After decades of slow-burning development, the defense market in Europe is now in a high boil. Even with much still to do, clear advances are visible: for instance, a greater awareness of the overreliance on external countries and an increase in available resources at the national level (defense budgets rising) and at the European level (the 150 billion euros of the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program, the European Defence Fund (EDF) itself, or the five recently approved macro-projects — European Defence Projects of Common Interest (EDPCIs)). But financial impetus alone may not be enough. As European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius recently stated, “We have secured the funds for our defence. We have established the laws for our defence. Now we must create a market for our defence.”
Remainder, in our view, is a huge challenge that sometimes goes unnoticed: ensuring that the new financial, technological, and human resources available are of the armed forces.
“The defense market in Europe is bubbling with activity. Even though there’s still a lot to do, significant progress is evident”
During the Cold War, much of the strategic technological innovation (such as nuclear energy, ballistic missiles, space technologies, or early Internet developments) emerged from defense research programs funded under a governance model that was very simple: a market essentially monopsonomic (a single buyer, the State), industry players integrated within the defense ecosystem, each tied to a branch of the Armed Forces (one company supplies the Army, another the Navy, another the Air Force) with well-established requirements, standards, and certification processes. Thus alignment between resources and needs was simpler: a single client, very few suppliers (the sector’s primaries), and very few technology creators (the same players). In short, technological creation and military needs were easy to coordinate.
“The defense market in Europe is bubbling with activity. Even though there’s still a lot to do, significant progress is evident”
What happens today when the center of gravity for technological innovation (AI, quantum technologies, robotics, IoT…) has moved from the defense domain to the civilian sector? How do we condense the multiple technological opportunities evolving in civilian ecosystems (dual-use) and driven by private investments and global markets so that they are useful for security and defence? The governance of so many technological poles with potential military applications beyond the primes has become far more complex, and its link to the Army’s operational challenges is a strategic mandate for Spain and Europe to harness their full potential. As an Air and Space Force officer put it at the Youth Mediterranean Dialogue on October 6: “What we need is not for a startup to bring us a lithium-ion battery. We need what comes to the Armed Forces to be a finished program.” In other words, instead of intermediate components, complete solutions that align with their needs should be proposed.
“We need an intermediate layer of public and private actors that connects industry and SMEs with dual-use technological contributions”
This challenge, if addressed, would dramatically boost the efficiency of public defense spending—and, therefore, reduce the public resources required to achieve the desired level of military capability. Our analysis argues that to achieve this, there is a need for a middle layer of public and private actors that connects industry and SMEs with dual-use technological inputs and does the work of translating them into innovative solutions for the final military user’s challenges. In other words, a greater intertwining of the technological opportunities offered by the civilian sector with the real on-the-ground needs of our Armed Forces. Only in this way can we mobilize Spain’s and Europe’s resources most efficiently, maximizing the geopolitical-military power and strategic autonomy gained per euro of public expenditure.
“There is a need for an intermediate layer of public and private actors that connects industry and SMEs with dual-use technological contributions”
Achieving this alignment is one of the main challenges faced by technology SMEs eager to contribute to security and defense: they frequently lack the technical-institutional knowledge and the resources needed to navigate the sector’s culture and processes and to make their technology useful to military units. They need, therefore, better channels to access end users and their operational knowledge (doctrine, requirements, data, and deployment scenarios), essential to develop, test, and jointly adapt civilian technological solutions that can quickly become effective military capabilities.
“Lack of alignment prevents them from securing contracts, delaying the integration of their products into the Armed Forces and impoverishing the national tech base”
In today’s military environments, accelerating development cycles and turning disruptive startups and dual-use firms into providers of military solutions is a strategic imperative. The war in Ukraine has introduced a decisive battlefield variable: the industry’s ability to understand operational problems and to develop, test, and adapt solutions in close collaboration with the Armed Forces, at a speed that outpaces the adversary. For instance, Ukraine, lacking a navy to confront a Russian maritime threat, developed the Magura V5 naval drone and moved from prototype to deployment in just three months. And the race does not stop once a given capability is achieved: some UAV systems reportedly require updates every 6–12 weeks to remain effective against new countermeasures. As President Zelenskiy recently stated, “Russia holds the drone advantage for a month; the next month, it’s ours”.
“Lack of alignment prevents them from securing contracts, delaying the integration of their products into the Armed Forces and impoverishing the national tech base”
By contrast, consider traditional development cycles: in Spain, the adoption of the 8×8 Dragón armored vehicle for the Army, awarded in 2015, did not begin until 2025, and the S-80 submarines for the Navy (ordered in 2004) did not reach deployment until 2023. Aware of the huge technological gaps between these programs and the Ukraine examples, these cases show that times have changed, that a decade of development is unacceptable when a few months are possible, and that maximizing the benefits of technological innovation opportunities to turn them into industrial solutions is mandatory.
“The lack of alignment prevents them from securing contracts, delaying the integration of their products into the Armed Forces and impoverishing the national tech base”
Addressing this challenge does not necessarily require creating new agencies or high-level coordination structures, whose rigidity could clash with the agility and innovation cycles demanded by today’s operating environment. The proposal is to articulate a network of dual-use technology experts and defense specialists who can speak both languages and maintain a continuous dialogue among those who identify military needs, those who understand technological opportunities, and those who can translate them into industrial solutions.
“The proposal is to articulate a network of experts in dual-use technology and the defense environment, capable of speaking both languages”
This activity should materialize in concrete mechanisms for identifying and prioritizing operational challenges, seeking solutions in the civilian ecosystem, co-design with end users, experimentation in representative environments, and support toward industrialization and procurement. Rather than replacing existing initiatives led by actors such as the Circulo Foundation, TEDAE, or AESMIDE, the aim should be to connect, reinforce, and broaden their reach within a systematic approach that seeks to integrate that collaboration layer into the governance of the new investment cycle.
“The proposal is to articulate a network of experts in dual-use technology and the defense environment, capable of speaking both languages”
Developing this intermediate governance and collaboration layer—linking startups, technology companies, the Armed Forces, and the Ministry of Defence—is the key step to respond to the paradigm shift. Strategic autonomy is not only about possessing domestic technology but about ensuring that the talent of a country and of our Union is transformed into hard-power capabilities that deter rivals from threatening the normal, everyday, sovereign functioning of our Spanish and European societies—whether in Ceuta, Ukraine, or the Baltic states.
