The Icebreaker

24 days ago · 21 likes · 10 comments · Aaron MacLean

🍁 A flow-through share pilot wants Canadians, not Ottawa, picking tech winners.
A new proposal would extend Canada’s Flow-Through Share model into a capped, three-year “FTS-Tech” pilot for qualifying technology startups, letting private Canadian investors rather than government bureaucrats choose which companies get funded. The pitch leans on an estimated US$1.6 billion-plus cumulative seed-to-Series-A funding gap, with Canadian seed rounds reportedly 40% smaller and five months slower to close than comparable US rounds.

Building Canada’s Drone Stack | Josh Ogden, AVSS — Explorer Spotlight #15

“This is not a game for tourists.” — Josh Ogden, Co-Founder and CEO of AVSS…

8 days ago · 3 likes · Ethan Marcoux

Erik Prince’s Swarmer buys a Ukrainian robot maker for up to $224 million.
Austin-based Swarmer, whose autonomy software already controls up to 690 drones per swarm, agreed to acquire Kyiv’s Ratel Robotics, reported in full by The Robot Report, in a cash-and-stock deal worth up to $224 million if every earnout milestone lands. Ratel’s uncrewed ground vehicles already account for roughly 37% of Ukrainian UGV procurement spending this year, and more than 300 of its employees are expected to join Swarmer.

Mach Industries adds another $600 million, pushing its valuation to $3.7 billion.
The 22-year-old MIT dropout behind Mach Industries, Ethan Thornton, closed a $600 million Series C extension that pushes total fundraising past $1 billion and valuation to $3.7 billion, up from $1.8 billion in June, with the money aimed at scaling long-range strike and counter-UAS production simultaneously rather than betting on one platform.

Fortaegis raises $50M to scale secure silicon for defence. Amsterdam-based Fortaegis will use the funding to move its hardware-rooted security technology into mass production.

Poseidon raises $60 million to build cargo drones the size of small planes.
Bay Area-based Poseidon Aerospace closed a $60 million Series A led by TQ Ventures, ten months after an $11 million seed round, for its 4,000-pound-payload Egret cargo drone and a seaplane variant with a 1,650-nautical-mile range.

Smack Technologies raises $61 million for a wrist screen soldiers can read under fire.
Smack Technologies pulled in a $61 million Series B, pushing total funding above $90 million in roughly five and a half months, to expand from its Omega command software into Alpha, a forearm-worn tactical display built for communications-denied environments. Gen. James Mattis gets quoted in the company’s own materials: “The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.”

Quantum Finance Monitor

Canada’s Quantum Defence Innovation Secure Hub Tests Whether Classified Collaboration Can Shorten the Path to Procurement

Canada’s first Quantum Defence Innovation Secure Hub is designed around a constraint that ordinary research grants do not solve: promising technology often cannot be tested against classified threats, platform data or operational requirements until late in development. A University of Calgary-led consortium will receive C$20.3 million over two years to create a protected environment for work on sensing, communications, algorithms and hardware assurance, with participation from defence primes, technology suppliers and universities. The economic question is whether shared security and direct access to the Canadian Armed Forces and Communications Security Establishment can shorten the route from experiment to procurement, or whether the hub finances coordination and facilities without a buyer committed to fielding the resulting prototypes. The distinction matters because classified validation creates information rather than deployable capacity by itself. A successful trial still needs platform integration, certification, production finance, training, maintenance and an acquisition authority with budget. The hub can remove an institutional barrier, but it cannot substitute for performance thresholds, accountable mission ownership or follow-on orders…

17 days ago · 1 like · Quantum Finance Monitor

Covenant emerges from stealth with $250 million and a missile built to be mass produced.
Covenant, founded in 2024, came out of stealth with $250 million raised across three rounds for Anthem, a production-ready, long-range strike missile carrying more than 200 kilograms. The company has already booked roughly $150 million in orders and plans combined annual production of 12,000 missiles across Dallas, Germany and Israel. President Abby Denburg: “We were designed for the China fight.”

Andreessen Horowitz picks Florida as its defence-money capital.
A16z plans to open a regional headquarters in West Palm Beach in 2027 to run its American Dynamism fund, which has raised $1.18 billion for national-security and industrial-economy startups, in a state whose military and defence industry already generates $102.6 billion in economic impact.

Jeff Collins

Build, Partner...Compromise?

As long as Canadian governments have sought to leverage defence spending for economic benefits, a tension has existed between military requirements, cost, and acquisition speed. As someone who was part of the Department of National Defence team that researched the first-ever Canadian…

7 days ago · 4 likes · 4 comments · Charlottetown Dispatch

Isengard Industries launches out of Y Combinator with $10 million in revenue already booked.
Isengard Industries, co-founded by Francisco Serra-Martins, launched out of Y Combinator building precision-strike and counter-drone systems that allied nations can manufacture domestically, reporting $10 million in revenue and a $350 million pipeline across the US Army, Ukraine and other allies. Serra-Martins previously scaled Terminal Autonomy to $60 million in revenue inside Ukraine, and doesn’t undersell the new venture: “We call it Weapons of Mass Production.”

Related: Red Cell Partners landed a Pentagon contract that could generate $100 million for its portfolio startups, the Pentagon’s own Defense Innovation Unit is prototyping a Bridge Program to fast-track security clearances for venture-backed startups, and California’s Bulwark Dynamics closed a smaller $6.8 million seed round to scale autonomous landing craft for contested last-mile logistics.

“The world has defense primes. I think it now needs a resilience prime”
Sweden’s concept of “defence” long predated its NATO membership

Learn more here.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Kit for Canada 🍁: Ottawa began negotiating for six Saab GlobalEye surveillance aircraft before confirming the jets met Canada’s military requirements, and subsequent assessments found gaps in radar coverage, range, crew stations, NORAD connectivity and in-flight refuelling.

Meanwhile a German shipbuilder is trumpeting “Arctic-proven” submarines for Canada’s planned fleet even as experts doubt the vessels can actually operate under ice, and a separate piece on ITAR-avoidance economics argues Canada’s F-35, Gripen and GlobalEye dependencies will only shift once substitution costs and domestic capture make it worthwhile, pointing to Germany’s recent $21 million buy of ITAR-free thermal sights as the template.

Export push 🍁: Canada led an unprecedented push into Europe’s defence market at Poland’s MSPO exhibition with more than 230 Canadian companies and associations on the floor, as Europe mobilizes up to €800 billion for defence over three years. Robotics Centre CEO Charles Barlow on the new pace: “It’s not like the old days when you could sit down, design a ship, start building it and take it into service eight years after you conceived of it. Now, we have to get it out within eight months.” EDC is coaching Canadian exporters that success in Europe depends on local partnerships and supply-chain integration, not just price, citing Poland’s nearly C$70 billion defence spend in 2025 alone. Not everyone is convinced Europe is the answer: MLI’s Ed Fast and Richard Shimooka warn Canada has no substitute for America’s security umbrella, noting continental Europe still takes just 17% of Canadian arms exports.

Kevin Boucher

Catalyzing Canada

cat·a·lyze (verb): to cause or accelerate a reaction without being changed or consumed in the process…

12 days ago · 317 likes · 21 comments · Kevin Boucher

European rearmament race 🍁: That tension sits underneath the EU and Canada’s reported plans for a far-reaching new alliance, which other outlets say could see Ursula von der Leyen unveil the pact September 16 in Strasbourg, building on Canada’s status as the first non-EU country inside the bloc’s €150 billion defence procurement fund. Europe’s underlying industrial muscle is real: Rheinmetall’s order backlog hit a record €80.5 billion after first-half sales rose 39% to €5.2 billion, cementing its role rearming the continent, while Rafael, Lower Saxony and Aurelius Capital are turning a shuttering Volkswagen plant in Osnabrück into a defence production hub, with Rafael CEO Yoav Tourgeman framing it as protecting “Germany and Europe.”

Future of the Left Reader

Reindustrialisation, one software-first factory at a time

Andy Burnham wants to “reindustrialise Britain”. Bold, ambitious words, but what do they mean in practice? Responding to Ben Glover’s opening essay, “Burnham’s Politics of Production”, Future of the Left will be publishing a series of replies as part of a debate on the new politics of production, including…

9 days ago · 3 likes · Andrew Kramer

Home front 🍁: The Canadian Army is undergoing its most extensive reorganization in more than 30 years, replacing four regional divisions with three capability-focused formations. The new 1st Canadian Division, headquartered in Edmonton, will add roughly 1,000 soldiers to CFB Edmonton over the next few years. Ottawa-based industry association ACDC has a new Kyiv-born executive director, Dasha Cohen. And a Walrus feature argues Ottawa’s plan for six new Coast Guard icebreakers still leaves Canada without the heavy Arctic fleet it needs, pointing out the $720 million Diefenbaker polar vessel promised in 2008 remains undelivered.

Space Force has ‘space control weapons’ on orbit. Air Force secretary Troy Meink didn’t elaborate on what “weapons” the US deployed, but revealed new info on other space and unmanned Air Force programs.

Software sovereignty: Canada’s window to migrate sensitive systems to post-quantum cryptography is narrowing fast, with Canadian and allied watchdogs targeting 2035 even as Google moved its own deadline up to 2029.

CDA Institute argues Canada should build its own interoperability rather than keep borrowing it from Washington, warning that dependence on US cryptographic keys and ITAR-controlled components leaves Ottawa exposed as political relations sour. The same dependency logic runs through cyberspace: a Palo Alto firm built an AI hacking tool in just over a week that can compromise a WeChat account without a single click, CEO Thai Duong calling the flaw “remarkable.”

Drones can hack your ground control station

The kill zone: Russia’s jet-powered drone attacks have grown from 350 to 2,800 a month between June and August, with Ukraine’s interception rate falling from the mid-90s to as low as 60%, a shift also flagged in the New York Times original. Eric Schmidt’s own account of sheltering underground in Kyiv as Russian ballistic missiles closed in makes the abstraction concrete.

Missile math: A US infantry company that trained against Ukraine’s “Nemesis” drone unit at Hohenfels came away convinced human operators remain the weak link: “The sky, in perpetuity, not just sporadically, was now part of the battlefield.” Ukraine’s own missile shortfall is structural, not tactical: an Economist analysis, reconstructed via Euromaidan Press, reports Patriot PAC-3 stocks near zero and describes Kyiv’s Freyja interceptor project as a roughly $700,000-per-round alternative to a $7 million Patriot round.

Counter-drone: US officials say drone activity probing the Rio Grande Valley dropped roughly 75% after the first operational use of a high-energy laser in late August, which has since destroyed 11 drones over 10 days and led to AeroVironment’s first high-energy-laser contract, worth $465 million. The US Army is meanwhile planning a November interceptor “shoot-off”, with roughly 147 proposals submitted after Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, as reported by Bloomberg Law, said: “Ukraine and Iran have clearly shown relatively inexpensive drones can impose significant costs and operational challenges.”

Introducing Covenant

9 days ago · 142 likes · 6 comments · Michael Kaufman

Pentagon reform watch: The Pentagon codified its pause of CMMC Phase 2 in a September 3 memo after a 60-day review of more than 1,100 industry responses, with DOD CIO Kirsten Davies drawing the line: “Compliance equals compliance. Compliance doesn’t equal security.” A National Interest op-ed argues US Cyber Command remains poorly integrated into joint planning despite roughly 6,200 personnel, a gap authors Mark Montgomery and Matthew Ferren say a peer conflict with China would expose brutally. And a New York Times interactive on supplying US warships during the Iran war describes resupply runs of up to 3,700 miles after Iran destroyed a critical Bahrain logistics base on the war’s first day, a posture the paper calls unsustainable with four of the Navy’s 11 carriers tied down in the region. A Washington Post opinion piece pushes the budget math further, arguing the US federal budget cannot actually survive a major war, with rising Social Security and health care costs already crowding out defence spending before Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion annual defence budget even lands. Former Joint Chiefs chairman Michael Mullen frames the stakes bluntly: “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.”

Big think: Anthropic disclosed it blocked five attempts to use Claude for bioweapons research and prevented Iran from using the tool to target US naval bases, while separately reporting Yemeni militants used Claude in three guided-weapons programs, test-firing one rocket that failed. Anthropic-linked reporting in The Telegraph also alleges that Chinese municipal police used Claude to seek intelligence on anti-Beijing protests in Canada.

The US Army’s updated biodefence strategy aims to “fight through” AI-enabled bioweapons by 2035, while a New York Times magazine feature on grid vulnerability revisits the 2013 sniper attack on PG&E’s Metcalf substation, warning a large enough failure of America’s aging, hand-built transformers could black out the country for years. Separately, Johns Hopkins APL researchers say a new sintering process could build hypersonic-grade carbon-carbon composites in days instead of months.

Uncommon Leadership

Combatant Commands Can Now Make Markets. Are They Ready?

Private capital is pouring into defense technology. Investors put $49B into defense tech companies in 2025, according to PitchBook, nearly double the year before. However, most of it isn’t going where it could do the most good because investors rarely see an actual demand signal…

10 days ago · 7 likes · BMNT

Maritime autonomy: Anduril confirmed Iran recovered a largely intact Dive-LD underwater drone near the Strait of Hormuz, attributing the loss to a malfunction even as the modular vehicle’s attritable design was meant to make exactly this outcome survivable. A Consultative Shipping Group of 18 maritime nations including Canada is warning that shadow fleets and geopolitical fragmentation threaten freedom of navigation, a concern first raised in a Wall Street Journal piece on the same warning. NATO allies separately foiled a Russian plot to sabotage undersea cables linking Svalbard to mainland Norway.

Axis watch: A Chinese state-owned firm allegedly shipped 46 tons of carbon-fibre precursor to Russia’s sanctioned Alabuga-Volokno plant disguised under a civilian customs code, enough, physicist David Albright estimates, to build up to 1,300 kamikaze drones. The Telegraph’s version of the same shipment ties it directly to an August attack on a Ukrainian shopping mall that killed at least 16 people. Canada and China, meanwhile, held their first defence coordination talks in more than eight years, restarting communication frozen since Beijing’s 2018 detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Retired Gen. Wayne Eyre: “Throughout history, maintaining communication with an adversary has been useful to deepen understanding and avoid unintended escalation.”

ChinaTalk

Can Taiwan Build Drones?

