Welcome back to the eighteenth edition of The New Defense Post!
In this edition, we’ll cover:
Why Classic Investment Models Fail in the New Defense: Pierre-Marie Derouin joined us as a guest writer to break down how defense has shifted from slow procurement to software-speed execution.
Spotlights: The Royal Navy Is Testing Oshen’s C-Star Micro Uncrewed Ocean Drones; Deutsche Telekom Has Entered a Strategic Partnership and Investment With Quantum Systems
Fundraising News of the Week: Digantara raised $50mn in a Series B to scale its space surveillance capabilities, while Sisir Radar secured $7mn in a Series A to develop radar technology.
Bonus Section: We’ll take a look at USVs and the companies building in this space.
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Why Classic Investment Models Fail in the New Defense
Pierre-Marie Derouin. Photo Credit:
Pierre-Marie Derouin
Something fundamental has changed in defense. For decades, procurement followed predictable rules. Long programmes, slow cycles, heavy documentation. Investors could ignore the sector because nothing moved fast enough to matter.
Then Ghost Shark happened.
In May 2022, Australia gave Anduril a classified brief, a mandate, and a timeline. Three years later, they delivered a new class of autonomous underwater vehicle from a blank sheet using private capital, software velocity, and a development model that looked more like modern tech than legacy defense. They delivered three prototypes on budget and ahead of schedule, unlocking a programme of record worth US$1.1 billion.
Defense is now “eating the world”, precisely the way software once did. But most investors continue to apply software logic to a system operating under sovereign constraints.
Software scales by finding users. Defense scales by surviving procurement gatekeeping and sovereign capability requirements. These are fundamentally different problems. For this guest article, Pierre-Marie Derouin joined us to break down how defense has shifted from slow procurement to software-speed execution.
Spotlights
Photo Credit: Oshen
The Royal Navy is testing Oshen’s C-Star micro uncrewed ocean drones to spot russian submarines and potentially form a “picket line” between the UK and Greenland, with a notional fleet of 1,000 units costing £10m to £20m.
The trials sit inside the UK’s Atlantic Bastion concept, which aims to blend uncrewed vessels, sensors, AI, and traditional naval assets to improve anti-submarine warfare and protect undersea infrastructure. The push comes amid heightened concern about Russian activity around subsea cables and pipelines, plus reports of increased Russian vessels in UK waters and suspected Russian sensors found near UK waters. (Financial Times).
🗣 Anahita Laverack, Co-founder, Oshen: “We could be the early warning system… the eyes and ears in the sea.” (The Sun)
📰 Our Take: This is a strong signal that anti-submarine warfare is starting to look more like the drone revolution in the air: numerous, cheap, attritable sensing at scale rather than only a handful of very expensive crewed platforms.
For European startups, that is exciting because the “winning” product is rarely just the boat. It is the full stack: acoustic and RF sensing payloads, ultra-low power compute, autonomy, comms in harsh EW environments, data fusion, anomaly detection, and integration into the Navy’s systems.
2. Deutsche Telekom Has Entered a Strategic Partnership and Investment With Quantum Systems
Photo Credit: Quantum Systems
Deutsche Telekom has entered a strategic partnership and investment with Quantum Systems, the German drone manufacturer active in Ukraine, marking a notable move by a European telco deeper into defense and security technology. The investment was made through T.Capital’s €2bn Tech Fund, which backs companies across AI, cyber, cloud, IoT, and defense tech, and coincides with Quantum Systems’ current financing round.
The partnership focuses on developing and commercialising drone-enabled solutions to protect critical infrastructure in Germany and across Europe. Quantum Systems’ autonomous surveillance platforms will be combined with Deutsche Telekom’s strengths in secure connectivity, intelligent platforms, and system integration, expanding the drone maker’s reach beyond military customers into civilian and dual-use security applications. (Deutsche Telekom)
🗣 Sven Kruck, Co-CEO, Quantum Systems: “Deutsche Telekom is the ideal partner for increasing the use of our proven technologies in the non-military sector.” (Deutsche Telekom)
📰 Our Take: This is a strong signal that European defense tech is starting to pull in non-traditional strategic investors, not just primes and governments. A tier-one telco backing a drone company shows how the landscape is changing.
This is an example of how volatile sentiment around defense technology is. Once it becomes a “sexy” industry, everyone wants in. The lesson is that sensibilities can change incredibly quickly when there is real motivation. Just a few years ago, large corporations would never have gotten involved in defense.
Other News
Fundraising News
Amount | Name | Round | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
$50mn | Space Surveillance | ||
$7mn | Radar Tech |
Bonus Section — Unmanned Surface Vessels
Photo Credit: Ukraine’s MoD
AI-enabled USVs are moving closer to becoming a must-have in maritime defense, with navies adopting small, persistent surface robots to watch choke points, protect undersea cables, and extend anti-submarine surveillance without using expensive crewed ships. At the same time, attack UGVs are making life very hard for large surface vessels.
Ukraine has shown the most success in this space, turning the Black Sea into a highly contested environment for the Russian Navy by using attack vessels at scale (check out the report by Snake Island Institute).
Startups are building the platforms that make this possible. UK startup Oshen is developing the C-Star micro-USV, designed for distributed deployments, and its vessels have been used by NOAA in the 2025 Atlantic hurricane observation mission, which is a strong signal of endurance and reliability at sea. (The Sun)
Zero USV (UK), formed from Marine AI and MSubs, is positioning Oceanus12 as a long-endurance, open-ocean autonomous vessel operated as a fleet rather than a one-off prototype.
At the more “tactical effects” end, UK firm SubSea Craft has unveiled MARS, a low-signature, modular USV designed for contested waters and rapid development cycles. At the larger fleet scale, Ocean Infinity is building its Armada concept around robotic surface vessels that can deploy sensors and subsea robots, pushing a commercial-style operating model that defense buyers increasingly want.
The next phase is less about hulls and more about autonomy. USVs must continue navigating, sensing, and operating when communications are degraded and GPS is contested. These systems have been very successful in Ukraine due to the use of Starlink, which is difficult to jam and can be deployed almost anywhere. The challenge arises if this capability becomes unavailable. Autonomous navigation must therefore be fully independent or rely on sovereign systems.
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