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Best of LinkedIn: Defense Tech CW 02/ 03 · Best of LinkedIn: Digital Transformation & Tech

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Provided by Thomas Allgaier and Franus, based on the most relevant posts on LinkedIn about defense tech in CWO two and O three, Franus is a B to B market research company that equips product and strategy teams with market and competitive intelligence across the defense industry.
• 0:15
  Speaker 0: And welcome back to the deep dive.
• 0:17
  Speaker 0: We are looking at a really high intensity window today, calendar weeks two and three of twenty twenty six.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Honestly, looking at the intelligence from the last couple of weeks, it really feels like the industry has hit some kind of pivot point.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: For years, we've talked about the potential of defense
• 0:33
  Speaker 0: tech.
• 0:34
  Speaker 0: Right.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: But now, it feels like we're actually seeing the gears start to grind into motion.
• 0:38
  Speaker 0: It's the shift from, can we design this thing to, can we build two thousand of them by next year?
• 0:43
  Speaker 0: And you can see this tension playing out all over the feed.
• 0:46
  Speaker 0: Oh, so.
• 0:47
  Speaker 0: Well, on one side, you have the industrial giants, you know, the primes, flexing muscles we haven't seen them use in decades.
• 0:53
  Speaker 0: And
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: on the other,
• 0:54
  Speaker 0: the startup ecosystem is just rewriting the physics of procurement.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It's a real collision of cultures and budgets.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and well, battlefields.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We've got five key clusters to get through today.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We're going to look at this explosion in industrial capacity, the reality of AI moving into the plumbing of warfare, the drone versus counter drone arms race.
• 1:17
  Speaker 0: Which is escalating fast.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Then the economics of laser weapons and finally the leadership strategies trying to make sense of it all.
• 1:24
  Speaker 0: There's a lot of signal on the noise these past two weeks.
• 1:27
  Speaker 0: Let's get into it.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: So we have to start with the hardware.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the capital, the ecosystem, the industrial base.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, for a long time, the critique of the Western defense industry was that we build Ferraris when we really need Fords.
• 1:38
  Speaker 0: Exquisite R&D, but brittle supply chains.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: But looking at the updates from mid-January, specifically from Lockheed Martin, that narrative is being forcefully corrected.
• 1:49
  Speaker 0: It is.
• 1:49
  Speaker 0: The numbers are pretty startling.
• 1:51
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
• 1:51
  Speaker 0: If you saw the updates from Tim Cahill and Daniel Nimblett at Lockheed, they dropped a figure on the Passy III MSC that really sets the tone for twenty twenty
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: six.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: So just for context, the PAXY three MSE is the high velocity interceptor for the Patriot system, right?
• 2:05
  Speaker 0: Yeah, it's the bullet that hits the incoming bullet, a critical defensive asset.
• 2:09
  Speaker 0: And for
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: years, production was pretty steady, but you know, relatively
• 2:13
  Speaker 0: low.
• 2:14
  Speaker 0: It was.
• 2:15
  Speaker 0: They have now reached an agreement to ramp production from six hundred a year to two thousand a year.
• 2:21
  Speaker 0: over the next seven years.
• 2:22
  Speaker 0: That's
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: more than a three x increase.
• 2:24
  Speaker 0: It's massive.
• 2:25
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
• 2:25
  Speaker 0: And what's interesting here is that this isn't just about working faster.
• 2:29
  Speaker 0: They're calling it the acquisition transformation strategy.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So they're redesigning the whole process.
• 2:33
  Speaker 0: The whole factory floor.
• 2:35
  Speaker 0: It signals a move away from just in time efficiency, which is great for the civilian world, to just in case capacity, which is what you need for a major conflict.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And we saw a similar flex at the F- Thirty-Five plant in Fort Worth.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Jim Tacklett and Greg Ulmer hosted the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseff, and the headline wasn't just the visit.