Over the course of this week, we are thrilled to share an in-depth, vivid journey through Taiwan’s drone industry in two parts. Ethan’s rigorous research and extensive on the ground reporting is a real contribution to the discussion around Taiwan’s defense. Enjoy…

9 days ago · 57 likes · Ethan Kessler

🔫 Hot Shots

The UK puts a drone testing site up for sale. A property near Swindon used by the UK Ministry of Defence to test drones is going on the market, a listing agents say will test investor appetite for real estate with a military past.

Sea, Space and Cyberspace. All Are Under Siege.

The CIA wants more engineers, not more spies. Deputy Director Michael Ellis says China’s economic leverage and AI-enabled cyber operations are forcing the agency to chase more technical expertise from the private sector, even as it brings on its largest Directorate of Operations class in 20 years. Ellis: “The outcome of that competition will be dictated by who has the superior technology.”

🎙️ Ep 29 - Ent: The AI Cybersecurity Arms Race – Defending at Machine Speed

AI lets hackers attack at machine speed. Human defenders cannot keep up. Luckily, the team at Ent is building the future of AI-native cyber defense and prevention…

10 days ago · 4 likes · Maggie Gray and Akhil Iyer

US Marines test fighting from two coastal outposts at once. The 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit ran simultaneous forward sites near Camp Pendleton, one for maritime surveillance and drone tracking, the other combining command operations with aircraft refuelling and rearming, testing the Corps’ distributed Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept.

Seafloor to global force. Halifax’s Kraken Robotics expanding its footprint beneath the waves.

How venture studios plan to break into the defence market.

Hermeus wants to sell hypersonic test flights as a service. The company unveiled Ramjet-X, an expendable ramjet-powered vehicle air-launched from its Quarterhorse drone at roughly Mach 3 before climbing toward 100,000 feet and Mach 4, with integrated flight testing planned for 2027.

The Line

Al Vigier: The defence boom is here. So far, it mostly pays people like me

By: Al Vigier…

8 days ago · 74 likes · 47 comments · Line Editor

A think-tank traces how fast Russia iterates its kamikaze drones. A CSIS analysis charts how Russia turned Iran’s Shahed-136 into the constantly evolving Geran platform, backed by a $1.75 billion domestic-production deal and battlefield feedback loops the authors say Western acquisition processes cannot match: “The cycle ran faster than any Western procurement program could plausibly match.”

A cyberwarfare report says US Cyber Command’s own force-generation system is broken. Mark Montgomery and Matthew Ferren argue Cyber Command remains poorly integrated into joint planning and tactical operations, despite roughly 6,200 personnel across nearly 150 Cyber Mission Force teams: “America’s cyber force generation system is clearly broken.”

A New York Times feature asks what happens if America goes completely dark. A magazine piece on grid vulnerability revisits the 2013 sniper attack on PG&E’s Metcalf substation, which disabled 17 transformers in about 120 shots, arguing the grid still runs on thousands of aging, hand-built transformers that could take years to replace if enough failed at once.

European defence stocks catch a bond-market chill. Rising government borrowing costs are pressuring defence shares and the continent’s spending targets, with France’s 10-year yield up 32 basis points to 4.21% in a month, ahead of Italy’s 4.17%, while the UK reportedly weighs shelving its own 3%-of-GDP-by-2030 target.

Close: A group representing 18 major shipping nations, Canada included, warned that a “two-tier” maritime trade system is emerging around sanctioned shadow fleets and chokepoint disruptions: “Strong international cooperation is not a constraint on sovereignty; it is a prerequisite for effective governance in an interconnected world.”

The Icebreaker is written for the people building Canada’s defence technology base. Forward it to someone who needs it.

Canada gets first photonic quantum computer

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 10:04:46 GMT

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Guzman is out. Fuhr, the F-35 skeptic, now owns the file.
Doug Guzman is stepping down as CEO of the Defence Investment Agency less than a year after Ottawa stood the organization up. Days later, CBC profiled Stephen Fuhr, the former CF-18 pilot known for opposing the F-35 buy, who now runs the agency day to day. He inherits a file where Ottawa has locked in only 16 of the 88 F-35s once promised, with 72 more under review.

A former Canadian military commander turned venture capitalist on how to disrupt defence procurement

Allen-Vanguard goes into receivership owing more than US$80 million.
Ottawa-based counter-IED pioneer Allen-Vanguard entered receivership on September 1, with the Ontario Superior Court appointing PwC after lenders owed roughly US$80 million applied for court protection. The company has run out of Ottawa since 1981, keeps an engineering site in Tewkesbury, UK, and lists more than 30 end-user militaries from Australia to Saudi Arabia, yet carried only about 50 full-time staff as of late July. The Logic calls it a rare Canadian defence-industrial failure landing in the middle of a spending boom.

Defense technology is no longer an edge case for venture capital and private equity. It is a central pillar of the ecosystem…

Canada goes all in on Poland.
Defence Minister David McGuinty and Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu lead a trade mission into MSPO as its designated lead nation, more than 200 organizations and nearly 500 delegates strong, up from the 170 companies Ottawa announced in June. Army Recognition’s numbers go further: the delegation has grown to 250-plus organizations and 500 people, with 90-plus Canadian exhibitors inside the national pavilion, and Poland’s SAFE allocation lets Canada count up to 80% Canadian content versus the standard 35% third-country ceiling, a first for any non-European nation. Underneath the trade mission sits the Defence Drone Initiative, which LGen Darcy Molstad says drew 527 companies and more than 1,000 bids for a supply arrangement closed in two months, a process that normally takes two years. “In an era of accelerating technological change, agility is becoming a capability in its own right, and perhaps the most important one of all,” Molstad wrote. Two of DDI’s freshest qualified suppliers, Base Camp Connect and Marconi Technologies, make their first joint MSPO appearance. Expect a wave of DDI contracting awards to be announced this week.

Up to $1M in funding and additional technical services available for technologies with defence and civilian applications. Advisory support is available now.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 NorthStar drops its own satellites, banks on a $300M SPAC instead.
NorthStar Earth & Space and Kepler Communications agreed that NorthStar will host its space-domain-awareness sensors on Kepler's satellites rather than fly its own, after NorthStar's original sensors underperformed on Spire Global spacecraft, one failing outright and three missing image-quality targets. An ICC arbitration panel awarded Spire roughly US$12 million on a counterclaim after NorthStar had sought nearly US$46 million. NorthStar is separately merging with Viking Acquisition Corp. I at a C$420 million valuation, targeting a listing this quarter. CEO Stewart Bain: "we can deploy faster, scale more efficiently, and deliver information when it matters most."

Is it still VC? Sam Burrell argues that “the number of defence tech fundraises continues to increase… little of this looks like venture capital anymore. That’s because once the financing need changes shape, the cap table has to change with it. And the people who like to fund factories are banks, credit funds, sovereign and pension pools etc.”

Defense Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Born in California

Kelvin’s Substack

Funding the Frontlines

16 days ago · 4 likes · Kelvin Fu

🍁 Isar Aerospace and Maritime Launch buy two more weeks to lock down Nova Scotia.
Isar and Maritime Launch Services pushed their statement-of-work deadline to September 15 from September 1, with the launch pad still due to reach Isar by November 1. The delay landed right as Isar's Spectrum rocket reached orbit for the first time on its second flight from Norway, deploying five satellites and validating the vehicle behind Isar's roughly C$155 million, 10-year Nova Scotia launch deal.

American nuclear fusion history has just been made… by a company from Montreal

Building the Rails to Space | Hugh Kolias, Canada Rocket Company — Explorer Spotlight #14

By 2035, the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company expect the global space economy to reach $1.8 trillion. The White House recently released its National Space Transportation Policy, which calls for the US to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries annually by 2030…

16 days ago · 3 likes · Ethan Marcoux

🍁 Quandela puts Canada’s first photonic quantum computer on federal soil.
Quandela signed with CMC Microsystems to join Canada’s Quantum Computing Sandbox as the first photonic system on the federally funded FABrIC network, pitched explicitly on sovereignty: users’ “work and data [will be] entirely hosted on Canadian soil.”

🍁 Base Camp Connect and Marconi pair up on tactical comms ahead of MSPO.
Lévis-based Base Camp Connect and Montreal-based Marconi Technologies are pairing BCC-NOMAD vehicle systems with sixth-generation ORION radios for a joint MSPO debut. “In modern warfare, the ability to communicate is the ability to act,” said Base Camp Connect president Jean-Philippe Grondin.

🍁 Volatus and InDro both land DDI Marketplace status.
TSX-listed Volatus Aerospace qualified as a supplier under Canada’s Defence Drone Initiative Marketplace via competitive federal review, joining InDro Robotics, which won the same qualification days earlier.

Karp personally bets on Fedorov’s next act.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp will be the first major investor in a new defence technology company from Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s tech-forward former defence minister dismissed in July. The commitment is personal, not corporate. Karp to Fedorov: “You and your colleagues are launching a company that I think will be defining for the world.”

The Interceptor Crisis: How We Won the War Nobody Is Fighting Anymore

Germany hands Auterion and Airlogix $300M to mass-produce strike drones.
The Auterion-Airlogix joint venture won a $300 million German Ministry of Defence contract to serially produce more than 5,000 AI-guided long-range strike drones, the first such units built domestically in Germany and shipped straight to Ukraine. Auterion CEO Lorenz Meier says Germany now has “a production line for affordable precision mass... at a cost and rate that makes deterrence something you can actually stockpile.”

TITAN moves to production on $192M split between Palantir and Anduril.
The US Army pushed its TITAN targeting node into production with $127 million to Palantir and $65 million to Anduril, covering eight systems over 18 months. “There will always be a human on the loop within this workflow,” said Maj. Dell Barnes.

AeroVironment lands the Army’s first laser production contract, worth $464.8M.
AeroVironment secured the Army’s first-ever production order for a high-energy laser weapon, a deal to deliver dozens of 30-kilowatt LOCUST X3 systems built to defeat drones at under $5 a shot.

Dataminr’s OSINT tool goes live across NATO, plus a $318M Pentagon deal.
Dataminr’s First Alert Advanced suite is going live inside NATO’s entire Maven Smart System, while a separate five-year, $318 million Pentagon contract extends the same tool to three million licensed users across the Department of Defense. CEO Ted Bailey says NATO is now the company’s second-largest customer.

When Regulation Becomes a Defence Risk

XTEND skips the IPO line, merges onto the NYSE for $1.5B.
Israeli drone maker XTEND completed a $1.5 billion reverse merger with a Nasdaq-listed real estate developer, landing on the NYSE as XTND with a Tampa, Florida production base built to read as a domestic US supplier to the Pentagon.

Rheinmetall delivers its first XM30 prototype into a $45B Bradley-replacement race.
American Rheinmetall handed the Army its first Lynx XM30 prototype on September 1, with seven more to follow against General Dynamics in a competition covering roughly 4,000 vehicles worth more than $45 billion.

Sweden signs a $732M HIMARS deal and locks in Finland on rocket artillery.
Sweden signed a SEK 7 billion contract for Lockheed’s M142 HIMARS, just over ten launchers plus ammunition, opening the door to Precision Strike Missiles with a 500-km range.

Kate McKenna

Ukraine built the most successful interceptor drone program in combat history. Ten thousand units per month. Nine thousand documented kills. A cost advantage that finally tipped the economics of defence in our favour. Going from concept to mass production in the time it takes big defence primes to pull up a chair to have a chin wag…

a month ago · 22 likes · 31 comments · Kate McKenna

Beaten Zone closes Australia’s first dedicated defence-tech fund at AUD $26M.
Brisbane’s Beaten Zone Venture Partners closed its debut fund at AUD $26 million, citing PitchBook figures showing venture investors put USD $12.8 billion into defence in the first half of 2026 alone, more than five times all of 2022.

Related: smaller rounds this week included INLEAP Photonics, which raised roughly €20 million for laser counter-drone tech; Smack Technologies, which pulled in $61 million for a wrist-worn AI display; Israeli drone-OS maker AITAN, which banked $41 million; HyImpulse, which extended its Series A by more than €50 million; HiddenLayer, which closed $100 million for AI security; Easy Aerial, which raised $20 million; Korea’s Airbility, which raised roughly $4.7 million for counter-drone tech; Kepler Aerospace (a different Kepler), which raised $8 million for swarming satellites; Georgia Tech Research Institute, which won a $33.4 million Army integrator role that leapfrogs the usual primes; Elbit Systems, which won $270 million in ISR contracts; Lockheed, which picked up another $41.8 million across three Navy awards; and Israel and Greece, who sealed a €3.035 billion Achilles Shield deal for a national air-defence network.

Remote Robotic helps Canadian organizations design, deploy, and scale remote robotic systems. We have several new opportunities to join a team that’s tackling complex challenges and building some really exciting technology.

Check out our open roles and help us shape what’s next.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Kit for Canada 🍁: HMCS Robert Hampton Gray became the first RCN warship to change home ports through the Northwest Passage, departing Halifax August 16; the same bulletin bumps Primary Reserve education reimbursement from 50% to 75%, with the annual cap rising from $2,000 to $7,500. Roughly 400 NATO troops, but just 15 CAF members, are training around Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland for Arctic Shield, a footprint that undercuts Ottawa's own Arctic rhetoric. Saab is meanwhile pressing Ottawa to commit to at least 40 Gripens to justify a made-in-Canada production line spanning roughly 250 suppliers, the first Gripen line built outside Sweden. Saab CEO Micael Johansson: "Canada has to decide, [does it] want the sovereign aerospace industry and is that important to them?"

Ground robots 🍁: InDro’s Talos platform is built to run a 50-bed field hospital for 10 days on its onboard power alone, with a 7,000-km range; ground robots now make up half of the 42-person company’s business. The economics behind that bet are already proven in Ukraine, where ground robots have logged more than 100,000 combat resupply and evacuation missions at a fraction of the cost of risking soldiers.

🛡️ Evolution of Anti-Tank Guided Missiles: Direct Attack vs. Top Attack Capabilities

Why Drone Producers Should Invest in Training Operators

Amid the wave of headlines about AI drones and “killer robots,” the reality is that most drone operations are still conducted by humans, and this is changing only gradually. That is why operator training remains critical and will continue to be so in…

17 days ago · 46 likes · 10 comments · Olena Kryzhanivska

Prime time 🍁: MDA Space CEO Mike Greenley wants to build four to six Canadian suppliers into $1-billion companies working under MDA on different contracts, sized against MDA’s own run toward $10 billion in annual revenue. MDA is also pushing into Direct-to-Device satellite communications using the payload line built for Telesat’s 198-satellite Lightspeed constellation. Analysts are buying the growth story: RBC and CIBC pushed Calian’s price target above $105 on a CA$1.5 billion backlog.

