Defence Expos Become Tech Shows at DSEI; Ukraine Defence Startup Falcons Secures Funding from Green Flag; Project Orion Launches to Construct AI-Enabled Digital Twin of the Earth

Issue 40: Our time at DSEI made us even more excited about convening startups, investors, industry, and government at Resilience Conference which, will be in London in 17 days.

Sep 13, 2025

a boat in the water in front of a bridge — Photo by Samuel Quek on Unsplash

Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media

This newsletter comes at the end of a very long and productive week where we joined thousands of defence and security professionals at London’s ExCel Centre during a crippling Tube strike and periodic torrential rain. DSEI was disorienting and overwhelming, but an excellent opportunity to see everyone. The Resilience Media team met up with — Tiberius, Hadean, Helsing, Quantum Systems, McKinsey, BAE, Plural, Expeditions Ventures, IQT, NIF, NATO DIANA, Stark, Lakestar, Alpine Eagle, Hypersonica, the British Navy, the American DIU, Point Zenith, Vizgard, Volander, among others. We wrote about the launch of the Grail and Sceptre consortiums, MyDefence’s drone library, the Helsing and Systematic partnership, and I enjoyed moderating a panel about Lithuania and its defence tech manufacturing and supply chain successes.

I spent a lot my time at DSEI reflecting on how the industry has changed since it last took place in London two years ago. Many of the startups we cover hadn’t been founded in 2023, and plenty of the companies who exhibited on the show floor this year weren’t sure they’d still be around two years after they signed their contract to exhibit at DSEI. A conference that asks companies to pay huge sums to exhibit and to register two years in advance isn’t built with startups in mind, but I understand why they attend.

Frankly, it made us even more excited about convening startups, investors, industry, and government at Resilience Conference which, will be in London in 17 days. We’re announcing the agenda on Monday but you can get an overview of what will be discussed in our Announcement section below. Tickets are almost sold out and our programme is full. We can’t wait to share the full agenda with you soon.

Elsewhere on Resilience Media, we covered funding news from Ukraine (below in Funding Announcements) and a study on the rise of DIY drones. We also published some guest posts well worth your time:

A Journey to DSEI Through the Disinformation Looking Glass, by Maria Amelie, Factiverse CEO
The Case for Strategic Autonomy in the UK and Europe, from Hugo Jammes, Founding Partner, EDT Ventures

We’ll be back on Monday with our full agenda.

-Leslie, co-founder, Resilience Media

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Falcons, one of the wave of defence tech startups out of Ukraine that have emerged out of the war against Russia, has picked up some investment as it scales its business. Green Flag Ventures, a firm based out of LA that focuses specifically on early-stage rounds for startups out of Ukraine that build AI, cybersecurity and dual-use tech, is writing the check. This is the first time that a U.S. investor has backed the startup.

The exact amount is not being disclosed, but Svitlana Braslavska, the CMO and COO who co-founded Falcons with CEO Yehor Dudinov, described it in an emailed interview as a “typical” early-stage check for Green Flag. The VC has previously made investments of between $1.5 million and $5 million in five startups, per PitchBook data. Read the full piece here.

Resilience Conference Announcement

Resilience Conference 2025 is about the future. We meet at a time when technology, strategy, and investment are transforming how we defend our democracies. What was once the preserve of traditional industry is now shaped by entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors who bring speed, ambition, and innovation. The question we will ask together is: what comes next?

This year’s programme brings together leaders and operators who are not only shaping today’s battlefield but also preparing for tomorrow’s. Across fireside chats, panels, and breakout sessions, we will explore the forces driving change: from autonomy and encryption to industrial resilience and the real lessons from Ukraine.

We invite you to join us for two days of debate, collaboration, and discovery — and to be part of the community working at the frontier of defence and security.

📍 London | 🗓️ September 2025
🎟️ Tickets are limited. Secure yours today.

Aechelon Technology, long known in defence circles for its geospatial simulation and Synthetic Reality training systems, has launched Project Orbion in collaboration with Niantic Spatial, ICEYE, BlackSky, and Distance Technologies. The goal, in short, is to construct a live, AI-enabled digital twin of the Earth.

Defence and security decision-making increasingly depends on real-time, multi-sensor data. Project Orbion fuses satellite imagery, radar intelligence, photogrammetry, and AI into a continuously updated 3D model of the planet. Unlike traditional simulators, this system is designed to keep pace with the world as it changes. Wildfires, floods, military movements, shipping lanes, disaster response—all can be tracked and modelled as they unfold.

The system can be used in two ways. First, using heads-up displays and other technologies, users can see through objects and terrain. They can also see live video overlays in certain situations that marry on-the-ground situational data, geospatial information, and even prediction data based on vehicle and troop movements. The system can also be used to train AI in real time, allowing it to move through the model of the earth and learn how to interact with terrain, buildings, and water.

It is, in a word, wild. Read more here.

The Genval Forum II: "Emerging technologies for European Resilience" on September 24 in Genval, outside Brussels, is an ecosystem convening of 200+ dual-use and defence tech innovators, industry, venture capital, and EU and NATO decision-makers around themes relevant to the EU's strategic focus on competitiveness, emerging technologies, resilience, and defence. Resilience Media is happy to support the Genval Forum as a community partner. The forum is free to attend but invitation-based, with priority given to profiles aligned with the Forum themes and objectives. You can submit a request for an invitation here: www.genvalforum.eu