Ulrich Nuding

Prime Innovation for Deterrence & Defence

The core message of this keynote was that European deterrence and defense depend on combining sovereign industrial capacity, fielded high-end missile technology, scalable production, and a connected ecosystem that can turn innovation into certified military capability. Olli opened by framing the shared task as keeping Europe “safe, credible, and free to decide about its own future,” then organized the talk around five points: lessons from Ukraine and Iran, innovation from a prime contractor’s perspective, future capabilities, industrial ramp-up and regulation, and the defense ecosystem needed to protect society. He first drew lessons from current conflicts. From Ukraine, he argued that Russia’s increasing production and growing use of drones and ballistic missiles show the importance of reliable air-defense resupply, while Ukrainian operations demonstrate the value of combining cheap drones with effective cruise missiles for deep strikes. His conclusion was that future arsenals need both mass-producible, affordable weapons and highly complex weapons. From the war in Iran, he cited public reports that rebuilding U.S. missile stockpiles to pre-war levels will take years, delaying foreign military sales shipments to European partners. For European sovereignty, he said Europe cannot rely on foreign purchases subject to geopolitical turmoil, especially for air defense and deep precision strike. From MBDA’s perspective, innovation was presented as already fielded hardware rather than future promise. Olli cited the 2,500th delivery of the Meteor missile, described its long-range air-combat role and large no-escape zone, and pointed to the Taurus missile’s ability to hold distant hard targets at risk without pilots entering dangerous airspace. He also referenced a contract to prepare series production for the upgraded Taurus Type-10 NEO and a joint venture with Raytheon to produce Patriot interceptors in Germany, which he said would double sovereign German capacity and global PAC-2 interceptor production. Looking ahead, he listed hypersonic glide interceptors and strike systems, lasers, AI-assisted sensor fusion, software-defined seekers, loitering munitions, unmanned ground vehicles, European consortia, Ukrainian cooperation, and MBDA’s RCM2 remote carrier using AI-based swarming algorithms. The final sections focused on scaling and governance. Olli said MBDA’s missile production doubled from 2023 to 2025, with another 40% rise planned for this year, and that its Schrobenhausen headquarters is becoming a missile hub for production, maintenance, repair, and modernization. He argued that sustainable growth requires planability, scalability, resilience, funding, and continued research to preserve technological superiority. He welcomed new budgets, procurement reform, and greater risk appetite, but warned that regulations remain multilayered and unprepared for the gray zone between peace and war. He called for faster planning and approvals, special rules for defense projects, possible exemptions and shortened objection periods, and streamlined requirements such as reducing some NATO environmental standards based on Ukrainian experience. He closed by arguing that primes must integrate startup technology into certified systems, but deterrence requires a strategic alliance among governments, armed forces, primes, SMEs, startups, finance, and science.