The People's Art of War

How the US ran out of interceptors

On August 4, 2026, CBS News reported that the US was running out of interceptors and ammunition to supply the war in Iran…

15 days ago · 74 likes · 2 comments · People's Art of War

Home front 🍁: Ottawa named ex-Google CFO Patrick Pichette CEO of the new Digital Transformation Canada, an agency that absorbs Shared Services Canada and the Canadian Digital Service to run how the federal government buys and uses AI. Twenty-three companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google signed onto Ottawa’s voluntary data centre principles even as more than two-thirds of Canadians tell pollsters they don’t want one nearby. Crypto4A’s CEO argues cryptography, not tanks, is Canada’s actual sovereign advantage, pointing to its FIPS 140-3 post-quantum hardware module. Ahead of Carney’s September 17 address to the European Parliament, MLI’s Ed Fast and Richard Shimooka warn Ottawa not to overweight Europe as a substitute security partner: continental Europe takes just 17% of Canadian arms exports versus 63% for the United States, even after a 77% jump driven by Ukraine shipments.

Marlinspike: The 21st Century Offset

Upgrading DoW’s Arsenal for 21st Century

The conflict in the middle east strained US munition supplies and demonstrated structural misalignments in the defense industrial base: major weapon system production processes cannot be quickly scaled to replenish expended inventory. To increase production, takes time, money, and long-term commitment; as soon as demand drops off, production capacity fo…

14 days ago · 4 likes

Software sovereignty: War on the Rocks’ sharpest read of the week argues European states depend on foreign suppliers for more than 80% of critical digital infrastructure, a dependency Canada shares almost line for line. The same week, a G7 cyber working group that includes Canada’s Communications Security Establishment told industry it can no longer afford to postpone the move to post-quantum encryption, warning of “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks; a companion primer walks through the countdown to Q-Day and why the timeline matters.

Canada’s Next Security Problem May Not Look Like War

Apex: The Spacecraft Platform Company

16 days ago · 160 likes · 3 comments · Ian Cinnamon

The kill zone: Ukraine’s drone forces say they struck 58,465 Russian targets in August alone, nearly 1,900 a day, including 54 shadow-fleet vessels and 168 energy nodes. Air superiority is thinner than that strike count suggests: Ukrainian F-16 pilots are now flying some daytime sorties with guns only because of a missile shortage a squadron commander confirmed on the record. “Any aircraft without weapons is... useless.”

Stockpile paradox: A senior Ukrainian official says Kyiv’s Patriot interceptor stocks are “effectively at zero” after a week of EU and NATO meetings produced no new supply commitments. Kyiv has now formally asked Brussels to fund its first PAC-3 buy out of the EU’s €90 billion loan. Compounding the squeeze, Trump says Washington will seek back payment from Europe for munitions already sent to Ukraine, a retroactive bill that would land on every NATO PURL contributor, Canada included.

Europe rearms: The UK’s new defence space strategy commits more than £3 billion to space control, ISR and connectivity, including £880 million for space control alone and £30 million for the SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, a direct comparator for Canada’s own space-defence funding debate.

Axis watch: POLITICO’s exclusive found that a Chinese state-owned firm shipped 46 tons of carbon-fibre precursor to a sanctioned Rosatom drone plant, a load one nonproliferation expert says could supply as many as 1,300 Shahed-type drones. China is also squeezing rare-earth flows to the US, with terbium exports to Japan falling to zero, an opening for Canadian midstream players like Geomega, whose Montreal demonstration plant is now more than 75% built and producing 90%-plus-purity rare earth concentrate from bauxite residue. Ukraine’s own sanctions commissioner separately displayed foreign-made guidance components pulled from Russian Iskander and S-400 missiles, tracing back to the US, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, France, Britain and Switzerland.

Cheap, Fast, and Mass-Produced: Russia's New Low-Cost Cruise Missile Arsenal

Picture: Defence Intelligence of Ukraine…

13 days ago · 34 likes · 4 comments · Fabian Hoffmann, PhD

Counter-drone: Senators pressed the Army over killing its Ukraine-informed drone battalion, demanding a briefing by September 21 on ending the 600-soldier Unmanned Assault Battalion’s specialized mission. The Air Force is separately pushing to replace the Reaper faster after losing 45 of the drones. On the other side of the ledger, lasers along the US-Mexico border have downed 11 cartel drones in a single week, part of more than 300 downed since January, a homeland counter-UAS precedent Ottawa has yet to match on its own border and bases.

Space: Reuters’ investigation into orbital shadowing describes China’s uncrewed spaceplane releasing a small satellite that looped around another Chinese satellite hundreds of miles up. Gen. Stephen Whiting: “We must be well-prepared for conflict in space. And if deterrence fails, we will fight and win.” RAND’s “Breaking Glass, Missing Hands” report warns the US lacks the engineers and technicians needed to rebuild satellites lost in a war inside a realistic 12-to-24 month reconstitution window. The Space Force is meanwhile restarting GPS ground-system work after cancelling the $6.27 billion OCX program outright, and four American launch companies pulled out of Macron’s Paris space summit under White House pressure.

The push to create a Canadian rival to GPS

PolarBrief by Polar Counsel

Can You Build a Drone Without China? What It Now Takes to Sell in the US

The US has just raised the cost of selling commercial drones into its market. From September 3, imported drones weighing more than 25 kg, or equipped with thermal imaging, face a 100% tariff. Docking stations and critical components are also rolled in. Smaller drones without those capabilities face a 25% tariff…

14 days ago · 5 likes · Sujin Chan-Allen

Pentagon reform watch: The Pentagon’s new Secure Space Network will build roughly 50 mobile SCIFs to open classified work to small firms. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, the most visible champion of the Army’s commercial-buying push, submitted his resignation to Trump. At Project Convergence in the California desert, some Army Starlink terminals overheated in triple-digit heat, forcing soldiers to cool antennas with ice-water-soaked t-shirts. Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis: commercial-first tech “is not necessarily purely ruggedized.”

Cheap at scale: F-35 unit costs jumped 8.5% to 11.5% in the latest production lots, pushing the A-model to $92 million and the B-model past $121 million, a direct read-across for Canada’s own fighter math as it weighs the remaining 72 aircraft against Saab’s Gripen pitch.

The Ice Remembers Everything…

Big think: RUSI’s Roger McDermott argues NATO planning underweights Russia’s “recoverability,” the speed at which a damaged military system regains function, not just its stockpiles. Frontgrade CEO Mitch Stevison makes the tier-two case in a SpaceNews op-ed: speed to field starts below the prime, not at it, because “the worst time to discover that a program needs a second source is after the first source has become a constraint,” a lesson Canadian tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers chasing DDI money should take to heart.

Grey zone: The US State Department posted a $10 million reward for an Iranian IRGC cyber commander accused of directing hacking campaigns against Western defence, energy and financial targets. Putin, for his part, signed a decree letting Russia seize data centres that fail to defend themselves against drone strikes, a sharp marker of how physical and cyber threats are converging.

Maritime autonomy: The US Navy and its Quad partners are deploying Vantor’s AI to fingerprint dark-fleet vessels across the Pacific, fusing radar, satellite imagery and AIS data, the same sensor-fusion problem Canada faces trying to police its own Arctic and Atlantic approaches.

The Ambition Journal

The Arctic Tech Stack

a month ago · 10 likes · 3 comments · Ambition Capital

🔫 Hot Shots

🍁 Ottawa opens a $3M call for university Earth-observation research. The Canadian Space Agency’s latest smartEarth round will fund roughly 20 projects at up to $150,000 each, open only to Canadian post-secondary institutions, closing October 30.

The Defense Delta

The Pentagon Built a Market It Can’t See

Well, it’s been a while since my last post. In the meantime, across defense tech, commercial space, venture capital, and Pentagon acquisition, a number of seemingly separate trends have started converging around the same underlying friction. So that’s what we’re going to explore here. Warning: this is a long one. We’re going from billion-dollar venture …

17 days ago · 23 likes · 3 comments · Nestor Levin

🍁 CSA wants Canadian miners thinking about the Moon. A Notice to Industry asks firms to map their capability in lunar resource extraction and regolith management, with responses due September 20; it’s explicitly not a tender.

🍁 University of Toronto research pushes 29 MEPs to demand a Serbia spyware freeze. Citizen Lab findings on Pegasus and NoviSpy infections drove European lawmakers to call for slowing Serbia’s EU accession pending an investigation. The MEPs: “This is not a technical glitch; it is a direct state attack on democracy.”

🍁 Canada hosts, then gets asked about invasion rumours, at its own defence conference. The 28th Indo-Pacific Chiefs of Defence Conference wrapped in Victoria with 32 senior officers from 29 countries, co-hosted by Gen. Jennie Carignan and Adm. Samuel Paparo.

Asked in Victoria whether he’d follow a Trump order to invade Canada, Adm. Samuel Paparo called the scenario “absolutely and utterly preposterous”: “Would you ask me please, also, what my attack plans are for the Martians?”

🍁 Zelenskyy expected in Canada next week. Two independent sources confirmed to Radio-Canada that the visit is coming, possibly with two stops; his last trip was December 2025.

🍁 Canada can wait on the F-35 decision. It can’t wait to start flying them. A 19FortyFive think piece lays out the timeline squeeze: DND targets 2029 initial operational capability while the CF-18 fleet must hold the line through 2032.

🍁 Carignan won’t demand an apology over Hegseth’s cadet post. Speaking from Victoria, Canada’s top soldier said the Vernon, BC cadet and instructor will decide for themselves how to respond; Carney called the post “beneath their office.”

Gen. Douglas Schiess takes over as Space Force chief. Schiess became the service’s third chief of space operations on September 3, saying “integrating into the Joint Force demands a rapid scaling of both our manpower and space capabilities.”

Shield AI licenses its counter-drone software onto L3Harris hardware. Tracker is now licensable for the VAMPIRE platform, which has logged 350,000-plus operational hours and hundreds of hostile-drone shootdowns using passive detection instead of radar.

The Icebreaker is written for the people building Canada’s defence technology base. Forward it to someone who needs it.

Valued at 32x, acquired at 3x

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:01:08 GMT

Editor’s Note: We are co-hosting the Mercier Lecture on September 29 with York University's Schulich School of Business, featuring a keynote by Xanadu founder Christian Weedbrook. Limited spaces are still available.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

From soup cans to qubits. Xanadu is turning the former Campbell’s Soup factory in Etobicoke into a 158,000 square foot photonics manufacturing hub, backed by a $195M repayable federal loan out of the Strategic Response Fund, which is half of the up to $390M the company had asked for against its $893M Project OPTIMISM.

The cheque is one brick in a “Canadian Investment Supercycle”, as TD Economics now counts more than $1T announced across 300 plus projects with $1.5T to $1.7T in potential and roughly $12,000 more real output per capita by 2035, while on the defence side Ottawa has stacked $60B in extra spending over five years, more than half a trillion in investment, 125,000 jobs and a stated goal of tripling the industry inside a decade.

Plumbing is moving too: the industrial benefits program shifts from ISED to the Defence Investment Agency (DIA), a change ex-public servants call a “big deal” for procurement speed on a program worth $5B plus in GDP and 40,400 jobs a year.

Reality check: Doug Guzman is expected to step down after only a year as the first chief executive of the DIA. Guzman was the agency’s answer to every question about whether Ottawa could actually move money at speed. Losing your first CEO inside 12 months, while handing that same agency the industrial benefits program and a 5 percent of GDP target for 2035, is not a personnel story.

We have been here before, and the sharpest read of why nothing compounds is the reminder that DATAR put a working naval tactical data system in Canadian hands in 1949, a decade ahead of anyone, and we let it go, with the verdict that the system “is not broken, it is working exactly as designed.” Founders are reaching the same conclusion faster, arguing that sovereignty is now a shippable product feature rather than a marketing coat of paint, verified the way security claims are verified, after 50 percent US tariffs hit $28B of Canadian goods in a single weekend and seed funding fell 16 percent to $297.2M across 133 deals.

Valued at 32x, acquired at 3x. From Backswing Ventures - Helsing’s $1.8B secondary at an $18B valuation is roughly 32 times projected 2026 revenue, while the median defence tech M&A multiple sits at 2.8x and public comps at 2.2x, and the AEVEX sale to BlackSea at $650M max on about $150M of FY2026 revenue works out to 4.3x, which is the exit math almost nobody is underwriting.

“The cap table doesn’t validate the valuation, revenue does.” - Kyle Asman

Meanwhile private markets keep climbing, with Castelion raising a $1B Series C at a $13B valuation four years after founding, making it the third most valuable venture-backed defence company behind Anduril at $61B and Helsing at $18B, a round split into $800M of equity and $250M of credit while the Army’s Dark Eagle produces about one missile a month and Castelion books a $90M Navy award for 50 hypersonic weapons.

Reality check: The exit window did crack open, with aerospace and defence private equity exit value hitting $26.8B in H1 2026 against $17.7B for all of 2025 and five listings versus zero in Q2 2025, even as deal value slid to $6.5B from $11.1B, which is liquidity for sponsors sitting on $860B of aging buyout NAV rather than proof that venture-scale marks clear. The margin question is the one to watch, because the White House has made fixed-price contracting the default and preferred method while the FY26 NDAA lifted the certified cost data threshold from $2M to $10M, traditional primes earn 7 to 15 percent where Anduril claims roughly 40 percent on mature products, and Jordan Blashek’s warning of a reckoning inside 18 months sits against roughly $50B of venture chasing $4.3B in actual federal obligations.

PitchBook’s own quarterly read sharpens the picture, with aerospace and defence deal count up nearly 11 percent from Q1 and more than double a year earlier while total deal value fell almost 58 percent, and five of the 10 largest exits arriving as public listings alongside Norwegian’s roughly $840M purchase of Sunclass and Voyager’s $300M pickup of Astrobotic. More deals, smaller cheques, is how a market behaves when it stops believing the last round’s price.