• 2:55
  Speaker 0: It was the numbers.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: It was the numbers.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: They delivered a hundred and ninety-one jets in twenty twenty-five.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: A new record.
• 3:02
  Speaker 0: And the vibe of those posts is very specific.
• 3:05
  Speaker 0: It's not we're trying our best.
• 3:06
  Speaker 0: It's we are the arsenal.
• 3:08
  Speaker 0: The message from the prime seems to be, you want mass.
• 3:12
  Speaker 0: We're the only ones who can actually deliver it.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: That's the old steel argument.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: But then you flip the coin to the venture backside and the philosophy is just completely different.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Eves Augustus from Stark wrote a brilliant reflection on this.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: He moved from a prime to a VC backed firm and he used this great analogy of the cargo ship versus the hydroplane.
• 3:33
  Speaker 0: I love that visual.
• 3:34
  Speaker 0: The prime is this cargo ship, immense capacity, huge momentum.
• 3:38
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
• 3:38
  Speaker 0: But it takes five miles to even turn the rudder.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Whereas the VC bag startup is the hydroplane.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: It skims the surface.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: It's agile.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It's built for speed.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Eves points out that in his new world, they're taking products to TRL seven in months.
• 3:52
  Speaker 0: Let's pause on that for a second.
• 3:53
  Speaker 0: TRL seven.
• 3:54
  Speaker 0: That's technology readiness level seven.
• 3:56
  Speaker 0: So we're talking about a prototype demonstrated in an operational environment.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Not just on a lab bench.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: It's ready to get dirty.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And that speed is vital because the threat changes weekly, doesn't it?
• 4:05
  Speaker 0: It does.
• 4:07
  Speaker 0: You can't spend ten years building a counter drone system if the drones themselves change every month.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Whitefeld from ARX Robotics really emphasized this.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: They just partnered with Daimler Truck AG.
• 4:18
  Speaker 0: That's an interesting pair.
• 4:19
  Speaker 0: A robotics startup and a legacy truck maker.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It is, and Mark made this point that it's not about the press release.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: It's about the hard work that is rarely visible.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: It's about merging that hydroplane agility with the cargo ship's scale.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: But...
• 4:33
  Speaker 0: There is a bit of a wet blanket on all this.
• 4:35
  Speaker 0: And that's the budget.
• 4:36
  Speaker 0: Someone has to sign the checks.
• 4:38
  Speaker 0: Luca Leone shared a pretty sobering analysis of Britain's twenty twenty five defense review.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the reality check.
• 4:45
  Speaker 0: Luca points out a twenty four billion funding gap over the next decade for the UK.
• 4:50
  Speaker 0: He warns that the review could just become a statement of intent instead of actual combat capacity.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: And he noted that conventional force spending is actually falling in the near term.
• 4:58
  Speaker 0: Correct.
• 4:59
  Speaker 0: Artillery stocks are thin.
• 5:01
  Speaker 0: So while we're celebrating Lockheed ramping up missile production, there's a real question in Europe about solvency.
• 5:06
  Speaker 0: Innovation requires solvency.
• 5:08
  Speaker 0: That's
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the classic defense dilemma.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we have the hardware scaling up, but we also need the software to run it.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And this brings us to our second cluster, AI and autonomy.
• 5:19
  Speaker 0: And the conversation has thankfully moved past the, you know, the Skynet stuff into what I'd call industrial AI.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: It's becoming the plumbing of the war machine.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: It might sound boring, but it's revolutionary for the operator.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: A perfect example is what Preston Feinberg shared about Palantir and the Navy.
• 5:36
  Speaker 0: Ah yes, the ship OS.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Ship operating system.
• 5:39
  Speaker 0: So think of it as a digital twin for the entire shipbuilding process.
• 5:43
  Speaker 0: which is incredibly complex, thousands of suppliers, millions of parts.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And instead of static spreadsheets, ShipOS uses AI to connect everyone.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: So if a vow is late from a factory in Ohio, the system automatically reorganizes the work schedule in the shipyard.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Precisely.
