Defence Innovation: From battlefield lessons to structural gaps

Babis Papaspyros

How Europe must evolve from legacy structures to mission‑driven defence innovation

For decades, defense innovation was a closed loop: MODs wrote requirements, and prime contractors built heavy, expensive mega systems over a 10-year cycle. Today, that model is fundamentally broken.

The major shift is that defence innovation is no longer a closed, government‑driven pipeline. Over the last few years 3 dynamics define the current landscape:

Operational Urgency

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated the decisive role of drones, counter‑UAS, electronic warfare, space‑based ISR, and rapid prototyping cycles. The battlefield has become a laboratory where software‑defined capabilities evolve faster than traditional procurement cycles.

Technological Urgency

AI, autonomy, quantum, cyber, and advanced materials are advancing at a pace that challenges legacy defence‑industrial models. The EU must ensure that innovation ecosystems deliver operationally relevant solutions at speed. Defence ministries simply cannot keep up with that speed.

Industrial Urgency

Europe faces production bottlenecks, fragmented supply chains, and dependence on non‑EU technologies. Ammunition shortages, limited manufacturing capacity, and slow certification processes have exposed structural vulnerabilities.

The EU has realised that:

- dual‑use innovation ecosystems matter as much as defence‑industrial capacity,  

- small companies can deliver strategic effects faster than traditional programmes, and  

- operational feedback loops must be measured in weeks, not years.

As a result, Europe should shift from a compliance‑heavy, platform‑centric model to a more agile, mission‑driven innovation architecture, through instruments like the European funds, and national defence‑innovation hubs.

The core lesson is clear: Critical technologies are no longer “future capabilities”, they are current operational requirements

The gaps are less about technology and more about systems, processes, and culture.

First, there is a Critical transition gap between prototype and scale. Europe is actually quite strong in early-stage innovation—startups, research centres, pilot programs. But too many solutions get stuck at the demo phase because there is no clear pathway to procurement, no committed funding for scaling, lack of accredited test ranges and no fast-track to operational adoption. Another mismatch has to do with Technology readiness levels (TRLs). The preference for TRL 7+ excludes early‑stage innovators from evaluation and accreditation. 

Second, procurement remains too slow and risk-averse. By the time a system is formally acquired, the technology, especially in software, AI, or drones, may already be outdated. Startups in particular cannot survive multi-year procurement cycles or complex compliance barriers.

Third, there is a disconnect between operators and innovators. In successful model, like what we’ve seen in Ukraine, engineers, soldiers, and end-users are in constant feedback loops. In Europe, requirements are often defined too early, too rigidly, and without continuous operational input.

Fourth, integration is underestimated. Many promising technologies fail not because they don’t work, but because they cannot plug into existing systems—C2 architectures, data standards, security frameworks. Interoperability is still a bottleneck.

And finally, access to defence customers and trust remains limited for new entrants. Primes still dominate the interface, and while that is changing, many startups struggle to even get in the room, let alone win contracts.

So if I had to summarize, the biggest gaps are:

From prototype to scale

From speed of innovation to speed of procurement

From isolated solutions to integrated systems

Closing these gaps is less about inventing new technologies and more about re-engineering how Europe adopts them.

Υ.Γ

Απο την τοποθέτηση μου, στις 26 Ιουν. 2026, στο forum του JOIST Innovation Park : Η "Ευρωπαϊκή Αμυντική Καινοτομία & η Αναγκαιότητα των Τεχνολογιών Διττής Χρήσης: Από τις Περιφερειακές Δυνατότητες στις Στρατηγικές Ευρωπαϊκές Ευκαιρίες"