Paolo Trecate

Defense & democracy enthusiast, working to keep Europe safe, sovereign, and tech-strong

Jul 28, 2026

•

5 min read

The New Defense Post #43

This week: Germany creates a sovereign state VC fund for defense tech, NATO launches its "Front Door" to streamline industrial procurement, and Lakestar closes a $300M defense fund urging European tech independence.

Paolo Trecate

Jul 16, 2026

•

5 min read

The New Defense Post #42

This week: Europe's most valuable private startup is a defense company, NATO put $40B behind stopping drones, and Berlin is paying Kyiv to build them.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

Jun 22, 2026

•

6 min read

The New Defense Post #41

This week: how Lithuania went from five defense companies to two hundred in six years, plus Alta Ares, BRAVE FRANCE, Helsing's new drone, and France's startup fast-track.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

Jun 9, 2026

•

6 min read

The New Defense Post #40

This week: SpaceX wins $4.16B to build Golden Dome's orbital threat-tracking layer; Mach Industries raises $300M at $1.8B for the vertically integrated autonomous weapons model Europe doesn't have yet; and ICEYE hits one satellite per week while naming C2 data fusion as its next gap.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

Jun 1, 2026

•

6 min read

The New Defense Post #39

This week: Airbus picks Mistral AI as its sovereign defence AI partner; Rheinmetall and EV startup Harbinger team up to build robot trucks for the US Army; SpaceX wins $2.29B to wire together Golden Dome; and a bonus deep-dive on the ISR exploitation gap Europe hasn't filled yet.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

May 25, 2026

•

6 min read

The New Defense Post #38

This week: ICEYE closes a €300M revolving credit facility as Europe's sovereign SAR constellation model hits profitability; Helsing and OHB formed KIRK, the first European consortium with a named orbital targeting architecture; and Stratolaunch disclosed a Mach 5+ test for the US Missile Defense Agency, highlighting the reusable hypersonic test infrastructure gap Europe still hasn't closed.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

May 11, 2026

•

7 min read

The New Defense Post #37

This week: SWEBAL closes Europe's first new TNT factory since the Cold War; Anduril assembles a commercial space consortium for orbital missile interception under Golden Dome; and Intelic launches BASE, a pan-European drone procurement platform that could finally fix the continent's interoperability problem.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

May 4, 2026

•

6 min read

The New Defense Post #36

This week: The naval autonomy market hit an inflection point as Hanwha and Magnet Defense partnered on 38-meter MUSVs, True Anomaly closed a $650M Series D to lead the emerging space-based interceptor category, and Germany's Bundestag blocked a EUR 263M Bundeswehr container order over doubled per-unit pricing.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

Apr 28, 2026

•

6 min read

The New Defense Post #35

This week: Castelion wins a $105M Navy contract to field the first carrier-launched hypersonic missile; a bootstrapped London C-UAS startup beats larger rivals to a USMC urgent order; and KBR bets on MIT-founded Tagup to fix a decades-broken military logistics problem — plus why European defence logistics is the most underbuilt startup gap nobody's talking about.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

Apr 20, 2026

•

8 min read

The New Defense Post #34

This week: Cambridge Aerospace goes from startup to MoD supplier in 18 months with the Skyhammer interceptor; AeroVironment sets the launched effects benchmark with MAYHEM 10; the EU commits €1.07 billion to 57 defense R&D projects with dedicated startup on-ramps.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

Apr 14, 2026

•

14 min read

The New Defense Post #33

This week: Hermeus hits unicorn status with $350M for hypersonic unmanned fighters; Warburg Pincus launches a dedicated European defence investment platform backed by Munich Re; The Pentagon's FY2027 budget proposes a jaw-dropping $54.6B for its new Autonomous Warfare Group.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2

Apr 8, 2026

•

14 min read

The New Defense Post #32

This week: the Iran war sends European interceptor startups racing to arm Gulf states, Shield AI doubles its valuation to $12.7B on the back of autonomous combat AI, and a Finnish company fits an entire drone factory inside a shipping container.

Diego Paniagua Silva, +2