Can Emerging Military Tech Firms Provide Better Defense For Less?

INNOVATION

Battlefield innovation drives surge in cyber attacks on defence contractors

New report warns drone developers and advanced weapons suppliers are becoming prime cyber targets as espionage campaigns expand across Europe’s defence industrial base

Rune Joins Anduril’s NGC2 Prototype Team

Right on the heels of joining Lockheed Martin’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototype team last month, logistics and sustainment software startup Rune announced today that it joined Anduril’s NGC2 team, making them the only company on both prototype contracts.

India Expands Airpower Through Israeli Aircraft and Defense Technology Deals

India is deepening one of its most important defense partnerships, turning to Israeli firms for aircraft, sensors, and weapons that now sit at the center of several major modernization efforts.

Booz Allen's Steve Escaravage on Defense Tech Trends

In an interview published on Booz Allen’s website, Escaravage said defense leaders are moving beyond debate and toward broad recognition that emerging technologies are fundamentally changing warfare.

Beyond the Missile: A Cost-Per-Effect Blueprint for the Future Force

Should the United States buy more destroyers, or would the money be better spent developing bases, munitions, or software? These are the kinds of questions the Department of Defense confronts every year when building its budget.

Yet the Pentagon’s process still lacks a clear way to answer the most fundamental question: Which force structure delivers the greatest strategic effect for every dollar spent? And just as important: How should the Pentagon work with industry to generate the concepts, data, and prototypes needed to answer that question?

INVESTMENT

SAU Tech Gets $20M for Defense Manufacturing Center of Excellence

“This $20 million investment is about more than bricks and mortar,” said Chancellor Jerry Thomas. “It’s about creating high-wage, high-demand careers right here in south Arkansas. Our graduates will be prepared to step into $50,000-$75,000 jobs, strengthen our local economy, and help our region compete at the highest level.”

New Saudi Fund Aims to Bring US Defense Tech and Local Manufacturing Together

The fund is designed to support the localization of defense technology manufacturing within Saudi Arabia, targeting sectors such as unmanned aerial vehicles, aerospace, counter-UAS systems, automated platforms, AI-enabled defense technologies, and maritime solutions.

TECHNOLOGY

Can Emerging Military Tech Firms Provide A Better Defense For Less?

Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey made news last week when he told interviewers on CNBC’s Squawk Box that America could spend billions – perhaps hundreds of billions – less on defense, if we didn’t “spend too much money on the wrong thing.”

It’s hard to argue with that. The Pentagon is still buying $13 billion aircraft carriers that are vulnerable to modern high speed missiles; heavy armored vehicles that have failed in virtually every major war of the past two decades; excess nuclear weapons that make a nuclear conflict more, not less likely; and complex, costly, underperforming systems like the F-35 combat aircraft. None of these systems are well suited to the most likely conflicts of the future, and they are devouring resources that could be used to meet more urgent defense and domestic needs. They exist primarily because of special interest politics.

They fill the bottom lines of powerful firms like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX, and they funnel revenue to the states and districts of powerful members of Congress who jealously guard the funding levels of their favorite projects, often adding more money than the Pentagon even asked for, or blocking the department from retiring outmoded programs like the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

Albion River Launches Ignium, a Leading Merchant Provider Across the Global Defense Weapons Ecosystem

Ignium unites a portfolio of market-leading companies including: FAAC, Inter-Coastal Electronics, Battlespace Simulations, Epsilor, Maytag Aircraft and Wescom Group. Each company has long operating histories, proprietary intellectual property, and entrenched positions within defense and security programs.

Collectively, these businesses support customers across air, land, and maritime domains and operate within regulatory, qualification, and operational environments characterized by high barriers to entry and long program durations. The company operates across three core weapons systems verticals – Software; Power; and Energetics & Pyrotechnics – supporting the full program lifecycle from development through deployment and sustainment.

POLICY

CIA overhauls acquisition to get new tech faster

The new framework includes a vendor-vetting system and streamlined IT authorization.

EUROPE

European defence, security and resilience startups raised a record $8.7B in 2025

The market is hot, especially for companies out of Munich, says the new report from Dealroom and NATO Innovation Fund

London-Based Occam Industries Raises €3M Pre-Seed

London-based Occam Industries has raised a €3 million Pre-Seed round led by Czech Presto Tech Horizons, with participation from Antler, Freedom Fund, TYR.vc, and other international investors to accelerate deployment and product development. The funding follows the company’s approval for integration testing by Ukraine’s Brave1 defense tech cluster.

Ukraine Races to Build “Sunray” Air Defense Laser to Protect Cities From Russian Drones

Unlike large Western laser programs such as the US Navy’s Helios, which cost $150 million to develop, Ukrainian developers say their laser system was built in roughly two years for just a few million dollars, with an expected price tag of a few hundred thousand dollars per unit, the Atlantic wrote.

STARTUPS

Integrate raises $17M to move defense project management into the 21st century

At each company, Conafay ran into the same software hurdle: collaborating on government contracts was a logistical mess that forced his teams and their federal counterparts to rely on a tedious back-and-forth of PDFs and Excel files. The bottleneck was always the same—most project management tools like Atlassian’s Jira and Asana simply weren’t secure enough to meet the government’s strict security standards.

Inleap Photonics secures Pre-Seed funding for laser-based drone defense

Hannover-based DeepTech startup Inleap Photonics has completed its Pre-Seed funding round and is emerging from stealth mode. High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF)