The New Defense Post #41

Welcome back to the #41 edition of The New Defense Post!

In this edition, we’ll cover:

Deep Dive: Six years ago, you could count Lithuania's defense companies on one hand. A couple of semiconductor firms, some service work for state-owned outfits, and little else. Today, the figure runs close to 200. The story of how a country of under three million pulled that off is one of the most exciting case studies in European defense

Spotlights: Alta Ares, the French startup founded under fire in Zaporizhzhia, closes a €50M Series A to mass-produce AI-guided interceptors; Ukraine and France Launch BRAVE FRANCE, a €20M Joint Defense-Tech Fund; and Helsing unveils the CA-1EA at ILA Berlin, Europe's first autonomous electronic attack aircraft.

Fundraising News of the Week: Alta Ares leads the table, ICEYE anchors it with the largest European defense tech raise on record, and Allen Control Systems sneaks in just outside the window.

Bonus Section: France's Guichet Unique: MinArm's new startup fast-track, what it actually means in practice, and how to use it before the window closes.

Six years ago, you could count Lithuania's defense companies on one hand. A couple of semiconductor firms, some service work for state-owned outfits, and little else.

Today, the figure runs close to 200. The story of how a country of under three million pulled that off is one of the most exciting case studies in European defense

Read the full article here

Alta Ares was founded in January 2024. Not in a garage and not in a business school competition, but on the ground near the frontline in Zaporizhzhia, where founder Hadrien Canter watched Ukrainian defenders run out of interceptors against incoming Shahed drone salvos.

The company's first product was AI-guided computer vision software helping operators geolocate targets from drone feeds. The pivot to interceptors came from the fact that you can't win the drone war with scarce, expensive missiles. You need cheap shots at scale. On June 9, Alta Ares announced a €50M Series A led by Air Street Capital, with Cherry Ventures, OTB Ventures, and Harpoon Ventures participating. (Alta Ares) (Vestbee)

The company builds two interceptor platforms: the X-Lock for drone targets and the Black Bird for cruise missiles and glide bombs. Both run edge-AI entirely onboard in GNSS-denied, electronically contested environments, with no cloud and no GPS. Production runs from Toulouse and Ukraine; target output is 1,000 units per month from early 2027. Thales is a named customer. The raise includes €10M ring-fenced for Ukrainian operations. (Tectonicdefense) (Inforcapital)

📰 Our Take: The French defense-tech ecosystem has two main players in counter-UAS: Harmattan AI and Alta Ares. They have similar products and a similar focus. One has a top AI team (Harmattan); the other has a great reputation in Ukraine (Alta Ares).

Logic would say the win goes to the company that can show its product works in real conditions, but the procurement sector works in mysterious ways. A good example is Anduril, which failed in Ukraine but still collects huge contracts from the Department of War.

The startup world can be brutal, and there will be only one winner in this category long-term. Either one of the two pivots its offering, or we end up with just one French defense-tech startup standing.

Ukraine and France launched BRAVE FRANCE this week, a joint €20M defense-technology programme co-funded by Ukraine's BRAVE1 platform and France's Defense Innovation Agency (AID). The initiative provides grants of up to €1M to Ukrainian and French companies developing frontline-relevant military technology, with the first call for projects opening in September. The focus is missile systems, drones, and advanced air defense. (The Recursive)

The structural innovation is what makes this interesting: the programme allows French defense startups to test equipment under live combat conditions in Ukraine, and gives Ukrainian companies access to French institutional and procurement networks. "Ukraine gains immediate access to battlefield-changing European technologies, while France secures a unique opportunity to adapt its defense innovations to a high-intensity modern war," Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said at launch. (The Recursive)

📰 Our Take: Battlefield validation has become the single hardest filter in European defense procurement, and BRAVE FRANCE turns it into a formal grant criterion.

France is now openly indexing on Ukraine-tested products, and the AID-DGA procurement pipeline is opening to startups that can show their kit works under fire. Expect every serious European defense startup to want a Ukrainian test loop.

At ILA Berlin (June 10-14), Helsing unveiled the CA-1EA Electronic Attack, a dedicated EW variant of its CA-1 Europa UCAV.

The CA-1EA is a different mission profile in a different domain. Both CA-1 variants share the same 4-tonne, 11-metre airframe built by Grob Aircraft in Bavaria, the same Centaur AI autonomy stack, and the same ground control infrastructure.