• 5:59
  Speaker 0: So workers aren't just standing around waiting, it's dynamic.
• 6:03
  Speaker 0: And Feinberg notes it uses a shared savings contract, which is clever.
• 6:07
  Speaker 0: Palantir gets paid.
• 6:08
  Speaker 0: based on the efficiency they deliver.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: That aligns the incentives.
• 6:11
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's the back office.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: But what about the front line, the kill chain?
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: We saw a fascinating update from Victor Mengen about the MAV and SMART system.
• 6:20
  Speaker 0: This is where AI really changes the speed of battle.
• 6:23
  Speaker 0: They used this system to analyze satellite imagery of an airbase in Kaleningrad.
• 6:29
  Speaker 0: The AI identified and classified Su--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: And the time to result.
• 6:33
  Speaker 0: Thirty seconds.
• 6:34
  Speaker 0: That's...
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: That is wild.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: A human analyst would take hours, maybe days.
• 6:39
  Speaker 0: Right.
• 6:39
  Speaker 0: The AI flags it, classifies it, and puts it on a commander screen in half a minute.
• 6:44
  Speaker 0: That just compresses the whole decision loop.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: And the market is clearly buying into this.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: MOAD-M posted that Harmitant AI raised a two hundred million dollar Series B.
• 6:53
  Speaker 0: And that was led by Dissalt Aviation, which is significant.
• 6:56
  Speaker 0: Dissalt makes the Rafaal jet.
• 6:58
  Speaker 0: For them to lead around in AI startup shows they know the future isn't just the metal frame.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: It's the autonomous mission systems incited.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: It connects to an interview Shashank Joshi did with Torsten Reel from Helsing.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: They talked about precise mass.
• 7:10
  Speaker 0: The idea that AI allows you to control swarms of systems, not just one.
• 7:16
  Speaker 0: But Reel also touched on the ethical dimension.
• 7:19
  Speaker 0: Not in a preachy way, but as a design challenge.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Meaning.
• 7:23
  Speaker 0: Well, if the speed warfare exceeds human reaction time, how do you maintain meaningful human control?
• 7:29
  Speaker 0: It's a problem democracies have to get right.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: That speed issue leads us directly into theme three, the drone war, or really the multi-domain autonomous war.
• 7:39
  Speaker 0: Right, because as Matt McCran from Endorbrel pointed out, we're making a mistake if we only look at the sky.
• 7:45
  Speaker 0: His
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: take on counter UAS?
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: He says we're too fixated on aerial drones.
• 7:49
  Speaker 0: Which seems a little counterintuitive given the news.
• 7:51
  Speaker 0: But
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: look at the Black Sea.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: The Ukrainians changed naval warfare with unmanned surface vessels, USVs.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: My crans point is that if your defense system only looks up, you're going to get hit from the ground or the sea.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: The threat is three hundred and sixty degrees
• 8:03
  Speaker 0: now.
• 8:03
  Speaker 0: And the threats that are in the sky are getting nastier.
• 8:06
  Speaker 0: Benjamin Wolba highlighted a new Russian unit called Rubicon.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: This one really caught my attention.
• 8:10
  Speaker 0: Yeah, this isn't some militia with duct taped consumer drones.
• 8:14
  Speaker 0: This is a state backed center using fiber optic drones and Starlink equipped UAVs.
• 8:20
  Speaker 0: But the phrase will be used that stuck with me is they have zero patience for aesthetics.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Meaning they don't care if it looks pretty?
• 8:26
  Speaker 0: They don't care about polish or paint.
• 8:28
  Speaker 0: They just care about.
• 8:29
  Speaker 0: does it explode and is it cheap?
• 8:31
  Speaker 0: It's brutal efficiency.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And that efficiency is evolving into air-to-air combat.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Aviv Bar-Zohar spotted the Grand UAV carrying a heat-seeking missile.
