Britain had announced this last week biggest ever Military aid package for Ukraine. TeaThat bill takes total UK support for this financial year to £3 billion – not quite the same as the $50 billion the US recently committed, but still substantial.
But while most of those funds will be spent on very traditional military hardware, a new technology initiative launched last weekend was aimed at enhancing Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare capabilities against Russia. In fact, London Defense Tech Hackathon It was the first event to bring together some of the UK’s brightest minds in technology, venture capital and national security in a military setting. The idea was to hack together ideas to help Ukraine and create a more porous layer between the fast-paced civilian tech world and the very different world of the military.
Put together by Alex Fitzgerald Skyraal and richard nearby forces of the futureBoth were joined by co-organisers including the Honorable Artillery Company, apollo defense, lambda automata and D3 VC among others.
The event brought together developers skilled in both hardware and software to foster innovation in defence, national security and deeptech. The main focus was on drones and their applications on the battlefield, both on the hardware and electronic systems required to fly them to their targets and counter-drone systems.
As most observers of the war have pointed out, this war has taken on an entirely new dimension compared to previous wars. Today, drones and electronic countermeasures are the order of the day, as Ukraine attempts to fight off a much larger aggressive Russia, by asymmetric means.
Fitzgerald told me: “There Three groups of people are coming to these events. There are builders, investors and the military. I think for everyone, it’s trying to convince their partners to think more about defense technology as an option to build or invest in.
He explained that there were two main tracks of work: electronic warfare and drones or aerial systems: “There’s a short term that I learned from someone smarter than me, which is that the future of defense technologies is going to be smaller, cheaper and driverless.” Is.”
He explained that a main aim was to involve people who were not traditionally involved in defense either building for defense or investing in it: “We’ve got the NATO Innovation Fund, the UK National Security Strategic Investment Fund Like people I have met. So yes, it is a mix of people who are already investing in the defense sector or who have not thought about investing before.
He chose the hackathon format because “the focus is on getting the work done. “Find real builders, not just talk about construction, because that’s where most of the innovation is really happening.”
One of the inspirations for this event was a recent incident El Segundo, California, Defense Tech Hackathon In February this year.
“I think the main thing with military technology is to make it easy to use and as powerful as some consumer technology,” Fitzgerald said. Often have some of the most modern military systems.”
The event also included Katarina Buchatsky representing apollo defense, As engineers focused on cameras, Starlinks and drones, he told me: “Defense technology is a hard industry to get into. And it’s a difficult market to enter for obvious reasons. We’ve found hackathons to be an extremely exciting way for people to get involved because defense technology can seem like a huge black box of contracts that take 10 years, and the technologies that are created [are often] Hidden from public view. At a hackathon you have 24 hours. Make something really cool.”
Interceptor is done
He said that the company has got a lot of success in this El Segundo events.
“We just realized that if people think that this is something that is accessible to them [and] They can do something quickly and make an impact, they want to participate,” she told me.
Buchatsky, who is Ukrainian, also spoke powerfully about Ukraine: “These are very real things for me. When I say I need a drone detector, it’s because I’m looking at a drone detector outside my window that we didn’t detect in time and that’s about to kill my neighbor. This is the reality we face.”
He said it’s important for hackathon participants to know that “they’re building for someone and it could literally save my family’s life.”
Despite the controversy surrounding defense technology in some circles, he said, “Being involved in technology means being interested in a better future. And I really can’t think of a more interesting and better future that is secure and where we can guarantee peace.
NATO was also represented, in the form of the NATO Investment Fund, a fund with one billion euros to invest in defense technology over the next few years.
Fund partner Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky told me the fund was established to support startups “that enhance our collective defense security and resiliency.” We invest in dual-use deep technology, but this fund was conceived before the war in Ukraine. The conflict has now greatly influenced our investment thesis and we are keen to invest in defense technologies that can make Europe more secure.
But why was NATO funding the hackathon?
“I think defense technology is new to many founders and many developers,” Schneider-Sikorsky said. “It’s not as easy for them to understand the problem statements and challenges and get access to end users.”
He said the hackathon format particularly lends itself to this: “Typically, many founders take months, if not years, to connect with the right people in defense ministries, and many of them are here today. Are. So hopefully this will speed things up a lot.”
Another investor present, Alex Flament from HCVC, told me: “People in Europe needed to invest in proper defense technologies. From an investor’s point of view, it appears that there are restrictions on investment for some investors. One of the goals of this is to demystify why there is so much of it among young builders, and really get people more connected to the bigger mission we’re all working on.”
Machine learning experts were there to focus on drone detection: “It builds on our machine vision and object detection knowledge. Ukraine is currently fighting for the whole of Europe and obviously Britain is playing an important role in this. It is essential that we cooperate with them and use the help we have.”
The hackathon came at a time of rising tensions over the use of technologies in defence.
Google recently fired 28 employees after their strike Oppose For example, on the controversial Project Nimbus contract with Israel.
However, defense is clearly rising up the technology agenda.
Recently Anduril Have been taken Next up in the Pentagon program to develop unmanned fighter jets, and more broadly as we learned last year, is venture capital. Inauguration Gateway to Defense Technology.
And in the UK, there is much discussion About how the next wave of weapons could feature high-powered lasers. According to the Ministry of Defence, the Dragonfire weapon is said to be so accurate that it can hit a £1 coin from a kilometer away and costs barely $15 to fire.
Projects emerging from hackathons They might not have been quite as sci-fi, but they were pretty close. How about “high speed”? Interceptor “To shoot down Orlan drones”? And at least they are likely to be deployed much quicker than laser guns.
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