are maturing too.

00:05:56: Look at Australia's EOS Apollo laser.

00:06:00: Pascal M highlighted this one.

00:06:02: It can apparently take down twenty to fifty drones a minute.

00:06:04: That's

00:06:05: impressive.

00:06:05: And significantly, it's already got an export contract with a European NATO country.

00:06:10: So that suggests real confidence in directed energy starting to emerge.

00:06:14: Okay, so we've got this operational need for speed, clashing with industrial limits.

00:06:18: Let's circle back to those production bottlenecks.

00:06:21: Christoph Dunnique pointed out a specific hardware choke point.

00:06:25: Yeah, a really critical one.

00:06:27: Mini jet engines.

00:06:28: These little propulsion systems are essential for a lot of missiles and UAVs.

00:06:32: And they're hard to scale up.

00:06:33: Very.

00:06:34: It requires specialized materials, incredibly precise engineering, often relies on just a few suppliers with the know-how.

00:06:40: That lack of depth in the supply chain is a real vulnerability.

00:06:43: So what's the fix?

00:06:44: How do you secure that supply?

00:06:46: Well, the thinking seems to be going towards pan-European collaboration.

00:06:50: pooling resources, sharing expertise.

00:06:53: Like what specifically?

00:06:54: Ideas like a joint engine commons EU program.

00:06:57: Using those joint purchase guarantees we talked about earlier to help companies invest in new production lines without taking all the risk.

00:07:03: Okay.

00:07:04: And building genuinely European production capacity maybe across several countries so you're not reliant on just one facility or one nation.

00:07:12: Build in some redundancy.

00:07:14: It's interesting how this focus on hardware problems contrasts with the software side.

00:07:19: Marquis Whitefeld argued that maybe Europe's hesitation on unmanned systems is misplaced.

00:07:25: Yeah, his point was basically, look, the hardware, the drone itself might be expendable, but the real capability, the thing that makes it effective is the software, the AI.

00:07:36: And

00:07:37: software can be updated quickly.

00:07:38: Exactly.

00:07:38: The platform might be fixed, but you can constantly push out new software loads, new capabilities based on what you're learning.

00:07:45: These systems are inherently adaptable.

00:07:46: They're never really finished in the way old hardware was.

00:07:50: So talking about AI, how is it actually being used in defense right now?

00:07:55: Ismail Alvarez offered a dose of reality check on this.

00:07:59: Yeah, it's important to ground this.

00:08:00: It's not Skynet, you know.

00:08:02: It's mostly about augmentation.

00:08:03: Augmentation.

00:08:04: Helping

00:08:04: humans.

00:08:05: Right.

00:08:05: Helping them deal with information overload.

00:08:07: Using AI to fuse data from different sources, drone feeds, logistics data, open source intel, and present a clearer picture.

00:08:15: So interpretation and decision support, pretty much helping compare options, maybe drafting quick reports, reducing the cognitive load so the human commanders can make better decisions faster.

00:08:25: Which makes the idea of a sovereign software stack even more critical, doesn't it?

00:08:29: Yeah.

00:08:29: Justin Nerdrum highlighted a partnership working on exactly that.

00:08:32: He

00:08:32: did.

00:08:33: Between Helsing, the AI company, and ARX Robotics, they're explicitly building an AI recon strike network with, and this is the key part, Zero US components.

00:08:44: Zero US components.

00:08:45: That's a strong statement.

00:08:46: It's a direct strategic choice.

00:08:48: They want to avoid any potential issues with, say, US export controls or dependencies.

00:08:53: It's about ensuring Europe has full control over the core tech driving future capabilities.

00:08:59: But wait, if speed is everything, doesn't building everything from scratch within Europe instead of integrating potentially proven global tech actually slow things down initially?

00:09:08: Ah, that's the fundamental tension, isn't it?

00:09:10: You're absolutely right.

00:09:11: It's a trade-off.

00:09:12: Immediate speed versus long-term strategic control and autonomy.

00:09:15: So what's the prevailing view?

00:09:17: The sense you get from the posts is that for these really critical defining systems, that strategic control is seen as worth the upfront effort, especially if they can adopt some of that startup speed using VC-style funding and rapid iteration based on user feedback.

00:09:33: Okay, let's quickly touch on how this is shaping future capabilities in the main domains, starting with space.

00:09:38: Space is huge now, seen as foundational.

00:09:42: Daniel Metzler and Sebastian Klaus mentioned Germany's Defense Minister pledging thirty-five billion by twenty-thirty specifically for sovereign deterrence capabilities.

00:09:51: Which includes getting their own satellites up there.

00:09:53: Precisely.

00:09:55: And David Kavaila has confirmed they've chosen Ariane Six for launching those sovereign satellites, guaranteeing their own access to orbit.

00:10:01: And in the air, We're seeing more fighter-like drones.

00:10:05: Yeah,

00:10:05: the rise of the CCA collaborative combat aircraft, Arthur Burnham pointed to a bunch of new systems.

00:10:11: Things like Adiril's FURY, which is also known as the YFQ-IVA, and Lockheed Martin's VESO ties.

00:10:17: Torsten Stab noted these are designed as loyal wingmen to fly alongside crew jets like the F-XXV.

00:10:23: So it's less about the single pilot, more about the team.

00:10:26: Exactly.

00:10:26: As Luca Leon put it, the focus shifts from just protecting the pilot to orchestrating this whole ecosystem of crude and uncrewed aircraft working together.

00:10:35: And briefly, under the sea, maritime autonomy.

00:10:38: Also moving fast, Oleksandr Punchenko highlighted Ukraine's new large underwater drone, Toloka.

00:10:45: Apparently it can carry like five tons of explosives over two thousand kilometers.

00:10:49: That's a serious autonomous strike capability.

00:10:52: Wow.

00:10:53: and on the European side.

00:10:54: Juergen Skrebach mentioned the European Defense Agency's Abuse-View-VIS Victor's project.

00:11:00: They're making real progress on swarming autonomous underwater vehicles, AUVs, so advances in both offensive and defensive underwater tech.

00:11:09: Okay, so wrapping all this up, we've seen policy shifts, huge industrial challenges, new tech like drones and AI, focus on sovereignty.

00:11:16: What's the bottom line for the professionals listening?

00:11:19: I think it really boils down to cycle time, agility.

00:11:21: You just can't afford those old, slow, decade-long development and acquisition processes anymore.

00:11:26: The

00:11:27: speed and adaptation are everything.

00:11:28: Whether you're making engines or writing code, the ability to learn from the field, iterate quickly, and scale up production almost simultaneously, that's what's going to define success.

00:11:38: The biggest risk now is probably being stuck in yesterday's rigid structures.

00:11:56: Thank you for tuning in to this deep dive into the DefenseTech landscape from weeks thirty-eight and thirty-nine.

00:12:00: We

00:12:01: really appreciate you listening.

00:12:02: Please do subscribe and join us again next time.