The original CA-1 is now designated CA-1KA (Kinetic Attack); the CA-1EA carries a Kaeletron broadband jammer from partner HENSOLDT, plus Cirra, Helsing's deep-learning EW system. IOC for the EA variant is 2031; maiden flight for the KA variant is early 2027. (Helsing) (FlightGlobal) (Military Embedded Systems)

The mission concept: the CA-1EA flies ahead of crewed aircraft into defended airspace, suppresses ground-based air defense radar, and creates a corridor for strike packages behind it. Both variants are designed to operate alongside Eurofighters and other crewed platforms, sharing one supply chain, one maintenance pipeline, two distinct mission payloads.

📰 Our Take: The US EA-18G Growler is the only operational Western dedicated escort jammer. No European air force owns an organic equivalent, which means NATO SEAD missions currently depend on US platforms showing up.

Helsing is closing that gap with a 2031 IOC that is genuinely fast by European acquisition standards. There are some business opportunities here, Cirra's emitter classification needs training data from real adversary systems (a SIGINT problem Helsing doesn't solve alone), and ground control software for two-variant UCAV operations at scale is an unsolved systems engineering problem. Founders who want to get into the European EW stack for high-performance EW systems should be talking to HENSOLDT and Helsing today.

ICEYE Closes €1B Series F at €10.5B Valuation, Led by General Atlantic, Targeting 100 Satellites/Year by 2028 (ICEYE)

NATO BALTOPS 2026: US Navy UUVGRU-1 Deploys Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in Baltic Sea Amid Russian Submarine Threat (Army Recognition)

Eurosatory 2026 Opens Today in Paris with 60 Startups in Eurosatory LAB, Thales Air-Missile Defense and MBDA Hypersonic Countermeasures on Show (Army Recognition)

HENSOLDT and SE3 Labs Agree on Spatial and Agentic AI Collaboration for Autonomous Defence Systems at ILA Berlin 2026 (eTurboNews)

Diehl Defence and Spire Global Partner on Satellite-Based Early Warning Against Ballistic and Hypersonic Missiles at ILA Berlin 2026 (eTurboNews)

Pilotix is a European drone technology company building end-to-end solutions, from high-performance drones and flight electronics to advanced software systems. With in-house production and high-precision assembly capabilities, Pilotix delivers reliable, scalable platforms for both civilian and defense applications, including surveillance, industrial operations, and specialised missions.

Use code HOBBYDRONEF1 for a discount.

France's DGA is world-class at buying complex weapons systems over decade-long timescales and significantly less equipped to buy software from a two-year-old startup in six months. The Agence Innovation Défense (AID), created in 2018, was the first attempt to fix this by creating a dedicated innovation hub within MinArm.

At VivaTech in May, MinArm upgraded the interface with a move called the Guichet Unique, a literal one-stop shop where startups can engage the entire defence procurement ecosystem through a single entry point, rather than navigating DGA, EMA, and the service branches independently. (ResilienceMedia)

The Guichet Unique routes incoming startups to three main funding tracks. RAPID is the fastest: non-dilutive grants for SMEs working on dual-use technologies, with a decision timeline measured in months. ASTRID pairs academic research institutions with SMEs on defence-relevant R&D and is slower but opens DGA relationships that convert into contracts.

Innovation Challenges are the most interesting for founders with working hardware or software. MinArm publishes a specific military user problem, startups pitch solutions, and the winner gets a contract. The challenge format cuts through the generic innovation washing that plagued earlier AID efforts. France also has OTA-equivalent mechanisms under its military programming law (LPM 2024-2030) for expedited contracting in critical technology categories. Multiple fast paths now exist; they just require knowing which door to knock on.

The FCAS collapse leaves France with large unmet requirements in combat cloud software and autonomous systems, exactly where AID's Innovation Challenges are most likely to publish new problem statements.

The Guichet Unique won't fix French defence procurement overnight. The DGA is still a large bureaucracy with cultural resistance to small-ticket, fast-moving contracts. But the direction is correct, and Alta Ares's €50M raise this week, a company two years old with Thales as a client and multi-country deployment, demonstrates that French defence startups that engage this ecosystem early can move fast.

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