Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast The Defense Brief

Anduril, Babcock, Tekever and ARX all have something in common: they buy their parts from Isembard. The company just opened the largest factory London has seen since the Second World War.

I sat down with Alexander Fitzgerald to discuss why he is building the first software-first factory, why manufacturing is the rate limiter on everything, and what the modern franchisee looks like.

Castelion, Saronic, Impulse Space, Hadrian, Firestorm Labs — Jackson Moses backed all of them, solo, out of Dallas, starting when defense wasn't investable. Fund two closed this year at $85M.

In this episode: what he screens founders on. What the first Castelion meeting felt like, when three SpaceX veterans said they could build hypersonics and every VC said no. Why program of record is the only thing that matters in defense. And what Europe would have to do to get a check from him.

For twenty years, Alex Ferrara bet on the winners of the internet economy. At Bessemer, he led Shopify's Series A and backed companies like Pipedrive. Then, a little over a year ago, he published a piece announcing he was going all in on European defense.

In this episode, we get into what he saw coming: why European resilience is a generational shift and not another hype cycle. Where Europe has a right to win, What Helsing's mega-round says about king-making in defense tech. Why he bet on Auterion and why he thinks The Exploration Company culd become one of the most valuable companies in Europe.

Plus, the corners of the market that are still quiet — space tech, offensive cyber, and yes, bionic cockroaches.

Let’s dive in. 

"We were dreamers from the very beginning — everyone told us it was a toy."

Tencore is the leading UGV company in Ukraine. Their ground robots carry water, ammunition, and wounded soldiers across the most dangerous kilometers of the front line.

I first met Ronan over a year ago, when Tencore was just starting. What struck me most in our conversation is how far the story has moved since.

Ukraine now wants 100% of frontline logistics done by robots. Tencore just signed the biggest UGV order in history. And for the first time, these machines aren't just supplying the front line — they're fighting on it.

We talked about the robotisation of the battlefield, what it takes to build for scale under missile threat, and the joint ventures with Quantum Systems, Shark Robotics that are bringing this technology to the rest of the world.

“Ukraine will be a Silicon Valley for drones.”

Sine Engineering is powering the comms backbone of Ukraine’s drone war — keeping hundreds of thousands of drones flying when GPS is jammed and the enemy is hunting every signal.

Andriy Chulyk sat with me to discuss why electronic warfare (not firepower) is the real edge on the modern battlefield, how they’re scaling globally, and why they were just chosen as the first-ever investment of the US–Ukraine Reconstruction Fund.

"When global defense spend goes from two to three trillion, you don't get bigger militaries — you get a refresh of every platform."

Aaron Applbaum, co-founder of Kinetica, sat with me to talk about building a new Israeli defense fund at the exact moment that refresh begins — backing founders before they've even left the army, in partnership with 8VC.

We get into why October 2023 pulled Israel's best engineers back into uniform and changed what they wanted to build, and where Israel has a real right to win — from the algorithms behind information warfare to its long lead in aerial defense.

"Europe might be behind on a couple of core technologies, but let's make hypersonics ours."

Philipp Kerth, co-founder and CEO of Hypersonica, sat with me to talk about what it takes to launch a hypersonic missile company at the end of a PhD, when defense was still an afterthought in most of Europe.

We cover why maneuverability is the hardest problem in hypersonics, what the new generation of hypersonic systems actually changes on the battlefield, and why building an entirely European supply chain - no US components - is as much a strategic choice as a technical one.

"We're more than 10 times further than where I hoped we'd be. And we're probably one-tenth of the way to where we need to go."

I sat down with Doug Beck, former director of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

He steered billions of dollars into turning Anduril and Palantir from startups into primes, and driving the Replicator initiative, the first real signal of the shift of procurement toward autonomous, expendable systems.

Now, his work continues, shifting defense in Japan and in Europe.

38 years of evolution in air combat — and what the future holds

Translated by Eleven Labs

38 ans d'évolution du combat aérien — et ce que l'avenir nous réserve.

"Age is a poor predictor of the quality of engineers. I'm looking more into curiosity, ownership, passion, motivation."

Martin and I have known each other from the early days of Harmattan, France's first defense unicorn.

Harmattan went from zero to 100+ people across Europe, the Middle East and the US.

We discuss how they built a talent culture that compounds on itself, how Harmattan is contributing to the next generation of combat aircraft, and why vertical integration is the real moat.

“I don’t believe AI is something that you can just buy.”

I sat down with Bertrand Rondepierre, Director of AMIAD - the AI agency of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces - to discuss what it really takes to make AI operational in defense.

Drawing on his experience at Google Brain, Bertrand goes deep on data, infrastructure, culture, and command - and how AI is reshaping the armed forces from the inside.

“Those are the only drones from outside of Ukraine that are still procured. The rest doesn’t work, period.”

This year, Quantum Systems tripled its valuation to over €3 billion. I sat down with Florian Seibel to dig into:

• How they actually won key contracts in the US and Australia
• What being truly involved in Ukraine looks like in practice
• Will they IPO soon

“Just because you’re not seeing it, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It means you’re in the wrong room..”

I sat down with Eric Slesinger, founder of 201 Ventures and investor in CX2, Delian and Polar Mist, to talk about spotting inflection points before they become consensus.

We discuss:
- Why the Baltics and Nordics are moving faster than the biggest defense budgets

- Why “build first, explain later” wins in defense

- When incubation makes sense — and why you should only do it with extreme conviction

A conversation about first-check investing, gray-zone competition, and building what doesn’t exist yet.

