Dispatch from Tallinn, Estonia
Observations from the Fifth Defence Tech Meetup, November 2024
The Estonian Founders Association and DarkStar organised this event with the Ministry of Defence, government, startups, military, and investors in attendance. The event is about Estonian founders investing in defence, startups from Ukraine and across Europe pitching for investment, and pitching directly to the Ukrainian military. This write-up does not mention names or locations for security reasons.
Urgency
Everything here is about war, speed, survival, and existential threats. One speaker mentioned a drone that three months ago was the best available. It cost €1,000 and could hunt and destroy €100,000 Russian intelligence drones. It took the Russians two months to update their systems to undermine it. In the next three-four months there will be a move towards FPVs with optical cables. “If you make a tender for EW jammers now, it won’t be valid in four months’ time.”
Strong civil society brings agility
A speaker from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence talked about how they study why Ukraine did not fall in three days. One reason they found is the strong civil society. Over 80,000 Ukrainians were trained to fly UAVs by the Victory Drones NGO; €2bn have been donated to defence over two years; the first satellite for Ukrainian Intelligence was crowd-funded. To make a defence system more agile, they recommend working more closely with civil society.
‘Time runs faster at the frontline’
On the Ukrainian front line, innovation cycles run from three days to three months. One brigade commander said that if he leaves the frontline for two weeks, when he comes back he can’t understand his colleagues' tactics or language because things change so fast. A challenge is that military aid is coming six months late and is out of date when it arrives.
The Trump effect in Ukraine
One prediction is that if the war is ‘frozen’ by Trump, we will move into a four year arms race with Russia to be ready for the next invasion. ‘Europe is unprepared for Russian aggression: Russia produces 3m shells per year, the whole of Europe produces 580,000. The numbers are ‘awful’ for Shaheds, Cruise missiles, and gliding bombs.’
War is personal
A speaker showed a photo of two friends who were killed in battle and said, ‘they are buying us time for defence innovations and the defence industry to develop.’
Deadly metrics
From a startup pitch: ‘We don’t talk openly about our unit prices, but we do talk about the cost per kill. With our product, the cost per kill is 20 times lower.’
What procurement process?
After one startup pitch, a man in a hoodie said ‘I’m with the Ukrainian army. Is the technology ready now? If so, how many do you have? I will buy them now, let’s go outside and I will buy them all now.’