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I'm in a room filled with decorated generals looking at satellite images that capture the buildup of military helicopters at a Belarusian airbase after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
My first thought: that’s a lot of helicopters. Second thought: am I really allowed to see this? (Yes, apparently.)
The data analysis — “AI-powered”, of course — comes from Paris-based Preligens. It is one of the startups attending a Nato gathering in Toulouse on Monday to explore how the military alliance can adopt more spacetech.
This is just the latest stage of Nato’s trumpeted cultural reboot. Last year, the 32-member alliance set up the Diana tech accelerator, an experiment in venture capital that marked a first for Europe’s militaries.
The intergovernmental alliance is looking for new ways to fight and prevent wars. Everyone agrees that Ukraine — where $1,500 drones are taking out multimillion-dollar aircraft — has changed the game. Now, Nato wants to funnel some of this scrappy and potentially money-saving spirit into its space defences.
“Space is the domain in which we’re likely to be tested earliest,” said Angus Lapsley, assistant secretary general of Nato’s policy and planning division. Spend a day among military minds and you’ll come away with 10 new things to worry about: like GPS spoofing — where pilots receive false location reports from satellites — and Russian advances on a new, space-based nuclear weapon.
Many European spacetechs would love defence contracts. “The most attractive customer for us is government,” says Andre Oliveira, CEO of Portugal’s N30, which builds satellites. Other startups scoping opportunities at the Nato gathering included Sweden’s Satcube — which salesman Mustafa Hasan inevitably described to me as the “Ikea of satellite broadband”. It makes user-friendly terminals that are keeping mobile hospitals online in Ukraine. “We’re more resilient than [Elon Musk’s] Starlink,” Hasan says.
Still, it will take considerable work for techies to figure out a sprawling organisation like Nato. “I don’t know where to start; who to talk to,” says Stella Guillen, chief commercial officer at Munich rocket company Isar Aerospace, one of the best-capitalised space startups in Europe, having raised over $360m from investors.
“I have a hard time understanding what Nato buys and what the [individual] Nato countries buy — and I’ve worked with Nato for a number of years,” says Andy Lincoln, vice president of Viasat, which develops satellite networks. In response, Giorgio Cioni, deputy assistant secretary general of defence investment at the alliance's HQ in Brussels, promised to create a “simple front door” for spacetechs.
There will be other things for startups to weigh up before going the Nato route — like whether defence work will threaten future investment. Some investors restrict VCs from backing companies that sell to militaries, and many won’t touch this category.
Maybe this stance will change: after Ukraine, many old ways are dying. However far Nato takes its startup embrace, what's clear is that it'll need to take a cleaver to its contract process or risk excluding applicants. “The procurement timelines are years: startups need them to be weeks or months,” says Viasat’s Lincoln.