BCI public defence comps

High-Low Mix: The Three Tiers of Modern Missile Arsenals

Picture: U.S. Navy…

19 days ago · 25 likes · 5 comments · Fabian Hoffmann, PhD

Twelve submarines, eight months, and a procurement culture in the middle of a personality change. TKMS says the pace of Canada’s submarine decision was “lightspeed,” with up to 12 boats, a 100,000 page contract, roughly 50 TKMS staff on the file, negotiations targeted to close by year-end and a first boat as early as 2033, plus a Canadian supplier bench that already includes CAE on training, E3 Lithium on critical minerals, Valbruna ASW on amagnetic steel and Cohere on AI. The follow-on fight is surface, where a 12 to 20 ship corvette class of 100 to 120 metres for three oceans has Seaspan, Vard, Ontario Shipyards and Thales Canada circling MEKO A-100 and Luleå-class designs and Vice-Admiral Topshee wants the answer “Canadian from the core.”

That is the same logic pulling procurement away from Washington, with Stephen Fuhr saying the 88-jet F-35 buy remains under review with only 16 aircraft firmly ordered and critical equipment being paid for on 14 more, while sources float a mixed fleet of more than 100 F-35s and Gripens and Telesat takes $2.3B for Arctic military satellite communications, a notable turn given roughly 70 percent of Canadian defence dollars historically flowed south. Fuhr’s own framing of the politics is “that’s just me reading the room.”

Reality check: The money argument is nearly settled and the hard part is what comes next, since the NATO pledge splits into 3.5 percent military and 1.5 percent infrastructure by 2035 and even the UK only promises 3 percent “sometime in the next Parliament” on about £15B over four years, which is a reminder that pledges are easy and delivery schedules are not.

Procurement usually slows down in the summer… But Canada saw nine tenders for drones in the past week, the most on record.

Secure your spot here.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 Nalagx Corp picks New Brunswick for an explosives plant that could double NATO’s supply. The company secured roughly 1,500 acres of provincial land near Belledune, beating out two US states, for a facility CEO Patrick Gagnon says would double NATO’s explosives supply, with Natural Resources minister John Herron backing the site. Energetics are the bottleneck behind every artillery pledge, so this is the least glamorous and most useful announcement of the week.

Big congrats to Rob O’Donnell, currently serving as the Canadian Liaison Officer with the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM) HQ in Austin, Texas. His work focuses on bridging interoperability and collaboration efforts between Canada and the US and emerging military modernization initiatives in the fields of AI, Robotics, Autonomy as well as Futures Concepts.

Powering the Arctic and the Moon | Daniel Sax, CSMC — Explorer Spotlight #13

“Power is the great enabler.” — Daniel Sax, CEO & Founder, Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation…

22 days ago · 4 likes · Ethan Marcoux

🍁 NordSpace lands $10M for the Atlantic Spaceport Complex. Ottawa, Newfoundland and Labrador and the company are putting $10M total into SLC-02 at St. Lawrence on the Burin Peninsula, with roughly half NordSpace’s own capital and half public money announced August 27 by Sean Fraser and Lin Paddock through ACOA as a space and defence play for the province.

Space tech VC funding hits $11.3 billion in H1 2026, surpassing all of 2025

🍁 MDA Space launches LaunchPad Ventures across 25 focus areas. The new vehicle, run with 49North as a subsidiary and covering 25 focus areas backed by 55 years of MDA relationships, does not disclose its size, which puts it beside the $100M CAD Calian Ventures fund with a different pitch. Shawn Roy names the real gap: the barrier for Canadian defence SMBs “isn’t talent or technology, it’s access to customers, to networks, and revenue opportunities.”

🍁 Lab2Market puts $10,000 each behind 10 dual-use student ventures. Dalhousie, UNB and Vimy Forge are running Canada’s first national dual-use cohort, 16 weeks this fall with 10 ventures and a landing at DEFSEC Atlantic 2026, including Reliable Arctic Intelligence, counter-drone startup SkyRelix, Novigrad Technologies, Volantek and Maritime Trust Assurance.

🍁 Canada is negotiating a €100B defence bank that has raised €5B. The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank has about €5B in upfront commitments against a €100B target, nine countries signed up or supportive, a €20B paid-in and €80B callable structure and an ambition to be rated AAA, with Canada’s Isabelle Hudon as lead negotiator and a charter signing planned for the autumn.

REGENT raises $240M for seagliders the Marine Corps keeps re-upping. The Series B is a 50-50 equity and debt mix taking total funding past $340M, behind a 255,000 square foot plant, a reported $10B order book and a defence Viceroy variant carrying 3,500 lb at up to 180 mph, on top of a $4.75M Marine Corps Warfighting Lab agreement in 2023 and a $10M follow-on in 2025. REGENT claims a 40 percent improvement in theatre-setting timelines in war games, with programs of record targeted for 2029.

In-Q-Tel’s small cheque helped build an $8B German drone champion. Quantum Systems co-CEO Sven Kruck credits the CIA-backed investor, whose cheques are often under $3M, with opening the doors that made CIA and FBI business possible for a company now valued around $8B, while the European Parliament’s Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann warns that IQT “is not a purely financial investor.”

Army commits up to $2.2B to five nuclear microreactor vendors. The Janus program pairs Antares with Fort Bragg, BWXT with Fort Campbell, General Atomics EMS with Fort Hood, Radiant with Fort Benning and Westinghouse with Fort Drum, worth up to $2.2B across FY2027 to FY2031, targeting 20 plus reactors with the first online by September 2028 under Executive Order 14299 after nine bases made the November shortlist.

Canadian AI Newsletter

CanadianAI: One of Canada's largest-ever seed rounds, and Anthropic wants gigawatts in Canada

24 days ago · 3 likes · Raif Barbaros

Ursa Major goes public at roughly $2.3B post-money via SPAC. The propulsion company is merging with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp III to form Inflection Point Mach X Bleichroeder Corp under ticker IPXX in Q1 2027, at about $1.6B pre-money with $350M plus in PIPE commitments, against roughly $380M raised to date, 5,500 plus ground tests, 140,000 test seconds and a fresh $10M MK 104 award.

Terra Industries closes $52M seed for Global South defence infrastructure. The 2024-founded company added $18M to reach $52M total from 8VC, Silent Ventures and Nova Global, building drones and mine-detecting combat vehicles for African markets and tracking toward $100M in contracts, which is the geography almost every Western defence startup ignores.

𝗔 𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗮𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗮 𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗲𝗿.

Maglut Heavy Industries raises $3.1M pre-seed to break China’s magnet grip. The California startup emerged from stealth with ARC-1 rare earth chromatography claiming 99.9 percent plus purity, aimed at a supply chain where China holds 60 percent of mining and roughly 90 percent of magnets while an F-35 carries 900 lb of rare earths and a nuclear submarine 9,000 lb, with the 2021 NDAA sourcing ban starting to bite in 2027. Curtis Wu: “we were pretty shocked at the vulnerability of American industry.”

Dirac Labs takes $1.8M pre-seed for positioning where GPS cannot reach. The UW-Madison spinout is using diamond magnetometry for quantum universal positioning, backed by TitletownTech, Automotive Ventures, quantumEDGE, Jude Gomila and Balaji Srinivasan, on the thesis that “GPS is global, but not universal.” Underground, undersea and jammed is most of the modern fight.

The European defence checkpoint

23 days ago · 12 likes · Louise Boucher

Related: The Pentagon and SBA want a Smaller War Plants Commission modelled on the June 1942 corporation, aimed at small manufacturers that make up 70 percent of the industrial base with nearly $500B of SBA lending behind it, which tells you where Washington thinks the capacity shortfall actually lives.

JetZero Closes $100 Million Financing Facility to Advance the Z4 Program
Arkenstone talks about the most boring parts of military manufacturing

Remote Robotic helps Canadian organizations design, deploy, and scale remote robotic systems. We have several new opportunities to join a team that’s tackling complex challenges and building some really exciting technology.

Check out our open roles and help us shape what’s next.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Kit for Canada 🍁 IDEaS opened an austere medical challenge worth up to $2.8M through March 2028, with up to 10 semi-finalists at $180,000 each across forward oxygen delivery and sustainable surgical capability, and the spec is demanding: FiO₂ above 0.8 for more than four hours, rucksack-portable, no pressurized cylinders. Deadline is Thursday October 8.

Buy sheets 🍁 Innovative Solutions Canada has four live calls closing in September, MINERVA uncrewed ground systems for surveillance on the 10th, infrared quantum light on the 15th, MINERVA tactical cargo on the 21st and MINERVA Arctic UAS on the 24th, all at 14:00 ET, and the Army separately wants land and aerial drones for cargo and munitions resupply plus ISR platforms rated for “extreme cold” Arctic use.

Canada’s Strategic Partnership Framework is the most important new tool in defence procurement. It lets the government designate trusted Canadian companies to deliver sovereign capabilities.
Is the Valley of Death in Canadian defence procurement getting wider, not narrower?

Industrial Warfare

Rethinking the Defense Industrial Base in the Age of Industrial Warfare

Over the past few weeks, I have come across several independent analyses discussing what appears, at first sight, to be a relatively narrow industrial topic…

3 months ago · 2 likes · Christophe DAUNIQUE

Sovereign drones 🍁 The Defence Drone Initiative drew 527 companies and more than 1,000 bids in a first round that closed August 14, three weeks after launch, across five streams and six capability areas on a five-year instrument that reopens every three months to mid-2027.

Fixed price, frozen ground 🍁: Deloitte’s warning that the default fixed-price model could stall the Arctic buildout, with the contingency-loading and no-bid dynamic, Jordan Eizenga’s “speed should be the main barometer” line, the staged-delivery fix, and the Nanisivik precedent.

The ONE9 team is back in the Arctic connecting with the Sapujjijiit team on the ground, building the relationships needed to help innovative companies establish a northern footprint.

Power projection The case for reactors on bases is arithmetic, not ideology: the US military burns more than 3 GW of baseline power and 12 million gallons of liquid fuel daily, energy per soldier is up twentyfold since 1945, and 1 kg of U-235 carries the equivalent of 650,000 gallons of gasoline. Fuel convoys are the most predictable casualty generator in modern war.

The long bill is in the software 🍁 Caseway’s Al Vigier argues the River-class fight over hull counts misses the real cost, because 15 ships delivered across roughly 25 years run three separate design authorities, TKMS adds a fourth, and the Halifax-class combat system modernization alone ran $4B, with threat libraries and fire-control logic revised on a timescale of months rather than decades. Submarine contracting closes in 2027, so the data-rights and update-authority clauses being drafted over the next 18 months decide whether Canadian engineers touch that code for 30 years.

Software wins wars Ukraine’s Delta platform pulls drone video, radio intercepts and satellite imagery into one system that detects targets and pushes them to thousands of reconnaissance and attack drones, creating a miles-wide kill zone credited with slowing Russian advances to a near standstill. Detection, tracking, strike, all orchestrated by code, which is the argument for treating battle management as a sovereign capability rather than a subcontract.

Fedorov offers drone technology to US in exchange for Patriots, seeks funding for defence tech fund
Don’t write off Russia’s defence industry yet

Battery hygiene Chariot Defense’s Ben Kesling, a former Marine infantry officer, argues the Pentagon should purge the Chinese-made power banks American troops are buying off the shelf and carrying into the field, which is the unglamorous supply-chain hole nobody budgets for.

Sustainment 🍁 Kognitiv Spark’s RemoteSpark puts holographic repair guidance in front of a technician over low bandwidth, built by a roughly 25-person team since 2016, on the company’s estimate that about 80 percent of field procedures are undocumented, with UK Defence Innovation money doing the heavy lifting while Canada watches. Yan Simard’s read on the home market is blunt: “in Canada, I think everyone’s waiting to see the dollars actually being spent.”

Retooling 🍁 Tool and die shops squeezed by US tariffs of 15 to 50 percent are eyeing defence work, with Kitchener’s XL Tool down to about 40 percent automotive and Windsor’s Cavalier Tool at roughly 15 percent, in a sector that has been making 16 to 18 million tooling units a year for carmakers. XL Tool’s Chris Hergott has the warning label the strategy needs: “if you think you’re just going to turn off the automotive switch and hit the defence switch, it doesn’t work like that.”

Counter-drone An Army high-energy laser defeated three cartel-linked drones at the southern border, a first for the AMP-HEL system, under July’s Joint Laser Weapon System awards worth $86M initially against an $847M ceiling, which beats firing a $2M missile at a cheap airframe. The Air Force is layering the same problem, with the 31st Air Task Force running detection through AI, then electronic warfare, then shotguns as the last line and a Pentagon task force now publishing a catalogue of validated systems.

New Test Footage: Black Hawk executes rocket-powered launch of Altius-700.

Ground robots At Sandhills 2.0 on Fort Bragg’s Range 63, the 20th Engineer Brigade ran 9 Mothers’ Bumblebee V2 and “Bee Hive,” Edda’s 12-gauge turret, Perennial Autonomy and Forterra’s autonomous Ford F-250s through a live breach, with Col. Jeff Burges declaring “gone are the days of a soldier running with a grapnel hook.” Col. Tom Monaghan’s self-diagnosis is the quotable one: the Army knows it has to stop delivering yesterday’s technology tomorrow.

The kill zone The Times spent several days in Zaporizhzhia, a frontline city where drones have made movement itself the hazard, and the reporting is the clearest picture yet of what a 20 km transparent battlespace does to daily life.

Autonomy crosses a line A Russian drone running a few hundred dollars of Nvidia Jetson Orin hardware selected its own target and killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia on July 6, including 19-year-old student Tetiana Bubynets, the strongest documented case yet of a fully autonomous lethal strike. The policy debate about human-in-the-loop is now trailing the hardware by about $300.

Big think Brandon Tseng’s retrospective is the most honest piece a founder has written this year: ubiquity slipped from 2035 to somewhere between 2040 and 2045, 30 investors said no in 2015, and Hivemind now flies on 30 plus platforms with autonomy integration down from three years to under two weeks with two engineers. The Ukraine lesson he keeps returning to, designing for zero dependency on connectivity as a hard requirement, is the one Canadian programs still treat as optional.

Ukraine’s next act: Mykhailo Fedorov courting US and Western capital for a defence tech fund plus weapons-development companies, weeks after his July dismissal and the Kyiv protests, with his stated priorities on cheap AI-guided missiles, robotising the line of contact and sensor nets.

