Speaking points: Roundtable discussion with European New Defence companies on defence innovations, 19 May 2025

Speaking points at the Roundtable discussion with European New Defence companies on defence innovations, 19 May 2025:

• I appreciate the invitation to meet with you, – the new defence players.
• I want to intensify the dialogue with new defence companies and plan organise in June a round-table discussion to see how we, as Commission, can support you.
• Because you are the future of defence.
• The Commission together with Member States and NATO are doing a lot to ramp-up our defence readiness.
• And I think, for this community there is no need to repeat what threats we are facing.
• The SAFE regulation, and forthcoming EDIP program will create a lot of new financial and development possibilities for our defence industry and for our defence readiness. An additional 800 bln euros will be invested into defence during next 4 years. Possibilities for joint development and joint procurement will be significantly increased, flagship projects related to 7 strategic domains and strategic enablers will be developed.
• So, – possibilities for ambitious industrial growth will be here.
• But my personal feeling is that we are still not grasping the biggest challenge, – that we need to be ready to fight not only the wars of today but also the wars of tomorrow.
• And our ability to fight the future wars will very much depend on our ability to radically innovate in defence. It is no secret, that startups, SME’s, midcaps in defence, the entire New Defence industry, are those who are bringing a lot of innovation, disruptive technologies, dynamic ambition into development of defence.
• But conditions for the New Defence industry to show all of its potential are still not here, when we speaking about the European Union. That is why we need something like Red Carpet for New Defence program. I am really grateful for your initiative and I am ready to work together with you to make it a reality.
• The simplification omnibus for Defence and Red Carpet for New Defence need to create a totally new ecosystem for defence development in our Union. We need the New Defence Industry not only to bring radically new technologies into our defence, but also to bring a radically new management culture how we manage defence.
• The war of tomorrow is already being fought in Ukraine.
• Two weeks ago I was in Kyiv – I saw the innovative power of the Ukrainian Defence Industry – including start ups.
• Ukraine’s experience drone war: 80% of targets are destroyed by drones. There’s a 10 km “death valley” on the front line where nothing can move. A traditional tank on average survives 6 minutes in this “Death Valley”.
• Performance of individual drones is measured and evaluated using all the available digital data. Every 2 months there is a need for radical innovation of the drones in operation, since Russians are learning how to jam or intercept the previous models.
• Ukrainian drone producers and operators are united in the BRAVE1 platform, they are competing among themselves, since each successful hit gives them additional points in the public bonus system. The more targets they hit, the better  drones  they receive from the Govenment. Targeting the enemy is done in the same way as “Uber” connects with clients. The digital approach, and computer game approach is prevailing against traditional conventional military approach.
• To defend 1200 km of front line this year – in 2025 — Ukrainians will produce and use for defence 4 mln cheap drones of their own production.
• Back in 2022 Ukraine had just 3 companies, which were producing drones, now they have 500 companies.
• According to the Ukrainians, Russians are as good as Ukrainians with drones and electronic warfare . Sometimes even better.
• When our intelligence services predict that Russia can be ready to test NATO Article 5 during the next 3-5 years, we need to remember that at the moment on the European continent there are only 2 battle tested military armies. One of Ukraine, another – one of aggressor. Both of them have battle tested “Armies of drones”, with the capacity to use several millions drones each year.
• If day X  comes, Lithuania with its 900 km long borders with Belarus and Russia will need to be able to use around 3 mln drones per year. It’s the same  with other Baltic countries. And we cannot produce or procure them in advance, because they will become obsolete within 2 months.
• So for all these reasons, to defend ourselves against possible Russian aggression, we need to get ready for the war of the future: for millions of drones.
• And the truth is: we are not yet ready.
• So the future of Europe depends on you, our defence innovators.
• That is why we need also to work together with the Ukrainians, in order to ask them to help us to create a similar ecosystem as they did with BRAVE1.
• Ukrainians are ready to work with us. We have the EU Defence Innovation Office in Kyiv and just one week ago we created the Joint Task Force with Ukraine, which among other tasks will have a goal together with BRAVE1 to create possibilities for joint development of new weapon systems, for testing European defence products on the front line and for joint analysis of war data. That could be a good possibility to work together with Ukraine on the Red Carpet for New Defence in Europe.
• Here I need to stress, that of course, – it is not true, that we are doing nothing for innovations and SME’s in defence
• There are quite a number of important programs and possibilities for innovations and SME’s, created by the EU institutions over the past years, like the European Defence Fund, the Defence Business Accelerator, and other programs. Regular defence hackathons are organized, in the autumn we shall come out with the Technological Roadmap to support the transformation of defence, focusing on new technologies (like Artificial intelligence, and Quantum technologies).
• I will not go into details, how much of its financial resources the EDF devotes to SMEs, those are really significant numbers, but …
• But in the EU to get a permit for a new defence factory it takes at least 2 years. To get approval of a grant from EU programs it takes not less than 1 year. And you mention many more existing problems posed by EU or national regulations for the European New Defence industry.
• It is no longer acceptable. In defence, we don’t have the luxury any more to live with such a slow speed of decision-making. And with such a piecemeal speed of improvement of our defence.
• We cannot expect that Putin will postpone his plans for aggression until we will be ready to defend ourselves.
• That is why we need to be BRAVE in changing the ways how we are doing defence. And we need a Red Carpet for New Defence. Because you are BRAVE!
• Ukrainians learned how to create the BRAVE platform after the war came to their country. In order to avoid war, we need to learn to do the same to make sure the war will not come.

(Photo: European Commission (Jennifer Jacquemart))