The New Defense Post #22

Welcome back to the #22 edition of The New Defense Post!

In this edition, we’ll cover:

Defense technology is not just a European concern—democracy and shared values are under pressure in other parts of the world as well. With that in mind, we wanted to bring a perspective from Korea. Joshua Bang, a journalist for Drone Magazine, a Seoul-based publication specializing in drone technology, joined us for this guest article.

Newtype Industries is a Korean defense startup specializing in AI software for battlefield decision-making and artillery fire guidance. The company is founded and led by Joe Cho, a former Republic of Korea Army field artillery officer (MAJ(R)).

Built by a team of former officers, the company aims to accelerate collective decision-making in the military domain—especially when human attention and processing capacity become bottlenecks in high-intensity operations.

Read the full interview on The New Defense Post

📰 Our Take: Defense is not a space known for transparency; it is still unclear whether Helsing’s drones are underperforming or not. The procurement process in Ukraine is not as centralized as in most Western militaries, and individual units have significant autonomy in deciding which equipment they want to procure. It is not unusual for a single unit to return a system; the real signal is when multiple units conclude that a platform is not fit for service.

Field testing in realistic combat conditions is critical, and few Western companies take it as seriously as Helsing. By contrast, Anduril chose to withdraw after underdelivering, rather than continue iterating under battlefield conditions. Helsing stayed, and the same can be said for other European defense-tech startups like Stark and Destinus.

🗣 Clemens Kürten, Co-founder and CEO: “Our mission is clear – enable European and allied partners with an end-to-end approach: product, training, and life-cycle management.” (Globe Newswire)

📰 Our Take: It’s a smart way to get FPVs improvisations into something a Western army would be willing to buy. Defense technologies that matter and work are often not as complex as one might expect. In these cases, it can make sense to build in stealth if you don’t have to rely on publicity to sell your products

The timeline is impressive: from design to field deployment in less than a year. The value proposition of “deliver unmanned systems faster, more reliably, and at better economics than anyone else in Europe” is also very compelling. If a real war breaks out, these are the systems that will make the difference.

📰 Our Take: It seems the defense tech space is breaking one record after another. Just a couple of months ago, we were covering a record announcement by Keen Ventures. Now DTCP is sending an equally strong signal.

Smart money clearly thinks this market is deep, and we agree. The economics of warfare are changing, and setting aside the strategic imperative of investing in defense tech to protect Europe, it is also a compelling opportunity for investors to deliver strong returns to their LPs.

France’s drone production push (France) — Renault’s partnership with Turgis Gaillard (a smaller defense manufacturer) (Reuters)

Orbex (UK launch startup) is reportedly in sale talks with The Exploration Company (Franco-German space startup) (Financial Times)

Wearables for soldiers are moving from “a rugged smartwatch” to something more like a full suite of systems and sensors: gear that can sense when someone is overheating, fading, hypoxic, or just going the wrong way, and surface that as a simple, timely nudge.

The big shift is making it field-usable: sensors that disappear into clothing, analytics that run locally, and outputs that don’t demand a tablet and a spare brain to interpret.

On the medical-readiness end, France’s Manitty brings DeepMo as “hospital-grade monitoring brought forward”, a dual-use system that continuously tracks vital and neurological signs and turns anomalies into predictive alerts, framed directly through NATO DIANA’s Human Health & Performance track.

Austria’s QUS is building textile sensors designed to integrate into uniforms (or custom garments) without hard components getting in the way under protective gear, with a strong focus on washability and discretion.

Sweden’s WRLDS Technologies is pushing a similar idea with 6th SENSE: AI-driven sensing integrated into uniforms for military and other high-risk services, with a story arc that’s basically “sports-grade precision, but built for extreme conditions.”

Unbound Autonomy, a Lithuania-based startup and EDTH alumnus, is building a small, body-worn “AI pin” aimed at mission-critical teams that need better situational awareness without added friction. What matters in the field is stuck in messy, unstructured radio traffic and quick verbal updates, so they try to turn that stream into clear, shareable operational visibility in real time.

None of this is magic. Batteries die, sensors drift, and often this kind of “futuristic” technology breaks down once used in real battle conditions. The hardest part is often trust: who sees the data, how it’s secured, and whether it’s used to protect people or to punish them.

But the direction is clear. Europe’s startups aren’t just building “soldier health gadgets”; they’re trying to make the human body a measurable part of the system, without turning warfighters into walking dashboards and targets because of their signal emissions.

The winners will be the teams that keep it simple: reliable in battlefield conditions, with minimal friction, and that produce outputs that are actually useful for soldiers.

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