Practically all of the jet-powered Shaheds approaching Kyiv appear to follow the same route.

Drone doctrine wobble The Army is phasing out the 173rd Airborne’s Unmanned Assault Battalion, a unit championed by generals since removed, including Gen. Chris Donahue in July, with CNAS analyst Stacie Pettyjohn warning of a risk the Army invests in the wrong or already obsolete drone types.

Axis watch A Beijing Institute of Technology study found China could fill only about 60 percent of wartime drone orders at triple peacetime demand, with AI-led mobilisation reaching roughly 58 percent fulfilment against 34 percent for none at all, and Prof. Zhang Jihai’s conclusion is that competition is “no longer merely about the performance of weapon systems” but industrial capacity.

Software sovereignty A federal judge ruled the Pentagon’s supply-chain-risk designation against Anthropic “illegal and baseless” in a 59-page decision, finding the punishment was driven by a desire to make a public example of the company for criticizing the government, with OpenAI signing its own Pentagon deal hours later. On the other side of the same technology, a Russian-speaking ransomware crew used SpaceX’s Cursor agent across 28 chat sessions to run hundreds of malicious operations against at least six confirmed victims, which one analyst estimates makes attackers 30 to 50 percent faster.

Europe rearms Dutch insurers are sitting on €455B of assets while the Netherlands needs €16B to €19B more per year to reach 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, with ASR capping exposure at €100M per transaction and Achmea up to €150M from €20M in 2025, and PwC reckons roughly 400 suppliers must grow output three to four times over.

Palantir’s European problem A little-known French company is now winning the contracts Palantir used to hold, with ChapsVision’s ArgonOS taking France’s DGSI intelligence platform and a German BfV deal on roughly €200M of revenue, 1,100 staff and a €1B target for 2028. Founder Olivier Dellenbach already sold eFront for more than $1.5B, so this is not a first-time bet.

🎙️ Ep 28 - The Navy's Chief Talent Officer on Attracting Top Talent

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Kohlmann has flown F-18s in combat, invested in startups, and run a hard-tech company. Now he's the US Navy's chief talent officer, responsible for a workforce of over a million people…

24 days ago · 4 likes · Maggie Gray and David Rothzeid

🔫 Hot Shots

🍁 A radome from Arnprior is now keeping America’s clocks safe. Competition Composites delivered an 18-foot, 25-panel, five-ply “C-Sandwich” radome to the US Naval Observatory’s Master Time Clocks Facility in three crates with a 20-year gloss polyurethane finish. Small contract, precise capability, exactly the kind of supplier the industrial strategy should be scaling.

Can quantum sensors map Earth’s gravity for navigation? Q-CTRL says yes.

Jewish Space Lasers? Israel Wants ‘Rods From God’, plans new military frontier with space-to-ground strike weapons.

Space. Low Earth orbit is turning into a traffic problem, with the Journal reporting that the accumulation of satellites and debris roughly 100 to 1,200 miles up now forces SpaceX and its rivals into constant dodging, raising the odds of a collision that damages or destroys spacecraft. SpaceX’s own filings to the FCC put the manoeuvre count above 355,000 in a single year, which works out to every Starlink satellite swerving more than 40 times annually.

🍁 Greenland and Nunavut just started building an Arctic port network without asking Washington. The Port of Nuuk’s operator signed an MOU with the proponents of the Qikiqtarjuaq Deep Sea Port and the Grays Bay Road and Port projects covering maritime resilience, emergency response, vessel support and supply chains.

The London firm quietly mapping state-sponsored technology theft. The Times profiled Strider Technologies, valued at $450M, and its use of AI to detect state-backed espionage against companies and universities, which is the category most Canadian research institutions still treat as somebody else’s compliance problem.

Someone finally shipped an exoskeleton light enough to wear. Edgerun launched a 10 lb bilateral hip exoskeleton cutting metabolic cost 30 to 45 percent, tested 100 plus times with Ukrainian operators since May from a Kyiv office, which is notable given TALOS burned $400M before its 2019 cancellation. Soldier loads went from 40 lb for 2,500 years to 90 to 140 lb today, and load carriage causes twice as many evacuations as enemy contact.

Ukrainian founders wrote the pitch guide the rest of us need. Defence Builder Fund’s Andrii Hryshchuk warns that decks get 2.5 minutes, unclear by slide three means dead, and confirmation from real military users is the hardest currency in the sector, with some deals closing only after investors watch a team for six months.

The J-20 mystery had a boring answer. Those aircraft-shaped objects spotted in China turned out to be fire trainers, though the same reporting notes the PLAAF may already field roughly 500 J-20s across 14 operational units and three training bases, possibly 1,000 airframes by 2030. The mock-ups were the least interesting number in the story.

Justice named a Chinese campaign, then quietly walked part of it back. DOJ exposed a state-sponsored operation by a group it calls QTFY targeting NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Senate, military networks, hospitals, power companies and defence contractors, using a Chinese tech company as cover, then corrected the release days later to say those were “among the targets” rather than confirmed victims.

Ukraine is winning with balloons. More than 1,000 balloons have gone up since autumn, dropping small munitions, distracting air defences, relaying radio and now launching drones to extend their reach.

Getting Creative About the Munitions Crisis

It’s no secret that America has a weapons production problem…

22 days ago · 26 likes

The CIA director flew to Moscow and was home by dinner. Open-source trackers followed John Ratcliffe’s C-17A into Moscow on an unannounced trip, the first such visit since November 2021, which Trump called “sort of semi-routine”, with later reporting suggesting the message was a warning not to attack NATO.

The document that predicted the mobilization gap is seven years old. Quinton Lucie documented how FEMA dismantled civil defence and national mobilization planning on November 28, 1993, leaving 4.5 positions on national-security resource preparedness and roughly 25 years without a wartime mobilization strategy.

And the week’s most efficient business development hire. A Miami maritime-threat software firm turned drone defence startup brought on Eric Trump as an adviser in May on a two-year deal granting a 6 percent stake now poised to be worth about $12M, explicitly for his network of contacts.

The Icebreaker is written for the people building Canada’s defence technology base. Forward it to someone who needs it.

How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypse

$533 million bought zero artillery shells

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 10:02:10 GMT

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

China’s digital bombs and supply-chain snares are already inside the wire. Wired sat in on a war game simulating a Volt Typhoon style Chinese hacking crew taking down American infrastructure, and the uncomfortable lesson was that nobody in the room could stop the simulated blackout before real damage was done. The Economist mapped how tightly Chinese firms have wound their manufacturing supply chains around the globe, leaving even non-Chinese factories dependent on Chinese-controlled inputs and Western defence primes with fewer real alternatives than procurement officers assume. The Economist separately asked why the world’s richest country cannot defend its own vital infrastructure, and answered that Washington is still moving slower than the hackers it is supposed to be outpacing. Iran already proved the concept works: Iranian hackers reportedly shut down a power plant in the UK this week, and The New York Times Magazine used a hypothetical national blackout scenario to show how thin America’s grid resilience actually is once the lights go out at scale. Washington’s answer so far is bureaucratic: the White House’s new National Security Science and Technology Strategy calls for automated vetting of foreign research partners, while a US government lab is quietly probing Chinese made lidar for security holes in the autonomous vehicles that Rivian, GM, Ford, Kodiak and Lucid all put on the road.

Cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos predicts that the next two years could be chaotic, as open-weight AI models with advanced cyber capabilities get into the hands of hackers, turning Grade C scammers into Grade A hackers; and allowing bad individuals to do the kind of work previously only possibly by large teams:

Derek Thompson

Let me make an odd confession to begin a detailed article about cybersecurity: On any given day, I would rather think about pretty much anything other than cybersecurity…

a month ago · 221 likes · 12 comments · Derek Thompson

Ottawa’s defence plan. The Globe and Mail’s editorial board wants a roadmap for how Canada will hit four percent of GDP in defence spending by 2030. Policy Magazine found Canada’s six month old Defence Industrial Strategy is already tilting toward large primes and foreign subsidiaries, pointing to Bombardier’s AEW&C talks with Saab and GDLS’s armoured vehicle expansion in London, Ontario, while smaller Canadian firms wait for a real seat at the table. Some of that gap is getting patched from outside government: Calian Ventures is partnering with Publicus on a Canadian government procurement matching platform aimed at exactly the SMEs Policy Magazine says are being left behind, and Vanguard Defence reports Ottawa just opened a $20.3 million Quantum Defence Industrial Strategy Hub at the University of Calgary even as the first Defence Drone Initiative supplier round closed with no public word yet on volumes or delivery dates. Even the auto sector smells the opportunity: the Globe and Mail’s reporting shows Hanwha courting Canada’s Auto Parts Manufacturers Association to build armoured vehicles domestically for a plant sector running thirty percent below capacity, a bid explicitly tied to Hanwha’s push for the Royal Canadian Navy’s up to twelve boat submarine contract, at a moment when AGF Capital Partners argues Canada is a differentiated entry point into a global defence sector now spending $2.9 trillion a year.

A billion dollars for missiles, but zero shells from a half billion dollar factory. Castelion raised a $1 billion Series C at a $13 billion valuation, co-led by Carlyle, JPMorgan’s Strategic Investment Group and Andreessen Horowitz, built on more than $500 million in US military contracts signed over eighteen months. Contrast that against Task and Purpose’s reporting that a $469 million US Army funded ammunition plant in Mesquite, Texas has produced zero 155mm shells in nearly two years against a target of 30,000 a month, while Ukraine burns through roughly 8,000 shells a day on the front. ProPublica went further, tallying $533 million spent on that same General Dynamics run plant, three production lines with two halted since last August, eight missed deadlines, and $26.3 million paid out in December despite no usable shells to show for it. The Council on Foreign Relations says the US has roughly a two year window to rebuild its arsenal before China gains real capability to take Taiwan, and pushes “precise mass,” meaning cheap drones and cruise missiles rather than more of the same shells nobody can make. MDA awarded X-Bow $11 million to keep developing a sub $750,000 interceptor against the roughly $4 million Patriot, a modest bet set against The Economist’s warning that interceptor stockpiles are running out faster than allies can replenish them. Even the venture side is nervous about its own math: one analysis of the sector pegs some Series A defence tech valuations at $300 to $400 million with no revenue at all, flagging one team of four ex government staffers that raised $160 million at a $1.4 billion valuation before shipping a product.

The Ambition Journal

The Arctic Tech Stack

The Ice Remembers Everything…

a month ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Ambition Capital

CIBC is a proud sponsor of The Icebreaker. Connect with our team at Mailbox.Defence@cibc.com

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 Isar Aerospace locks in a Canadian launch pad for the next decade. SpaceNews reports Isar signed a deal worth $3.75 million a quarter over ten years, plus two five year options, for a pad at Spaceport Nova Scotia near Canso, with a 30 month fee waiver kicking in after year one. The agreement builds on a May letter of intent and lands as Isar’s German launch partner TKMS is separately bidding to build Canada’s next submarines, tying two very different Canadian procurement stories together through one company.

🍁 Caseway teams up with Taiwan’s MiTAC on a counter drone platform. Taiwan News reports the Canadian AI firm is partnering with MiTAC on Synthium, a maritime and counter UAS threat detection system, with Caseway’s CEO Al Vigier arguing that consumer tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek are unsuitable for defence work because the data gets routed through foreign servers.

The Canadian Defence & Deep-Tech Capital Guide

Click here to skip to the full list of capital providers…

a month ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · Ethan Marcoux

Castelion’s $1 billion round is the biggest defence tech raise of the month. The Wall Street Journal’s original scoop lists Lightspeed, Lavrock, Altimeter, General Catalyst and Interlagos among returning backers, plus new investor T. Rowe Price, on top of Carlyle, JPMorgan’s Strategic Investment Group and Andreessen Horowitz. Castelion says its Blackbeard hypersonic missile went from clean sheet design to program of record in under four years.

Want to work in defense tech? 🇺🇸 The U.S. and its allies need more talented people working towards a mission that matters. I’m launching a new initiative to match talented engineers and operators with early stage companies building at the cutting edge of commercial technology and national security (both in and out of the…

Work in Defense Tech 🇺🇸

a month ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · Maggie Gray

Brian Singerman’s GPx anchors an $85 million fund built to back the next Saronic. Tectonic Defense reports Silent Ventures closed Fund II with GPx as anchor LP, adding to a portfolio that already includes Saronic, Castelion itself, Hadrian, Armada and Firestorm, run by solo GP Jackson Moses.

CIBC’s thought leadership podcast unpacks Canada’s new submarine strategy.

Saildrone is building production lines in three European countries at once. Breaking Defense reports new manufacturing at Van Der Valk Shipyard in the Netherlands for its 52 metre Spectre vessel, at Umoe Mandal in Norway for the Surveyor, and at Southern Spars in Poland for wing components, alongside a new European headquarters in Denmark, announced the day before DALO Industry Days.

Erik Prince is betting on air defence as a subscription. Tectonic Defense reports Prince has launched Vectus, an air defence as a service startup, holding 80 percent alongside Swarmer’s 20 percent, while Prince also sits as Swarmer’s non executive chair with roughly a million shares tied to its IPO.

A Plymouth startup just tripled its ocean drone fleet with a Royal Navy customer in mind. The Times covers Oshen, the UK maritime intelligence firm founded by 26 year olds Anahita Laverack and Ciaran Dowds, which raised £5 million led by Lunar Ventures with Albion VC to expand its fleet of solar powered ocean sensing vessels used to track Russian submarine activity.

A Trump family backed dronemaker is racing to scale up production tenfold while cashing in on Gulf demand. The New York Times reports Powerus, a West Palm Beach start-up whose board includes Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump after a March SPAC merger, has workers in a United Arab Emirates facility spending up to twelve hours a day snapping together 3D printed components into “Guardian” interceptors that knock Iranian drones out of the sky at speeds up to 200 miles per hour. The company is currently producing roughly 3,000 interceptors a month and aims to reach 15,000 a month worldwide by mid-2027, momentum that helped it land a $22.3 million contract with a Gulf based energy firm for counter-drone detection equipment this past week.

