The New Defense Post #37

Welcome back to the #37 edition of The New Defense Post!

In this edition, we’ll cover:

On May 5, Anduril Industries announced the team it has assembled for its Space Force contract to prototype space-based interceptors under the Golden Dome programme. The consortium includes Impulse Space (in-space propulsion), K2 Space (high-power satellite buses), Inversion Space (atmospheric re-entry vehicles), Voyager Technologies, and Sandia National Laboratories. The goal is a demonstrated orbital interceptor capability by 2028. (SpaceNews) (Bloomberg)

Golden Dome's director, Space Force General Michael Guetlein, has called space-based interceptors the programme's highest-risk element, with affordability and scalability as the central challenges. Anduril's approach is to integrate proven commercial space hardware — K2's Mega-class satellite buses support up to 3,000 kg payload and 30 kW of peak power — rather than developing custom spacecraft from scratch.

Technical note: A space-based interceptor engages ballistic missiles in the boost or midcourse phase from orbit, before re-entry vehicles disperse. This intercept geometry offers a significant advantage over ground-based systems, which can only engage from fixed locations and face look-angle constraints. The core engineering challenge is closing the engagement timeline: a boost-phase intercept window is typically 3-5 minutes. The interceptor must acquire the target, manoeuvre, and achieve a kinetic kill within that window using onboard sensors and autonomous guidance — no human-in-the-loop at the kill decision layer.

📰 Our Take: What does this mean for europe? The U.S. is now building an orbital kinetic layer with named prime contractors and a 2028 demonstration timeline. Europe has no equivalent programme, no national space-based interceptor initiative, and no startup positioned to bid as prime on one.

The Kiel Institute paper published this week (see Bonus Section) names space capability as one of ten critical gaps. The SAFE programme includes €150B in loans, and the EU's revised EDF has lines for space defense. What's missing is not capital, it's a company with the ambition and technical stack to claim the category before the U.S. architecture locks European industry out as a subcontractor tier.

Dutch defense-tech startup Intelic launched BASE on May 4, a procurement platform connecting European ministries of defense directly with drone manufacturers from ten countries: France, Germany, the UK, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Portugal, Latvia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, and Czechia. The platform pairs with Intelic's Nexus command-and-control software, so every drone sold through BASE is guaranteed to operate on a shared C2 layer. The Royal Netherlands Army is finalising an agreement to give its drone units access to BASE via Nexus. (Defense News) (Tech.eu)

The problem BASE is addressing is structural. European defense ministries currently buy drones through slow national procurement cycles, often from manufacturers whose systems don't talk to each other. Interoperability in a coalition operation means separate training regimes, separate C2 stacks, and coordination gaps at exactly the moment they matter most.

Technical note: Intelic's interoperability model is software-first: every drone on BASE runs on Nexus, which acts as the abstraction layer translating between different vehicle protocols. This is architecturally closer to how mobile app stores work than how traditional NATO STANAG-based interoperability works. The risk, and it's worth naming, is that this makes Intelic's Nexus software the single point of dependency for every ministry that adopts BASE. If Nexus goes down or proves incompatible with a specific mission requirement, the platform's value proposition collapses. It's a bet that software lock-in is preferable to hardware fragmentation — and in most cases, it probably is.

📰 Our Take: BASE is clever bit of market selection. Rather than building another drone, Intelic is building the distribution layer for every drone in Europe. The manufacturers on the platform handle logistics and support; Intelic handles the C2 interoperability that governments can't assemble themselves fast enough.

The weakness is that defense ministries are notoriously slow to standardise on any software platform, particularly one owned by a startup with no government equity stake. The Netherlands Army agreement is the proof-of-concept this model needs. If a second ministry signs in the next six months, BASE becomes a real network-effect play. For founders building drone or autonomy hardware, getting listed on BASE early is a distribution shortcut worth taking seriously.

