The New Defense Post #48

Welcome back to the #48 edition of The New Defense Post!

In this edition, we’ll cover:

The Acutronic Group serves as the hidden backbone to much of the aerospace & defense industry, delivering the picks and shovels needed for next-generation systems.

We are the only manufacturer of micro-turbines, actuators, power systems, rate tables, and vibration test systems with a global footprint across the US and Europe.

Finnish defense company Patria, which we already wrote about in the previous edition, remotely operated one of its AMV armored vehicles at a military testing area in Finland from a control desk in Tokyo on August 25 and 26, a distance of more than 7,800 kilometers.

The demonstration, hosted by the Finnish Embassy in Japan, combined drive-by-wire vehicle controls with secure 5G connectivity and real-time situational awareness software. (Defence Blog, Patria)

Several other companies contributed technology to make the link work. Patria's own situational awareness system, called Patria DOME, was supplemented with satellite data from Finnish company ICEYE, another regular in this newsletter. Additionally, Nokia, SAVOX and Basemark supplied communications and visual awareness tools, and telecom operator Telia handled the secure data connection between Tokyo and Finland.

And this was not Patria's first long-distance remote-control demonstration either: it ran a shorter beyond-visual-line-of-sight trial with the University of Tampere back in 2020. Patria has also sold roughly 1,600 AMVs worldwide, including to Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, which has been receiving locally assembled units since September 2025 through Japan Steel Works, the local partner Räkköläinen credits below. (Defence Blog)

🗣 Janne Räkköläinen, Patria Vice President: the demonstration drew "a large number of attendees from the Japan Ministry of Defence and defence-related companies." (Defence Blog)

📰 Our Take: Patria was not starting from zero in Japan. Its Ground Self-Defense Force has been fielding Patria AMVs, which are built locally with Japan Steel Works, since September 2025, so this was really about showing an existing customer a new capability, remote operation, layered on top of a vehicle which their army already owns and uses.

To add to that, Nokia, Telia and ICEYE supplied the technology that made the distance work, worth watching as much as Patria itself if (or rather when) beyond-line-of-sight vehicle control becomes something militaries globally start to buy. None of that answers the harder and more obvious question, though: whether the same link holds up against jamming, satellite interference, or an adversary actively trying to break it, which was not the case during this controlled demonstration hosted by an embassy.

The European Space Agency signed its first contracts under the European Launcher Challenge and committed a combined €543.6 million to three European rocket startups, out of an original five finalists shortlisted from twelve proposals back in July 2025. One of those five, Scotland's Orbex, did not make it to a contract. It entered administration in February 2026 after funding talks collapsed.

Germany's Isar Aerospace received the largest award, €197.8 million, funded mainly by Germany with contributions from Austria and Norway. Germany's Rocket Factory Augsburg received a further €186.9 million, again funded mainly by Germany with a contribution from the UK, and Spain's PLD Space received €158.9 million, funded mainly by Spain with a contribution from Germany. A fourth contract with France's MaiaSpace is still being finalized. (European Spaceflight, NASASpaceFlight, FAZ)

The funding has conditions and is released in stages as milestones are met. Each contract splits into two parts: the larger share, support for operational launches through 2030, only unlocks once a company actually reaches orbit by the end of 2027, while a separate, smaller share funds rocket upgrades that must be demonstrated by the end of 2028. The challenge grew out of a November 2025 ministerial meeting in Bremen, where member states committed around €902 million, which is more than double what ESA had originally proposed. (NASASpaceFlight)

🗣 Géraldine Naja, ESA Director of Space Transportation: the contracts "kick off the European Launcher Challenge, encouraging competition among European launch providers." (Aerospace Testing International)

📰 Our Take: Neither company that got the two biggest checks here has actually reached orbit, and one of the original five finalists did not survive long enough as a company to find out. Isar Aerospace has tried and failed to launch the second flight of its Spectrum rocket four times this year from Andøya, Norway, after its first attempt broke apart within seconds in March 2025. Rocket Factory Augsburg has not flown at all yet and had to pull its rocket off the pad in late July after a testing issue. Both companies are getting paid roughly €190 million anyway, but the larger funding and support for actual operational launches through 2030 only unlock if they reach orbit by the end of 2027.

With these developments in mind, the deadline does some work here, and so does Isar Aerospace's balance sheet. The company has already raised close to €800 million from investors, including the NATO Innovation Fund and Porsche Automobil Holding, the largest shareholder of Volkswagen, at a valuation of nearly €2 billion in its most recent round. But none of that money has gotten Spectrum into orbit yet. ESA structured this funding so the bigger payout only comes after an actual launch, a genuinely disciplined way to commit nearly €550 million to rockets that, so far, keep failing to leave the ground.

Again, another quiet week. Back to it next issue.

This week's Spain-Poland tanker deal (see Spotlight 1) is a concrete example of what SAFE actually funds, so it is worth a closer look at what SAFE is and how it works.

SAFE is a €150 billion instrument, formally EU Regulation 2025/1106, that lets member states borrow money on favorable terms specifically for defense procurement. Poland has the largest allocation by far, €43.7 billion, reflecting both the size of its rearmament plans and its exposure on NATO's eastern flank. The eligibility rules are specific. Contractors and subcontractors must be established in the EU, an EEA-EFTA state, or Ukraine, with executive management based there, and production must occur in the same zone. On top of that, components from outside the zone cannot account for more than 35% of a product's total component cost, meaning at least 65% of that cost must come from within the EU, the EEA-EFTA, or Ukraine. (Bird & Bird, CMS Law)

The Spain-Poland tanker framework is a useful test case for the first part of that question, what SAFE actually buys, but not much of a test for the second, whether the component-cost rule holds up under real pressure. The aircraft involved, the Airbus A330 MRTT, is not a new capability Europe had to develop. It has been in production since 2007 and is already flown by several NATO members through an existing multinational fleet, of which Poland was originally part before it withdrew. It is also converted at Airbus's own facility in Getafe, Spain, so it clears the 65% threshold by a wide margin.

This purchase confirms that SAFE can fund an existing European product purchased bilaterally rather than through the existing multinational pool. It does not show whether the rule would actually block a purchase if the cheaper or faster option happened to be non-European instead. (Air Data News, Military Factory)

What this also shows is how much daylight there still is between a SAFE allocation on paper and the money actually moving. Poland's €43.7 billion allocation was set months ago. This tanker framework, approved this week, does not even finalize a single contract. It just clears the way for Spain and Poland to negotiate separate ones later. If getting from an allocation to an actual signed order takes this long for a mature aircraft both governments already know well, that raises a fair question about SAFE's overall pace: whether the €150 billion is translating into equipment on anything like the timeline implied by the fund’s own sense of urgency.

Love these insights? Forward this newsletter to a friend or two. They can subscribe to our website.