Defending the Dominion | Eliot Pence, Dominion Dynamics — Explorer Spotlight #12

The Canadian Arctic has more than 162,000 kilometres of coastline, accounting for 75% of Canada’s total. Temperatures can fall below -50°C, geomagnetic disturbances can interfere with communications and sensors, and shifting permafrost makes the terrain unstable. The Arctic is both vast and harsh, but it needs to be defended. Meanwhile, Canada’s defence…

a month ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Ethan Marcoux

Washington wants to beat China at shipbuilding by going nuclear instead of cheap. The Financial Times reports the US Maritime Administration is preparing a public-private partnership with London based Core Power to accelerate nuclear propulsion for commercial vessels, targeting faster licensing, insurance and port access for a US flagged nuclear fleet. MarAd administrator Stephen Carmel put the strategy plainly: “We are not going to beat China by being a cheaper version of China. They have mastered the art of being cheap,” arguing the US wins instead on nuclear technology it already leads in. Core Power, which has raised roughly $200 million from Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo and has a relationship with the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas, plans to start building its first nuclear powered vessel in 2028.

🍁 A Canadian quantum computing firm just tested its battlefield software inside a live US defence exercise. SuperQ Quantum Computing says it was the only Canadian technology company deployed in a live operational exercise at Texas A&M’s Bush Combat Development Complex, simulating a contested extraction alongside US military command, intelligence agencies and defence primes. The exercise tested whether SuperQ’s Super Edge platform can re-solve a battlefield plan and deliver a new course of action to troops on tactical devices within 60 seconds of a threat change, all backed by the Canada Q-Branch Dual-Use Accelerator with support from Global Affairs Canada.

🍁 Ottawa just handed Quebec the biggest shipbuilding contract in its history. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced $11.3 billion in federal funding for six new Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers to be built entirely at Chantier Davie in Lévis, Quebec, fulfilling a promise first made in 2019 and supporting 5,000 jobs during construction.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Kit for Canada 🍁: the Defence Drone Initiative’s marketplace opened this summer. Clank and Slop confirm five qualification streams closed their first request for supplier applications on August 14, running as a five year standing instrument that reopens quarterly through mid 2027.

Axis watch: Bloomberg reports Estonia is investigating a Russia linked arson at Milrem Robotics’ Tallinn facility, with suspects already identified and no injuries reported, though CEO Kuldar Väärsi says it is too early to assess the damage to a company that builds the THeMIS unmanned ground vehicles Ukraine relies on for casualty evacuation. Breaking Defense reports China’s own military press is calling the Iran war evidence of a shift toward “systems guerrilla warfare,” built on AI enabled networked kill webs rather than traditional force on force fighting. Iranwatch’s drone fleet table is a useful reference for exactly what Tehran has been exporting to prove that doctrine works, and The Economist reports Russian strikes are doing severe and lasting harm to Ukraine’s economy even as the front lines hold roughly steady.

EU defence executives are no longer as safe as they were

Software sovereignty: DefenseScoop reports the Army’s four month old Task Force Lexington now runs seventeen agentic and cyber protection mission elements a day, hunting threats inside the DODIN with AI agents that took roughly forty five days to train, run by a task force of only eight to ten people. Defense One says the administration’s tech strategy is leaning hard into drones, swarms, undersea systems and autonomy for Indo Pacific deterrence, while flagging a glaring omission in how that strategy handles allied interoperability.

Canada’s defence relationship with Washington may not stay insulated from the trade war much longer. The Globe and Mail reports experts now warn that with US-Canada trade talks broken down, major defence procurements are increasingly likely to become bargaining chips on either side of the border, even though the two countries remain deeply integrated through NORAD and joint military exercises.

Russia is using drone confusion as a weapon against NATO’s eastern flank. The Times reports Russia is exploiting GPS jamming and spoofing to steer Ukrainian drones off course and into NATO airspace, part of a pattern that has already put Russian drone debris on Romanian soil and wounded two civilians, the first casualties on NATO soil since the 2022 invasion began.

A fully autonomous drone kill. The New York Times reports a Russian drone, reportedly built around a repurposed Nvidia microcomputer, killed three Ukrainians last month in Zaporizhzhia, in what officials believe are the first Russian inflicted deaths with no human in the loop at all.

A Navy SEAL turned founder bet his career on the idea that the AI pilot matters more than the aircraft. War on the Rocks profiles Shield AI co-founder Brandon Tseng, who pitched thirty Silicon Valley investors in August 2015 and got zero yeses, then twenty five more the following year and got two, on his way to building the Hivemind autonomy software that now flies Shield AI’s V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft. Tseng once expected autonomous defence systems to be ubiquitous by 2035; he now says slow Pentagon procurement and slower investor appetite pushed that date closer to 2040.

🍁 A student rocketry team just broke a world altitude record in northern Ontario. CityNews reports the University of Waterloo’s Waterloo Rocketry team sent its liquid bi-propellant Polaris rocket to 63,497 feet at the Launch Canada Challenge in Timmins, nearly 7,000 feet past the previous world record for a student built rocket.

US Congress is quietly studying whether cyber deserves its own military branch. A Congressional Research Service brief published August 19 lays out the case for and against creating a dedicated Cyber Force as its own service, the same debate that produced the Space Force just a few years ago.

Cheap at scale: The Wall Street Journal reports acting Army chief of staff Christopher LaNeve is ordering a “back to basics” elimination of a futuristic drone battalion that was a signature program of his ousted predecessor, General Randy George. That same appetite for cheap and fast is exactly what is fuelling Neros: an exclusive preview details how its FPV racer founders with no defence background scored 87.5 out of 100 in the Pentagon’s Gauntlet Phase I trial, finishing second in a crowded field, on the way to a $250 million round that tripled the company’s valuation in nine months.

Canadian companies eye speed, quick contracts from Ottawa’s new drone marketplace

Pentagon reform watch: the Department of War says Secretary Hegseth has made “supercharging the defense industrial base” one of four lines of effort in the 2026 National Defense Strategy, tasking the Defense Innovation Unit with converting private capital into what the department calls tangible combat power. Whether the money behind that mandate is disciplined enough to work is exactly what a new defence tech bubble analysis questions, given how many Series A rounds are pricing in revenue that has not shown up yet.

America’s Missing Military Revolution

Big think: War on the Rocks argues that cheap battery powered drones, now responsible for the majority of Ukrainian casualties, run on the same consumer electronics supply chain, batteries, motors and chips, that China already dominates, which means the West’s drone ambitions are hostage to the same firms it is trying to out compete militarily. A New York Times opinion piece from an electricians’ union representative makes the opposite case about the same grid strain, arguing his members want more data centres built because the country needs the power capacity regardless of who is buying it. Meanwhile the Gloves Off podcast’s season two finale teams with the Canadian Shield Institute to report that mentions of “sovereignty” in Parliament just hit their highest level since 1901.

Ground robots: Milrem’s THeMIS remains the backbone of Ukraine’s unmanned ground vehicle fleet even as its maker deals with the Estonia arson above, and National Defense magazine quotes Ukrainian officer Yuriy Filatov saying battlefield technology goes obsolete in as little as six months, which is the entire argument for why process, not any single robot, is what actually wins.

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🔫 Hot Shots

Ottawa’s photonics founders have three weeks to apply for federal money. ISED’s Innovative Solutions Canada challenge on infrared quantum light characterization and secure communication opened August 18 and closes September 15.

A Navy officer is still warning that underwater UFOs are a real threat. Popular Mechanics revisits Lieutenant Ryan Graves and the 2014 Virginia Beach sightings that started the conversation.

Steve Jobs’s post-Apple exile had a secret intelligence customer. Digital Trends, reconstructing the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, says CIA officials approached Jobs in 1986 and committed to buying 20,000 NeXT workstations for satellite imagery analysis at the National Reconnaissance Office, a deal that kept NeXT alive long enough for Jobs to return to Apple.

CBC marks five years since Kabul fell. The retrospective revisits the evacuation and the years of Taliban rule that followed, a reminder of how quickly a twenty year commitment can unwind.

If you’ve got battlefield intel, classified tips, or just want to call in an airstrike on our typos, hit “reply” and sound off. Whether it’s a new tech sighting, a rumour from the mess hall, or feedback on our comms, we want your SITREP.

Ottawa wants 2M drones per year

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:03:11 GMT

Editor’s Note: Glad to welcome CIBC as a sponsor of The Icebreaker. Start with their latest on defence: Made in Canada: The industrialization of Canada’s defence procurement. Now join us to get to know their awesome team: a handful of seats remain for CIBC’s sponsored special, DMZ x Icebreaker Present: Northern Defence — A Private Screening, on Sept 14.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

For two days last week, roughly 200 Canadian Armed Forces personnel stood on a decommissioned airfield outside Killaloe, Ont. and watched nearly 30 Canadian companies put uncrewed systems through their paces. Canada is looking to increase its military drone and robot supply for a new era of warfare, and this was the CAF making that operational. The event: the RED COBALT Uncrewed Systems Accelerator, a first-of-its-kind CAF-industry drone test.

Quadcopters, fixed-wing, command-and-control stacks, counter-UAS, unmanned ground vehicles. Names on the flight line included Sentinel R&D, Robotics Centre, Redwire, Remote Robotic Systems, Screaming Geese, ARA Robotics, Draganfly, Remeo One, Kelluu, Sensofusion, Indro Robotics, and many more.

Running point was Lt.-Gen. Darcy Molstad, commander of Canadian Joint Forces Command, who has the unenviable job of deciding what the CAF needs, and how much, in a category where the answer changes faster than the staffing cycle. His framing, and it’s the quote of the week: the military has to “innovate at the edge directly with industry” because this is “technology that evolves on a weekly basis in a modern operational theatre.”

Translation: write a spec, tender it, deliver in five years, receive obsolete kit. Ukraine settled that argument in 2023. Ottawa is catching up.

Lieutenant-General Darcy Molstad, General Jennie Carignan, Sonya Shorey

RED COBALT happened at Area X.O, the R&D and demonstration complex built by Invest Ottawa, and one of Canada’s NATO DIANA test centres. The Killaloe site is Area X.O’s secondary facility, a former airport chosen because you cannot do serious airspace work in the shadow of Ottawa International Airport. CEO Sonya Shorey put it plainly: Area X.O Killaloe unlocks “testing, demonstration, validation opportunities” that aren’t possible closer to the capital.

That’s the whole game. Sovereign capability doesn’t materialize from strategy documents. It materializes when a 12-person company can fly a payload in controlled airspace, in front of the operators who’ll actually use it, without a six-month regulatory odyssey. Invest Ottawa built that, before it was fashionable, on municipal-scale resources. Lt.-Col. Jayme Leclerc, who organized the event, made the same point from the uniform side: RED COBALT put military officials in front of manufacturers they’d otherwise struggle to reach.

Convening power is infrastructure. Hats off to Sonya and her team.

The industrial wrapper is the Defence Drone Initiative, a DND-DIA marketplace under the Defence Industrial Strategy. Sovereign capability, DND said, means access to the expertise, intellectual property, production capacity, supply chains, and sustainment. The initial application window closed 14 August. Around 500 vendors are expected in the first pool. The feds are standing up that pre-qualified supplier pool to compress acquisition from years to roughly two months, with three significant RFPs queued behind it. If that holds, it’s the most consequential change to this market in a decade. Two months is a cycle a startup can survive. Five years is a cycle that kills companies before the contract lands. Molstad also said the quiet part out loud: Canada’s SMEs are underutilized. Better coming from him than from us.

One of the first six asks from that pool is a deep-precision strike (DPS) system sitting between a long-range one-way attack drone and a cruise missile. Defence Minister David McGuinty: adversaries already have them, they are improving them, and “this is an area we can’t let slip.” Lt.-Col. Nick Verreault, head of the Joint Uncrewed Systems Office and DPS program director, put the production target on the record. Increase drones made in Canada by 200 times, or two million a year. Ottawa will still buy a foreign DPS first, inside about 10 months, then try to stand up a sovereign line.

IDEaS is standing up a downtown Ottawa urban CUAS sandbox for 26 to 30 July 2027: detection only, $1.75 million in prizes ($1 million / $500,000 / $250,000), $20,000 in expenses, RCMP and U.S. DoD SSO as observers, applications due 1 December 2026. A Joint CUAS Office is forming. The training pipeline confirms this is not a fad. MWO Blake Berggren, building FPV drone courses for the CAF, calls it “the biggest and fastest-paced change” of his 25-year career. Nobody builds a school for a fad.

The lesson from Ukraine is not a particular airframe. Yuriy Filatov told National Defense Magazine that kit is stale in six months. “You can copy a drone, but you cannot copy the speed [at] which it was born.” NATO just watched the point land. In Combined Resolve in Germany (April to May 2026), Ukraine’s 412th Nemesis handily beat a Texas mechanized brigade with FPV and dropped munitions. “Killed” U.S. troops had to be recycled as reinforcements to keep the game running. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said that experience cannot be replicated in the United States, which is another way of saying the CAF cannot photocopy it from a CONUS range either.

Bottom Line: A serious CAF-industry conversation, on infrastructure Invest Ottawa had the foresight to build, in a policy environment finally admitting procurement is the bottleneck. In Canadian defence, that’s close to a miracle. The caveats: a showcase is not a contract, “two months” is an aspiration until it’s a signed PO, and Ukraine’s real lesson isn’t that drones are good. It’s that drones are consumable. Now show us the contracts.

Newtype Industries: The First Korean Defence Startup Testing in Ukraine

President Zelensky announced that Ukraine is ready for a Drone Deal and closer defence cooperation with South Korea. And I’ve just met the first Korean startup, Newtype Industries, that is testing its defence solution with Ukrainian military units, and interviewed its CEO…

a month ago · 70 likes · 2 comments · Olena Kryzhanivska

Related:

The single biggest leading indicator of more defence spending is more RFPs. That DND signal is here
Ukraine’s first jet-powered interceptor drones for countering jet-powered Shaheds undergo combat testing
- Ukraine developed a €200 trajectory correction kit for precision drone drops, known as “FireFly”… Pocket sized drone defence out of Ukraine… Wuxly awarded CBRN Protective Clothing contract for CAF

CIBC is a proud sponsor of The Icebreaker. Connect with our team at Mailbox.Defence@cibc.com

🤝 Deal Corner

PitchBook’s Q2 2026 Defense Tech Report logged $16.4 billion across 249 deals, down 32.8% from Q1’s record $24.4 billion and still the fourth-largest quarter on record. Trailing twelve months: $69.5 billion. Autonomy took 42.1%. Anduril’s $5 billion Series H at $61 billion is the concentration problem in one line. Eleven public listings reopened the exit window. The next test is funded orders, scaled production, and recurring revenue. That test is already sorting winners. The Pentagon is buying weapons from startups under Secretary Hegseth, not just writing them science-project cheques.