• 8:42
  Speaker 0: A drone hunting other drones or helicopters.
• 8:44
  Speaker 0: that completely changes the airspace.
• 8:46
  Speaker 0: If a cheap drone can take out a manned helicopter, the risk calculation for sending in pilots just goes through the roof.
• 8:52
  Speaker 0: We
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: are seeing the industry respond though.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Penny Berger and Oleg Vornek reported that drone shield landed an eight point two million dollar military contract.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: So the money is flowing.
• 9:02
  Speaker 0: And the big players are adapting their heavy hitters.
• 9:05
  Speaker 0: Tom Kavanaugh from Lockheed Martin showed the JGM the joint air to ground missile launching vertically.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Why is vertical launch a big deal there?
• 9:12
  Speaker 0: It means you don't need to point the launcher at the target.
• 9:15
  Speaker 0: You can stick it on a truck, launch it straight up, and it can turn to hit a threat from any direction.
• 9:20
  Speaker 0: They're pitching it for counter UAS.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: But doesn't that bring us back to the math problem?
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: A JAGM missile is expensive.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: A drone is cheap.
• 9:28
  Speaker 0: Are we just shooting Rolexes at Cassios?
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 9:32
  Speaker 0: And that economic disparity is the single biggest driver for our fourth theme.
• 9:37
  Speaker 0: The search for a cheaper bullet.
• 9:40
  Speaker 0: Specifically, Directed energy.
• 9:43
  Speaker 0: Laters.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Matt K posted an incredibly detailed deep dive on this.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: He calls it the economic calculus.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: It's
• 9:49
  Speaker 0: the only math that really works in the long run.
• 9:51
  Speaker 0: A sea viper missile can cost millions.
• 9:54
  Speaker 0: Matt K puts the cost of a laser shot at about ten pounds.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Ten pounds, that's less than lunch.
• 9:58
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
• 9:59
  Speaker 0: He highlighted the UK's dragon fire system.
• 10:01
  Speaker 0: which supposedly hit a target the size of a coin from a kilometer away.
• 10:05
  Speaker 0: And the US Navy's heliosystem is already going onto ships.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: So if they're so cheap and effective, why aren't they everywhere?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Matt Kay mentioned blooming.
• 10:13
  Speaker 0: Right, blooming.
• 10:14
  Speaker 0: It's a physics problem.
• 10:16
  Speaker 0: The atmosphere has dust, moisture, fog.
• 10:19
  Speaker 0: A high energy laser hits those particles and heats the air, which scatters the beam.
• 10:24
  Speaker 0: It loses focus.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So it's a weather dependent weapon.
• 10:28
  Speaker 0: And then there's the Red Queens race
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: from Alice in Wonderland.
• 10:30
  Speaker 0: You have to run just to stay in the same place.
• 10:33
  Speaker 0: Yeah, we build a laser.
• 10:34
  Speaker 0: The enemy puts a reflective coating on the drone.
• 10:37
  Speaker 0: It's a constant technological tussle.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: So lasers aren't a silver bullet.
• 10:41
  Speaker 0: No, they're part of a layered defense.
• 10:43
  Speaker 0: You use the ten pound laser for the cheap drone swarm and you save the million pound missile for the supersonic cruise missile.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Right, which Robert Lightfoot noted Lockheed is building eighteen new tracking satellites
• 10:55
  Speaker 0: for.
• 10:55
  Speaker 0: And John Hill posted about the LRASM, the long range anti-ship missile, which is designed to think for itself if it loses connection.
• 11:03
  Speaker 0: The high end is getting smarter too.
• 11:04
  Speaker 0: And
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I also want to quickly mention Stephen Sturges's note that Waldo.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: three point oh a free AI for drones is back online.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: It just shows the barrier to entry for smart drone tech is incredibly low.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: That's
• 11:16
  Speaker 0: a great point.
