London’s first protection tech hackathon brings Ukraine battle nearer to the town’s startups

Final week, the UK introduced its largest ever army help package deal for Ukraine. The invoice takes the U.Ok.’s whole help for this monetary yr to £3 billion — not fairly the $50 billion the US pledged lately, however nonetheless substantial.

However whereas most of these funds can be spent on very conventional army {hardware}, a brand new tech initiative launched final weekend was aimed toward enhancing Ukraine’s uneven warfare capabilities towards Russia. In truth, the London Defense Tech Hackathon was the first-ever occasion to carry collectively a few of the UK’s brightest minds in know-how, enterprise capital, and nationwide safety in a army setting. The thought was to hack collectively concepts to each help Ukraine and likewise to create a much more porous layer between the worlds of fast-paced civilian tech and the very totally different world of the army. 

Put collectively by Alex Fitzgerald of Skyral and Richard Go of Future Forces, the 2 have been joined by co-organizers that included the Honourable Artillery Firm,  Apollo Defense, Lambda Automata and D3 VC amongst others.

The occasion introduced collectively builders expert in each {hardware} and software program to foster innovation in protection, nationwide safety, and deeptech. There was a key give attention to drones and their purposes on the battlefield, each the {hardware} and the digital programs wanted to fly them to their targets and counter-drone programs. 

As most observers of the battle have identified, this battle has taken on a totally new dimension in comparison with earlier wars. Right now, drones and digital countermeasures are the order of the day, as Ukraine has endeavored to battle off Russia, a a lot bigger aggressor, with uneven strategies. 

Fitzgerald advised me: “There are three groups of people coming to these events. There’s the builders, investors, and the military. I think for everyone, it’s trying to convince their colleagues to think more about defense technology as an option to either build or invest in.”

He defined that there have been two essential tracks of labor: digital warfare and drone or aerial programs: “There’s an acronym I learned from someone cleverer than me, which is that the future of defense technologies comes small, cheap  and uncrewed.”

He defined that one essential goal was to get individuals who had historically not been concerned in protection both constructing for or investing in protection: “We’ve got people like the NATO Innovation Fund, the UK National Security Strategic Investment Fund. So yeah, it’s a mix of people who already invest in defense or who haven’t thought about investing before.”

He selected the hackathon format as a result of “the focus is on getting stuff done. Get actual builders, not to just talk about building, because that’s actually where most of the innovation is happening.”

One of many inspirations for the occasion was the latest El Segundo, Calif., defense tech hackathon in February of this yr.

“I think the key thing with military technology is making it as easy to use and as powerful as some of the the consumer technology that’s been built,” mentioned Fitzgerald “There’s the classic line, ‘There’s more AI in a snap in Snapchat than there is often some most modern military systems.’” 

Additionally attending the occasion was Catarina Buchatskiy, representing Apollo Defense.  As engineers pored over cameras, Starlinks, and drones, she advised me: “Defense tech is a difficult industry to enter. And it’s a difficult market to break into, for obvious reasons. We’ve found Hackathons an extremely exciting way for people to get involved because defense technology can seem like a giant black box of contracts that take 10 years, and technologies that are built [are often] hidden from the public eye. At a hackathon, you have 24 hours. Make something really cool.”

Interceptor finished

She mentioned the agency had seen “a lot of success” with the El Segundo occasion.  

“We just realized that if people think it’s something that’s accessible to them [and] can do something quickly and make an impact, they want to participate,” she advised me.

Buchatskiy, who’s Ukrainian, additionally spoke powerfully about Ukraine: “These are very real things to me. When I say that I need a drone detector, it’s because I’m looking at one outside my window that we didn’t detect in time and it is going to kill my neighbor. That is the reality that we face.”

She added that it’s essential for hackathon attendees to know “that they’re building for someone and this could actually save my family’s life.”

Regardless of the controversy surrounding protection know-how in some quarters, she added, “To be involved in technology is to be interested in a better future. And I really, truly can’t think of a more interesting and better future than one that’s safe and one where we can guarantee peace.”

NATO, within the form of the NATO Funding Fund, a fund with a billion euros to put money into protection tech over the subsequent few years, was additionally represented. 

Fund accomplice Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky advised me the fund was set as much as again startups “that bolster our collective defense security and resilience. We invest in dual-use deep tech, but the fund was conceived before the war in Ukraine. The conflict has now very much impacted our investment thesis and we’re keen to invest in defense technologies that can make Europe safer and more secure.”

However why was NATO funding a hackathon?

“I think defense tech is new to a lot of a lot of founders and a lot of developers,” Schneider-Sikorsky mentioned. “It’s not that easy for them to understand the problem statements and the challenges and also to get access to the end users.”

He mentioned the hackathon format notably lends itself to that: “It would normally, for many founders, take them months if not years to get in touch with the right people at defense ministries, and a lot of them are here today. So hopefully it will accelerate things substantially.”

One other attending investor, Alex Flamant from HCVC, advised me: “There was a need for people in Europe to invest in proper defense technologies. It seemed from the investor standpoint, there’s restrictions around certain investors investing. One of the goals of this is to demystify what a lot of this is amongst young builders, and really to get people more aligned with the big mission that we’re all on.”

Machine studying specialist was there to give attention to drone detection: “That’s in our machine vision and object detection knowledge. Ukraine are fighting for the whole of Europe at the moment and obviously the UK is pivotal to that. It’s essential that we that we ally with them and utilize what we have to help.”

The hackthon got here at a time of elevated rigidity round the usage of applied sciences in protection. 

Google lately fired 28 staff after their sit-in protest over the controversial Mission Nimbus contract with Israel, for example.

Nonetheless, protection is clearly rising up the tech agenda.

Anduril lately moved forward in a Pentagon program to develop unmanned fighter jets, and extra broadly as we discovered final yr, enterprise capital is opening the gates for protection tech. 

And within the UK, there may be much talk about how high-powered lasers could possibly be among the many subsequent wave of weapons. The DragonFire weapon is alleged to be exact sufficient to hit a £1 coin from a kilometre away, in keeping with the MoD, and value barely $15 to fireside. 

The projects to emerge from the hackathon might not have been not fairly so sci-fi, however they have been fairly rattling shut. How a few “High Speed Interceptor to take down Orlan Drones”? And at the least they’re prone to be deployed quite a bit ahead of a laser gun.