JPMorgan’s $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative now covers Canada, with advisers including Robert Gates, Chris Cavoli, Paul Nakasone, and Paul Ryan. NatSec100 has 12 IPOs. Joby is paying $500 million for Resonant Sciences. Heaviside raised $60 million at a $600 million valuation. First In argues today’s scalers become the next primes, naming Castelion and Saronic, and comparing the 2022 to 2027 vintage to the 2005 to 2011 cybersecurity boom against a U.S. defence budget “well over $1 trillion.” Ukraine already minted the wartime version. UForce hit $1 billion on $50 million in March, Swarmer IPO’d, and Brave1 issued nearly 1,000 grants worth about $140 million. In Europe, Molten Ventures is hunting specialist VCs with industrial know-how in space, defence, and health.

Demystifying Defense Corporation Sales: Insights for Startup Founders

Talk to almost any employee at a large corporation, and they will tell you that the technology their employer uses internally is clunky, old, and hard to use. To this day, many corporations rely on decades-old software and legacy hardware vendors, reducing employee satisfaction and efficiency. This problem is especially true for A&D…

a year ago · 9 likes · 4 comments · Maggie Gray and Pat O'Reilly

Made in Canada is now a procurement doctrine. Implementation is the weapon.
CIBC’s industrialization paper puts numbers on the 5% of GDP by 2035 pledge: 70% of federal defence contracts to Canadian firms, a 50% export increase, about 125,000 jobs. National Defence tenders jumped from about 53 a month in FY2024-25 to 128 a month in Q1 2026-27. Disclosed awards hit $2.70 billion, including Bombardier ($634 million), Colt Canada ($307 million), Safran ($118 million), General Dynamics Ordnance ($81 million), and Insitu ($80 million). The Coast Guard moved to DND on 2 September 2025 and took about $10 billion in shipbuilding and 7,855 positions with it. ITBs now sit at the DIA, and bid clocks that used to be months are sometimes weeks. TKMS is the preferred submarine supplier. Elbridge Colby, on an Asia trip, praised AUKUS and warned middle powers, naming Canada, not to hedge Washington or “use your defense industrial dollar as a kind of political or industrial economic strategy for your domestic context.”

Meanwhile Barn VC’s Dominion List counts 517 U.S. companies with Canadian founders and about $414 billion raised. Waterloo fed 216 of them.

🍁 Palitronica closes Series A (amount undisclosed). BDC leads.
Waterloo’s embedded-electronics cyber shop closed a Series A led by BDC’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund, with Three Kings Capital, Frostbite, and Unpopular Ventures. Bell Textron already picked the company for cyber assurance on the MV-75 Cheyenne.

🍁 EarthDaily, $2.23 million, RCMP border AI.
EarthDaily won a DRDC/CSSP contract to build SMATAK, an AI change-detection platform for RCMP border monitoring, with a 2027 demo. Chris Rampersad’s brief is timely, actionable intelligence for analysts and field personnel. The Financial Post framed the same $2.2 million award as a springboard into more defence work.

Industrial Base Alpha

AI Visibility Index: Drones

Finally, after much delay, I am releasing my analysis of the AI Visibility Index for Drones…

a month ago · 3 likes · Matthew Bernard

🍁 IDEaS puts $4.96 million on Ukrainian minefields.
Five projects, up to $1 million each: THALES Canada SwarmScan at $1,000,000, Agile Electromagnetics at $999,895, FLIR Unmanned Aerial Systems at $972,659, plus Agent-F and Mine Defeat By Air Blast. Explicit dual use. Ukraine now. CAF later.

Neros, $250 million, triples to $2.5 billion.
Sequoia and the American Strategic Technology Fund led. Thiel participated. The Archer FPV runs about $2,000 bare and $5,000 with a warhead, no Chinese parts. A $500 million Army IDIQ sits underneath, aimed at up to 10,000 units.

Hadrian, $1.37 billion Series D at $7.87 billion.
Seven months ago it was worth $1.6 billion. Chris Power had barely touched the $260 million Series C. The Merge asks the right question: why raise a billion more than you need, and can venture return 10x on factories?

Uforce talks north of $4 billion.
Less than six months after a $1 billion unicorn round on $50 million, the autonomous air/land/sea shop is back in market.

Newcomer

AI Frenzy Brings Dual Valuation Deals into the Mainstream

a month ago · 52 likes · M. Sriram

Airbus anchors E2D at €500 million.
AVP and Earlybird. About 20 companies, about €25 million each. First cheque: Alta Ares, French ISR and CUAS. Michael Schoellhorn’s mandate is to keep the capital, talent, and IP on the continent.

Code Metal, $80 million OTA for WarMatrix.
Pentagon wargaming, layered on AFSIM, after a $17 million initial operating capability. Cycle time under 12 months. CEO Peter Morales: “I have never seen them move this fast.” Johns Hopkins APL’s Kelly Diaz on AFSIM: “it feels like you need a PhD.”

A Startup’s Guide to Working With Large Corporations

Large corporations and early stage startups need each other. While many in the startup and defense tech ecosystem love to criticize traditional defense primes and other large corporations (often for good reason), ultimately corporations serve a crucial role for American national security, managing massive, multi-billion dollar projects responsible for d…

a month ago · 11 likes · Maggie Gray and Pat O'Reilly

HighGround, $6.5 million seed.
Former Green Beret John Price. Next Frontier led, with Tandem, Fulcrum, and Context. An AI intel layer for Pentagon acquisitions, sitting between Washington and Wall Street.

Europe Doesn’t Have a Defence Funding Problem. The Real Challenge Is Capital Alignment with Capability Generation. Germany leads European defence tech by a wide margin.

Going all in on European defense — Alex Ferrara, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners

2 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Louise Boucher

Related: European VCs still cannot get enough drone startups even in an overcrowded market, and they are already looking past defence into mosquito control and firefighting.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

🍁 Kit for Canada. Ottawa is buying a foreign DPS inside 10 months, standing up the DDI marketplace, and running an urban CUAS sandbox in 2027. The price point Canadian vendors will be measured against is the U.S. Army’s Next Generation C-sUAS Missile under $150,000, Coyote-compatible, Group 2 and Group 3, at least 5,000 rounds, 50 for assessment by Q1 FY28, distinct from the separate Low-Cost Interceptor effort under $250,000. RFI responses are due 20 August. NORTHCOM and NORAD deputy Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard, asked if he can defend the homeland against a drone swarm, said “No.” “We don’t have the sensors... we’re not there yet.” He pointed at Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb.

The kill zone. Ukraine took a midrange-strike edge in the first half of 2026 with six innovations that chewed Russian logistics and slowed the advance. The same WSJ visual is the field manual the RED COBALT team must be looking at.

Deep strike. A year ago, satellite imagery took days to reach a Ukrainian drone team. Michael Schwirtz and Tyler Hicks watched it arrive near real time. Call sign Tikhi. Bravo1Alpha’s handheld looks like a game console and plots the flight path.

Detecting the Invisible from Space | Chris Robson, Wyvern — Explorer Spotlight #11

Traditional satellite imagery can show a ship. Wyvern’s hyperspectral satellites can reveal what it is made of. “Deception is the way modern warfare is waged these days. Hyperspectral sees through deception…

a month ago · Ethan Marcoux

Ground robots. The Army handed Infantry Last Tactical Mile prototype OTAs to Maren-Go, Overland AI, Forterra, Hendrick’s Motorsports, American Rheinmetall, and HDT: four vehicles each, casevac and resupply, operational assessment early 2027. Forterra’s doctrine note: “attritable is not a price point.” Score effect, human life, capital, and speed to replace. GAO: 30 major programs added $49.3 billion in a year and now take more than 10 years to field.

Cheap at scale. Auterion is putting one-to-many swarms into real operations. One operator. Many airframes. Shared state.

Stockpile paradox. Bloomberg Economics: the United States has fired more than half its PAC-3 MSE stock and about 40% of THAAD. Precision Strike Missile numbers are “likely exhausted.” The war “consumed important weapons faster than they can be bought and built,” opening a generational gap that “cannot be quickly overcome.” FY27 still asks for 7,031 interceptors, 86% of them via reconciliation, including 2,936 PAC-3.

Space. GUR’s Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitskiy says Russia’s Rassvet constellation (Bureau 1440) is at 16 satellites now, 292 by 2027, and 924 by 2035, and Moscow has “already begun launching it much faster than originally planned.” Once complete, it operates like Starlink. Ukraine cannot run Starlink over Russia. Russia would be able to run Rassvet over Ukraine.

Axis watch. PLA researchers reading the Iran war are writing about “systems guerrilla warfare” and the U.S. Maven Smart System, plus the cost gap between cheap drones and Patriot or THAAD. Ukraine’s GUR found an Nvidia Jetson Orin inside Russia’s S-71M Monokhrom, a Su-57-launched cruise missile with a 250-kilogram warhead and a stated 350 to 400 kilometre range. Thirty-five foreign components in the latest dump. Sanctions are a routing problem, not a physics problem.

🍁 Home front. Biwei Zhang was arrested at NATO Mons. She had cleared CSIS and the RCMP despite a 2023 fraud finding and sat a CBSA exam twice under two names. Richard Fadden: “It’s going to happen again.” Winnipeg lab. Hydro-Québec. NRCan, 2,000 documents. Meanwhile Canadian and U.S. negotiators put critical minerals and defence on the table ahead of the 19 August 50% tariff threat. Tariffs first. Minerals and defence in phase two.

Software sovereignty. The White House wants capable models in operators’ hands. Hugging Face just used a Chinese open-weight model to investigate an OpenAI test system that escaped its lab, because commercial safety filters refused the incident-response questions. Cory Ondrejka: “A model that refuses the questions an incident responder has to ask is not a defensive tool.” Same week, a Trump memo lets vetted firms hack foreign criminals under DOJ and DHS supervision, with a $1 million penalty and a ban on loss of life. Jeff Gray: “The United States just revived privateering for the digital age.” The New York Times version is the same memorandum.

Supply chain. A $150 million weapons system can die for want of $20,000 to $30,000 in magnets. Phoenix Tailings has a $500 million Pentagon loan and still cannot close the samarium gap of 50 to 100 tons a year. China still runs about 80% of tungsten mine supply. Pentagon tungsten deadline: 1 January 2027.

Donald Trump launches tariffs targeting Chinese drone technology
A massive explosion hit KNDS’s military plant in Colleferro, outside Rome - a company that supplies Ukraine’s defense forces and produces inside Ukraine

Secure your spot here.

🔫 Hot Shots

🍁 MINERVA wants an Arctic UAS.
Innovative Solutions Canada has one open challenge on the board: Arctic Uncrewed Air System, closing 24 September.

🍁 550 Canadians showed up to learn how to sell to DND.
DIGITAL’s Defence Market Access Series has drawn 550-plus attendees. Security clearance still takes 18 months or more.

DONRCO stands up Plug and Play.
The Navy Rapid Capabilities Office launched a National Security consortium for commercial and non-traditional vendors, managed by the Creative Defense Foundation. Jim Juster’s phrase is “speed of relevance.” First meeting: 18 September.

Amanda’s Substack

Defence Critical Minerals: When Mineral Supply Chains Become a Matter of National Security

For the past several years, much of my work has been devoted to explaining why critical minerals matter…

a month ago · 15 likes · 9 comments · Amanda van Dyke

Ethos is scoring 50,000 troops.
The California readiness startup’s engine is live across the Air Force, Space Force, Army, and Navy, plus a handful of NFL teams. Andrew Powell: stop training like it is the 1990s when the threat changes week over week.

ODNI wants a master list of spies.
Jonathan Fredman, 36 years at CIA and ODNI, says a central roster of targets, suspects, and recruits is a catastrophic counterintelligence vulnerability, not a deconfliction tool.

The Pope just called just war outdated.
Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, still demands an identifiable chain of responsibility for autonomous weapons. “No algorithm can make war morally acceptable.”

Wisconsin wants Area 52.
Lake Michigan, restricted airspace R-6903, Fincantieri building Saildrone’s 170-foot Spectre, and more than $800 million already in the yards. Autonomous Heartland Forum: 6 September.

Carson Powers

Balance of Powers Portfolio - 7.31.2026

And here we go. Welcome to the first issue of Balance of Powers where we track the companies generating the largest share of U.S. defense revenue and explore the trends shaping the defense sector. America’s defense industry is concentrated within 10 companies generating approximately $275 billion in defense revenue in 2024, spanning everything from subm…

a month ago · Carson Powers

World War IV, already on.
A Hill column opens in Beijing with a general briefing Xi on a cyber campaign against the United States.

The Greenbrier’s bunker is a tourist attraction.
112,544 square feet under a West Virginia hotel, a 28-ton blast door marked “High Voltage,” and 35 years of continuity-of-governmen.

Your router already knows your gait.
KIT researchers identified 197 people at nearly 100% accuracy from unencrypted WiFi beamforming feedback, no camera and no phone required. Julian Todt: “This technology turns every router into a potential means for surveillance.”

Shadowing Chinese icebreakers

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:01:50 GMT

Editor’s Note: To a couple pals reading this from somewhere on the Bering Sea right now: good to know you’re keeping eyes on Xue Long and Xue Long 2. Stay safe, stay sharp, come home soon.

Special congrats this week to Mark Robbins, a member of DND’s BOREALIS team, who just graduated Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School, better known as Basic Training. Well done, soldier.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Canadian banks are re-entering defence financing, but most defence SMEs still cannot get a loan without a signed government contract in hand, since procurement cycles run roughly seven years from pitch to decision, and no bank wants to carry that risk alone. The Defence Minister isn’t thrilled about the situation:

“I’ll be really blunt. We don’t have any choice. We need to move forward now. We need to look out for ourselves. We need to step it up domestically.” — Defence Minister McGuinty

Contrast that with Silicon Valley: Palmer Luckey’s challenger bank Erebor is nearing a $1.5 billion raise at an $8 billion pre-money valuation explicitly positioned to replace Silicon Valley Bank for defence founders.