• 11:16
  Speaker 0: It's happening at both ends of the spectrum.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we've covered factories, AI, drones and lasers.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: But none of this matters if the doctrine, the strategy is broken.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: This brings us to our final cluster.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Leadership.
• 11:29
  Speaker 0: And there's some really sharp criticism this week about whether we are actually battle proving our investments.
• 11:35
  Speaker 0: Richard William had a very provocative post about the Royal Navy's Proteus helicopter.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: The unmanned helicopter program.
• 11:42
  Speaker 0: Yes.
• 11:43
  Speaker 0: It costs about sixty million pounds.
• 11:45
  Speaker 0: It flew, so it's a technical success.
• 11:47
  Speaker 0: But William asks the hard question, is it scalable?
• 11:51
  Speaker 0: If a drone costs sixty million, can you afford to lose it?
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: And if you can't afford to lose it, it's not really expendable, is it?
• 11:57
  Speaker 0: Precisely.
• 11:58
  Speaker 0: He argues we need cheap mass, not unmanned luxury.
• 12:01
  Speaker 0: You can contract that with a report from a TNL's at the NRW summit in Germany.
• 12:05
  Speaker 0: What
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: did he find?
• 12:06
  Speaker 0: He pointed out that while Germany is investing billions in defense, less than one percent is designated for unmanned systems.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Less than one percent in twenty
• 12:14
  Speaker 0: twenty six.
• 12:14
  Speaker 0: It's shocking.
• 12:15
  Speaker 0: He says they lack battle proving.
• 12:17
  Speaker 0: You can't understand modern war if you aren't testing these systems in the mud in the chaos of electronic warfare.
• 12:23
  Speaker 0: Which
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: is exactly what Ukraine is getting right.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: German Stelmak posted about Ukraine's new defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: His strategy is fascinating.
• 12:32
  Speaker 0: Trust is the currency.
• 12:34
  Speaker 0: That's his line.
• 12:35
  Speaker 0: He's
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: basically treating the Ministry of Defense like a Silicon Valley tech giant.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Defense tech first.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: He's digitizing the paper chaos and creating career ladders for tech talent in the military.
• 12:47
  Speaker 0: It's about mobilizing the talent base, not just the industrial base.
• 12:51
  Speaker 0: Pascal M. noted something similar with the Swiss Army's focus on the Sensor Intel Command Effect Network.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a final, perfect thought on strategy from Benjamin Tallis.
• 13:01
  Speaker 0: Technology does not equal transformation.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: That's the quote.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: You can buy all the best tech in the world.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: But if your organization is stuck in nineteen ninety, if you can't share data, if you can't fail fast, you will lose.
• 13:14
  Speaker 0: It's a lot to digest.
• 13:15
  Speaker 0: It
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: is.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: From the factory floors in Fort Worth to the laser labs in the UK, the machine is definitely moving.
• 13:21
  Speaker 0: I think the takeaway for you, the listener, is that the experimentation phase is ending.
• 13:25
  Speaker 0: We are now entering the industrialization phase.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: The toys are being put away and the tools are being engaged.
• 13:31
  Speaker 0: That's a good way to put it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Before we go, here's a final thought for you to mull over.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: We talked about the economic calculus, the ten pound laser versus the one thousand pound drone, but consider the AI.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: If an AI can coordinate a swarm of five thousand drones simultaneously, does the cost even matter anymore?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Can a laser system, even a cheap one, track and engage five thousand targets at once before it's overwhelmed?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: We might be solving the cost equation, but we haven't solved the saturation equation.
• 14:01
  Speaker 0: And that's the question that keeps strategists awake at night.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Also check out our other editions on ICT and tech insights, health tech, cloud, digital products and services, artificial intelligence, and sustainability in green ICT.
• 14:16
  Speaker 0: Thanks for listening.
• 14:17
  Speaker 0: Stay sharp out there.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: And don't forget to subscribe for the next deep dive into the defense sector.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Catch you next
• 14:22
  Speaker 0: time.