Kiel Institute Paper: European Defense Autonomy Achievable at €50B/Year, With C2 and Drones as Priority Gaps (Defense News)

Bundeswehr Rejects Palantir, Shortlists Almato, Orcrist, and ChapsVision for Summer C2 Evaluation (Xpert.Digital) (DigitalShield)

Frankenburg Technologies Fires Mk.1 Interceptor from Airbus Bird of Prey Drone in Germany Trial (Aviation Week)

Palantir Maven Smart System Elevated to Pentagon Program of Record Under Deputy Secretary Feinberg Directive (DefenseScoop)

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Everything Europe is trying to build in space defense depends on a capability it doesn't reliably have yet: the ability to put things in orbit on its own terms, on its own schedule, without asking Washington for a ride.

This is an operational constraint tied directly to military readiness. The Helsing-Kongsberg-Hensoldt ISR constellation announced in late 2025 targets sovereign space capabilities by 2029. The EU's European Defense Fund has committed €66M to prototype a collective LEO surveillance constellation.

Germany has pledged €35B in space security investment through 2030, explicitly covering SAR replacements, SIGINT satellites, and new early-warning birds. The EU's IRIS² secure communications system is meant to be operationally ready by 2030. Every one of these programmes carries the same implicit assumption: that Europe can launch them or the US will allow us to.

Right now, that assumption is fragile. Ariane 6 is operational but expensive, designed for larger payloads. Vega-C returned to flight in 2024 after a two-year grounding, but it's on its way out. For the small and medium satellites that define modern defense architectures, things like responsive ISR, proliferated LEO constellations, and tactically replenishable assets, Europe currently has no domestic small launch vehicle in operation.

The orbital regimes that matter most for defense are Low Earth Orbit (200-2,000 km) and, to a limited extent, Very Low Earth Orbit (250-350 km), where the EDA's VLEO-DEF consortium is now developing Europe's first dedicated military satellite concept.

At these altitudes, a 1-degree change in orbital inclination requires roughly 50 m/s of delta-v per tonne of spacecraft mass. That's why launch vehicles designed for specific ISR orbits need precise injection capabilities and often multiple stage restarts.

The small launchers in Europe's pipeline are built for this. Spectrum's second stage supports multiple Aquila engine restarts, and RFA ONE includes an optional Redshift kick stage for precision orbital delivery. These are the right technical choices for defense payloads. Getting them to fly reliably is the remaining problem.

The European Launcher Challenge, backed by €902M from ESA member states following the November 2025 ministerial, is the institutional bet that the problem gets solved in time. Four companies remain in contention after Orbex went into administration in February 2026.

Isar Aerospace (Germany) flew its Spectrum once in March 2025. It failed 30 seconds in, and the company has spent 2026 fighting a pressure valve issue and a COPV leak through repeated scrubbed attempts at its second flight. Isar has vehicles 3-7 in production and a new 40,000 m² facility opening near Munich, which tells you the company is treating the launch vehicle as a manufacturing problem, not a one-off engineering show.

That's the right direction, though it needs an orbit first. Rocket Factory Augsburg (Germany) lost its first stage to a pad fire in August 2024, rebuilt, shipped both stages to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, and is targeting a summer 2026 inaugural launch. Its RFA ONE carries 1,300 kg to SSO, enough for a meaningful defense payload.

PLD Space (Spain) closed €180M in March 2026 and is targeting its first Miura 5 flight from Kourou before year-end. MaiaSpace (France, an ArianeGroup subsidiary) has slipped to April 2027 for its inaugural launch, a timeline that worries those who expected an ArianeGroup-backed vehicle to anchor the European small launch market by now.

For founders, the gap isn't in building another rocket. That market is crowded and capital-intensive. It’s everything around the rocket. Sovereign propellant supply chains, precision mission planning and management software, responsive launch operations tooling, and the ground segment infrastructure that turns a launch vehicle into a defense-grade responsive access capability.

Those are startup-scale problems with potential institutional buyers, yet the market for them still relies on European launcher companies fulfilling their promises. Founders can build around these new rockets, but ultimately, we're all waiting for them to prove they can launch.

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