This week we're about pace. DIU and US Northern Command moving fast and an essay on what we learn from high performance racing
Issue 22: Plus the very real threat of a dark sky event and positive signals for the U.K. defence tech manufacturing industry
Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media
I moderated a panel a few weeks ago where we discussed asymmetrical warfare. One of the panellists compared a typical number of commercial software updates with the rate at which equipment used by U.K. Special Forces is updated. Software updates thousands of time per year, where traditional equipment is updated at most once per week on average. The speed of updates is a new asymmetry, the panellist said.
With that in mind, we look at real life examples of asymmetry this week, sharing two guest essays and a product announcement. The guest posts can be found further down in the newsletter.
Adventure Tactical Upgrades IR Sensors in Flagship Beacon Products
The lights went out: It's time to get serious about energy security
Faster than the Adversary: Building a Racing Mindset in Defence
Also, we analyse why a recent announcement by the DIU is actually very exciting - the DIU and US Northern Command have announced a ‘joint commercial solicitation for novel technologies in support of Replicator 2.’ We hope is first of many bilateral CSOs, and we believe it shows a willingness for the UK Ministry of Defence to take a more proactive approach with startups.
Elsewhere on Resilience Media, more positive indicators from the U.K., this time in manufacturing: Tekever Commits £400M to U.K. Drone Manufacturing After RAF Contract Win
Are you going to London Defence Conference or the London Defence Tech Hackathon at Sandhurst? We’ll be on site at both. Send us a message and we can grab a coffee.
-Leslie, co-founder, Resilience Media
There is no true substitute for war. That does not mean we wish for it, but no simulator, exercise, or carefully managed trial captures the relentless pressure to adapt, improvise and survive. In Ukraine, innovation is happening in hours, days and weeks rather than months or years, and much has been made of this change driven by necessity. It is a constant reminder that real conflict drives adaptation in a way no training environment ever can. However, there is an adjacent field where rapid innovation cycles are the norm, and where adapting equipment until the last moment is measured by the rewards it can bring while dynamically balancing the risks. That field is elite racing engineering. More from Piers Flay, Kraken Technology Group here.
Alarm bells are ringing across Europe. In March, Europe's largest airport, Heathrow, was shut down, and Spain and Portugal lost power in April. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a more profound vulnerability inherent in our increasingly centralised energy systems. The echoes of these alarm bells should serve as a lesson: we need a fundamental change in how we think about and build our energy security for the future.
We've relied on this model for ages: big power plants, sending electricity over vast distances through complex transmission lines. And look, it works, at least most of the time, it does. But this model, for all its efficiency in regular times, creates single points of failure. One fire, one bad storm, or, heaven forbid, something more malicious, and the whole thing can just... domino. The cascading effects can be catastrophic.
Read this guest post from Ivar Kruusenberg, founder of PowerUP Energy Technologies here.
London Defence Tech Hackathon May 2025
10 May 2025, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Our friends at Future Forces, Isembard and EDTH are hosting the 2nd London Defence Tech Hackathon to connect the UK’s brightest young engineering minds with cutting-edge startups, venture capitalists, and U.K. defence and national security leadership and users. Apply here.
Latitude59
May 21-23, 2025, Tallinn, Estonia. Latitude59 is the flagship startup and tech event from Estonia, running since 2012. In recent years, it has grown into a global platform, connecting ecosystems, communities and innovators who change the world and make it a better place. Resilience Media is proud to be a media partner for this year’s event, and we’re pleased to see more focus on defence and security at the conference. Register to attend here.
Europe
Germany’s Intelligence Agency Labels Far-Right AfD as Extremist
The NATO Country With No Military Gets Serious About Defense
National Security
Inside the shadowy business of AI-chip smuggling
UK Immigration Costs are Slowing Science and Engineering Recruitment
Startups
Arondite raises $12M to unlock safe, scalable ‘human-machine’ teaming with AI
Can this space startup challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Starlink?
LSE Study About the Drone Ecosystem in Ukraine
DeepSeek. Temu. Tiktok. China Tech Is Starting To Pull Ahead