D3 is one of the only seed funds operating from inside a war zone. In just two years, they’ve backed 19 companies — all focused on one mandate: helping Ukraine win the war.

At the center of that story is Eveline Buchatsky.

She’s the investor founders call when they want to deploy next to the end user — not in theory, but in practice. She brings startups to brigades, into command centers, and into combat testing — scaling products in the most contested environment.

In this conversation, we talk about what she’s learning from the battlefield that the rest of the world hasn’t caught up to yet:

• Why next year may be the year of autonomous interception
• How robots are about to take over the zero line,
• Which are the next categories to watch

A rare, ground-truth view of what actually matters on tomorrow’s battlefield.

Biodefense has quietly moved from a public-health niche to a core national-security challenge — but most people still treat biology as healthcare, not infrastructure.

This week, I sat down with Max Breet, who went from military → Anduril → now leading biosecurity work at Ginkgo Bio. Few people have seen the shift from kinetic defence to biological risk as clearly as he has.

We talk about how cheap tools, AI and geopolitical competition are transforming biology into a strategic domain; the real (non-sci-fi) scenarios governments should prepare for; and what a “biological radar” looks like when deployed both conflict and civil zones. 

A conversation for anyone thinking about the future of defence beyond drones, autonomy and EW.

To learn more:

- Hoover Report on Biology (https://www.hoover.org/research/biosecurity-really-strategy-victory)

- Gingko Newsletter on Biodefense (https://thesignalbio.substack.com/p/introducing-the-signal)

A new class of European defense companies is emerging — full-stack, software-first, and ambitious enough to challenge the old order.

Delian Alliance Industries, founded by former Apple engineer Dimitrios Kottas, recently announced a $14M Series A to accelerate production of its autonomous and affordable defense systems — spanning sensors, software, electronic warfare, and interception.

What makes Delian distinct is the path that led to it. Before Ukraine, before defense drew the attention it has today, Kottas left Apple’s Special Projects Group and moved back to Athens — applying many of the learnings from Silicon Valley’s culture of rapid iteration, integration, and product discipline to a four-year-old defense startup now deploying systems across Europe.

A lot of people think they know what In-Q-Tel is. Very few understand what they actually do.

In this episode, JD Englehart breaks it down in a way I haven’t heard before — from how they scout technologies on the edge, to how they pressure-test them against real intelligence problems, to what founders get wrong when they think about working with government.

If you care about autonomy, sensing, C2, or how innovation enters national-security missions, this is worth listening to.

When people think of drones in Ukraine, they often picture cheap FPVs diving into targets.
But there’s another story unfolding above them — one of endurance, precision, and scale.

During my visit to Kyiv, I saw firsthand how Skyeton has built a completely different kind of company — one that flies at 10 kilometers altitude, survives dozens of missions, and is now nearing $100M in revenue. From a small Ukrainian workshop to a global exporter, Skyeton has become one of the most respected defense manufacturers to emerge from the war.

In this episode, I sat down with Pavlo Shevchuk to explore how they did it — and what Europe can learn from Ukraine’s defense innovators.

In Europe, a new generation of defense companies is emerging — vertically-integrated, software-first, and unapologetically ambitious.

Few capture that shift better than ⁠STARK⁠. Born in Germany, tested in Ukraine, and now expanding from air to sea, Stark is building the foundations of a new European defense industry.

I spoke with ⁠Philip Lockwood⁠, STARK’s Director and former Head of Innovation at NATO, about how to build a modern defense company from the ground up — in Europe, and for Europe.

🎙️ Episode Chapters
03:03 – The origins of STARK and its mission
05:39 – Building defense capabilities in Ukraine
08:32 – Expansion into the UK and Europe’s defense landscape
10:44 – Germany’s defense transformation
13:22 – Becoming a new European “prime”
17:09 – Global ambitions & ecosystem building
19:52 – A collaborative defense ecosystem
21:26 – Positioning STARK in the global defense landscape
24:13 – The future of multi-domain operations
26:08 – Unlocking swarming & autonomy
28:42 – What’s next for STARK

Sir Chris Deverell is a retired four-star General who spent nearly 40 years in the British Army, culminating as Commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command.

A vocal advocate for defence modernisation, he pushed for digital innovation inside the MoD and founded its first Innovation Hub.

Today, he advises and invests in cutting-ed ge startups like Helsing and Cambridge Aerospace, making him one of the rare European generals shaping the defence innovation ecosystem.

We discuss winning in a pan-European go-to-market, procurement reforms and future technologies that interest him.

Mikolaj is the founder of Expeditions Fund, an early-stage VC firm focused on national security. What began in Poland has since expanded across Europe, backing companies like Alpine Eagle, Comand AI, Orasio, and Cambridge Aerospace.

In our conversation, we discuss:
🔹 Why Poland is emerging as a defense tech hub
🔹 The categories he’s most excited about
🔹 What it takes to win a pan-European go-to-market

Srdjan is the cofounder and CEO of OrqaFPV, an European company that first made its mark building drone components and full-stack drones. 

Orqa designed what many consider the best FPV goggles on the market, competing head-to-head with Chinese giant DJI. 

After raising a Seed round with Lightspeed, the company has become one of Europe’s most compelling players—sitting at the intersection of reducing reliance on Chinese supply chains, the rapid growth of the defense drone market, and the push toward full autonomy.

Srdjan has a unique perspective on building great hardware in Europe, winning across several geographies and how procurement in defense is evolving.