Northside Ventures counts just 84 Canadian dual-use startups founded in the last five years against a federal plan to nearly double core defence spending to roughly $159 billion by 2035, and its own portfolio data shows only 12 of 34 investments are dual-use despite screening 5,000 companies a year. “We will need force multipliers,” says Clearpath Robotics co-founder Ryan Gariepy.

DLA Piper counts more than EUR 18 billion invested into European aerospace and defence startups so far this year alone, dwarfing anything moving through Canadian venture channels. And the new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank that Canada helped stand up with eight allies carries about $190 billion in capital but still leaves the hardest problem unsolved.

Canada bets the Arctic on satellites, reactors and shadowing Chinese icebreakers. True North Map ties together Ottawa’s Arctic buying spree: a $2.3 billion, 15-year contract for secure Ka-band connectivity, a Polar Class icebreaker joining the Canadian Coast Guard this season, and nine Prairie manufacturers entering the AeroTrace supply chain pipeline. The Telesat satellite build-out headlines the push, with the Lightspeed constellation expanding from 156 to 225 satellites, and Telesat and MDA shares soared on the announcement. MDA Space picked up a $474 million contract increase to build the extra 27 satellites in Montreal.

CTV put the total federal Arctic military technology investment at $2 billion. That sovereignty concern is not abstract: Canada and the US are actively shadowing Chinese icebreakers Xue Long and Xue Long 2 after they sailed through the Bering Sea, with an RCAF CP-140 flying out of Alaska since July under Operation Latitude.

Energy security is the other Arctic leg: Ontario’s Darlington site will host the first small modular reactor in the G7, but Canada will still enrich its uranium fuel in the United States, reversing “the original rationale for the CANDU program.” Both The Record and CBC report that a Waterloo startup wants a cleaner fix: Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation is building a desk-sized microreactor meant to replace diesel generators across the North, backed by $4.5 million from Ottawa and $1 million from the Canadian Space Agency, with founder Daniel Sax targeting fleet deployment by 2030.

Canada’s defence-tech founders are getting louder, and some of them fly F-18s. Start with the numbers: AI-powered defence tech has drawn a record $32 billion in VC funding since 2022, with H1 2026 alone pulling in $12.8 billion, more than five times all of 2022, according to Forbes’ survey of veteran founders now running the sector’s marquee names. Shield AI’s Brandon Tseng put the founder pitch plainly: “Veterans are really good at enduring pain and suffering. A 22-year-old marine has probably endured much more than a 22-year-old fresh out of college going to work at XYZ company in Silicon Valley.”

Canada has its own version of that story:

Vertical Takeoff Planes | Brandon Robinson — Explorer Spotlight #7

The Cavorite X7 is an aircraft that can take off vertically like a helicopter, fly forward like a plane, and recharge mid-air…

2 months ago · 2 likes · Ethan Marcoux

Horizon Aircraft’s Cavorite X7, a hybrid-electric VTOL built around a patented “HOVR Wing,” comes from a Lindsay, Ontario company co-founded by ex-RCAF F-18 pilot Brandon Robinson, who explains the tilt-wing design simply: “There’s a reason why you don’t see large birds with these tiny little propellers on top.” Muskoka has its own veteran-founder story too, with Skadi Cyber Defense’s Rachel Clark, a former US Marine and Navy submarine-systems engineer, building an autonomous cybersecurity platform called Frostbow for DND, NATO and mining clients.

Meanwhile a new hiring data set shows who is actually building this industry: Anduril alone made 258 external engineering hires in 2026 so far, more than a quarter of all hires tracked across nine defence “neo-primes,” and 79 percent of those hires came from commercial tech rather than the military, prompting the blunt verdict that “this is a commercial-tech recruiting operation wearing a defense badge.” Anduril’s own CEO Brian Schimpf spent the week on a media circuit explaining that philosophy on CNBC’s Tech Download, insisting autonomous weapons already exist quietly in torpedoes and anti-radiation missiles.

Japan is chasing the same wave from a different angle: Terra Drone’s pivot from commercial drones to defence contracting has sent its Tokyo-listed shares up 499 percent year to date.

Up to $1M in funding and additional technical services available for technologies with defence and civilian applications. Advisory support is available now.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 CellCore builds Canada’s first sovereign nitrocellulose supply chain, from flax straw and an Indigenous-owned facility. CellCore Technologies plans to make nitrocellulose, the explosive propellant base Canada currently produces none of, from Canadian flax straw and dissolvable wood pulp, targeting 6,000 tonnes annually by 2028. The facility will be Canada’s first Indigenous-owned sovereign nitrocellulose plant, anchored by Des Nedhe Group Defence and English River First Nation, with pre-sold supply agreements already exceeding initial capacity. CEO David Brough frames the urgency plainly: “God forbid a larger conflict kicks off. All those chains of supply, most likely, the countries that actually hold on to those will start to draw them back.”

Take a look at this Global Energetics Tracker

🍁 North Vector Dynamics lands European capital and pushes its valuation past USD 90 million. Calgary’s North Vector Dynamics landed a strategic investment from Dutch-listed defence manufacturer CSG N.V., which posted EUR 6.7 billion in 2025 revenue across 14,000 employees, pushing NVD’s valuation past USD 90 million on the strength of its ITAR-free, NDAA-compliant CM-70 drone interceptor. “NVD gets a manufacturing and export network it would otherwise need years to build. Ottawa gets a sovereign missile capability with a European accelerant attached.”

@julia_hornstein: Benchmark is getting into defense tech, the latest generalist firm to venture into the red-hot sector.\n\nMore here: theinformation.com/articles/missi… ","username":"leomschwartz","name":"Leo Schwartz","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1791481555325538304/jMCmRNWe_normal.jpg","date":"2026-08-07T14:12:58.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HPIBOP1XsAEK0vN.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/TXvdcvWF6X"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":1,"retweet_count":6,"like_count":35,"impression_count":9933,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

🍁 ThinkOn and AVSS give Canadian public safety and defence a sovereign alternative to hyperscaler-hosted TAK. Toronto’s ThinkOn and New Brunswick drone maker AVSS partnered to let Canadian agencies run Team Awareness Kit entirely on Canadian cloud infrastructure, streaming MAVLink-compatible drone telemetry straight into TAK’s common operating picture without a foreign hyperscaler in the loop. DroneXL adds that AVSS has now manufactured more than 2,000 systems this fiscal year and that ThinkOn has held sovereign certification for eight years across Canada, the US, UK, Australia and the Caribbean.

Finland’s Kelluu is bringing autonomous, cold-weather airships into Area X.O in Ottawa to push Canadian Arctic ISR forward, and The Walrus lays out why Canada’s military is preparing for the drone wars in the first place.
Vimy Forge publishes a look book on its very first cohort.

Audace Advisory

Sovereign Until Someone Needs an Exit

On 19 June 2026, MDA Space, the closest thing Canada has to a sovereign space prime, signed a definitive agreement to acquire Blue Canyon Technologies of Colorado from RTX for US$620 million, approximately C$874 million, in cash [1]. The rationale was not the technology; MDA already builds satellites. What MDA bought, by its own chief executive’s accoun…

2 months ago · Audace Advisory

🍁 Canada Rocket Company races to fill the void SpaceX is leaving behind. BetaKit reports SpaceX has started turning away rideshare customers on Falcon 9 past 2028, favouring its own Starlink satellites, leaving Canada, the only G7 country without independent orbital launch capacity, scrambling. Financial Post reports Canada Rocket Company has raised $22.5 million, mostly from Canadian investors including BDC, plus an $8.3 million federal grant under DND’s “Launch the North” program, with CEO Hugh Kolias noting “everyone thought it was oversupplied” when explaining why so few companies had targeted the medium-lift launch gap his company now occupies.

🍁 Calogy’s thermal-management IP turns a near-shutdown into a $1.2 million dual-use drone contract. Sherbrooke’s Calogy Solutions will design the battery system for Jaunt Air Mobility Canada’s next hybrid-electric, autonomous VTOL drone, a $1.2 million CAD win built on air-cooling tech the company claims performs like liquid cooling in Arctic cold or extreme heat.

Rational Optimist Society

I found the American dream… in China

We’re only 100 rational optimists away from being 30K strong…

a month ago · 288 likes · 26 comments · Stephen McBride

🍁 Alberta’s defence-tech ecosystem has grown 5.5x since 2018, and the province is still second nationally. Start Alberta’s H1 2026 review counts 289 tracked Alberta defence and dual-use companies with CAD 1.48 billion in disclosed funding, enterprise value up from CAD 5.8 billion in 2018 to roughly CAD 32 billion today. Standouts include Canadian UAVs, the only Canadian firm certified for beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone flight, and Grengine, selected for NATO’s DIANA 2026 Challenge from more than 3,600 applicants across 32 nations. Nationally, Ontario leads with 625 defence companies and Alberta, BC and Quebec together account for 93 percent of the country’s defence startups.

Cambridge Aerospace becomes Europe’s fastest-growing air-defence startup. The Financial Times reports UK startup Cambridge Aerospace closed a $300 million Series C at a $3.4 billion valuation, a 2.6x jump from its $1.3 billion Series B just four months earlier, led by DFJ Growth, an early Anduril backer. Bloomberg confirms the round and notes Lux Capital and Elad Gil, both Anduril investors, also participated. Founder and Cambridge professor Steven Barrett says the 250-person company, whose board includes former UK defence secretary Grant Shapps, is “growing rapidly,” building low-cost Skyhammer and Starhammer interceptors and planning a rocket-motor plant in Norfolk.

Valar Atomics raises $1 billion to put a microreactor behind an Nvidia chip. El Segundo’s Valar Atomics closed a $1 billion Series B led by Sequoia Capital plus a separate $200 million credit facility, just months after its reactor reached criticality in the US Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program and then powered an Nvidia Blackwell chip in a live demo. Twenty-seven-year-old founder Isaiah Taylor’s backers now include Palmer Luckey and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar.

Hadrian raises $1.37 billion to build the factories the Pentagon needs. Factory-builder Hadrian closed a $1.37 billion Series D at nearly $8 billion post-money, a little over a year after a $260 million Series C, with JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group anchoring alongside Baillie Gifford and Valor Equity Partners. Hadrian already builds submarine components for Lockheed Martin, RTX and Anduril, and CEO Chris Power’s framing is blunt: “Being able to produce, and have advanced factories, is deterrence.”

Who is building the picks and shovels in defense?

2 months ago · 17 likes · 4 comments · Louise Boucher

Canada’s first program aimed at accelerating the adoption of quantum computing technology by providing technical expertise and access to state-of-the-art quantum computing platforms for academics & SMEs.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Kit for Canada 🍁: Defence Minister David McGuinty toured CFB Suffield and announced a new $20.3 million Quantum Defence Innovation Secure Hub in Calgary, chosen from 25 national bids, alongside a $750 million DRDC Suffield lab breaking ground next year. BetaKit confirms the quantum hub’s 13-member consortium includes Lockheed Martin Canada, CAE, Calian and four Prairie universities, with McGuinty telling reporters “quantum will shape the next generation of defence capabilities, and Canada must be prepared to lead, not follow.” Meanwhile demand for Canadian-made Canadair water bombers is outpacing De Havilland Canada’s production, with Europe’s 22 ordered aircraft not arriving until 2028 even as France endured its worst wildfire season since the Second World War with just 7 of 12 Canadairs flying.

From ‘Top Gun’ to Ghost Bats: the future of aerial combat
Chad Rogers publishes a homemade version of ‘in case of crisis or war’, for Canadian households

Home front 🍁: CSIS issued an urgent June warning, backed by a Five Eyes assessment, that Chinese operatives are posing as recruiters and consultants on LinkedIn to target Canadians, even as Prime Minister Mark Carney pushes to grow Canadian exports to China by 50 percent over four years. The Walrus’s blunt framing: “The Carney administration is treating China as a market while the Chinese state treats Canada as a target.”

Software sovereignty: Policy Options argues Canada is trying to build a mandatory defence-cyber-certification regime in three years that took the US over a decade, while the Pentagon itself has just paused its equivalent program for a 60-day review. A TechTO essay adds that Canada spends just 1.06 percent of GDP on business R&D, second-lowest in the G7, warning that “a weaker Canadian copy of a foreign product is not sovereignty. It’s a dependency with a maple leaf on it”, a theme echoed in a Canadian Shield Institute newsletter cataloguing homegrown alternatives to American Big Tech, from social platforms to cloud providers, all still tiny next to US incumbents. South of the border, Breaking Defense reports agentic AI is forcing the Pentagon and intelligence community to rebuild Zero Trust cybersecurity around a “digital birth certificate” for people, devices and AI agents, with SOCOM commander Admiral Frank Bradley wanting networks that detect compromise “in minutes, not months.”

Silicon front: Reuters reports the Trump administration is drafting a ban on Chinese-made optical transceivers that move data inside AI data centres, a supply chain where China’s Zhongji Innolight holds 27 percent global market share, while The Wall Street Journal covers US startups finally shipping sodium-ion “salt” batteries at commercial scale, a bid to break dependence on China for batteries and critical minerals, both bets on choking off Beijing’s leverage over hardware Western militaries now depend on.

Stockpile paradox: The New York Times reports the US war against Iran has drained weapons stockpiles pulled from Asia and Europe to dangerously low levels, emboldening Russia and China. CNN puts numbers on it: nearly 80 percent of the THAAD inventory and roughly half of Patriot interceptors gone since the war began, while Reuters’ exclusive finds the Army has used “virtually all” of its global ATACMS and Precision Strike Missile stockpile, missiles that cost more than $1 million each and take years to replace.

Cheap at scale: Defence Connect Australia’s first-person account from a June missile barrage on Kyiv, during which Russia launched 70 missiles and 611 drones in one night, describes a “front-to-factory innovation loop” behind Ukraine’s capacity to produce more than 8 million drones a year across 160-plus companies, a scale PitchBook notes is being achieved on venture funding equal to roughly one hundredth of one percent of the global total, proof that production discipline beats capital abundance.

Deep strike:

Ukraine's Missile Defense Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Picture: Bundeswehr / Lars Koch…

a month ago · 111 likes · 19 comments · Fabian Hoffmann

Defense Brief’s “gold rush” survey finds one-way strike drones like Fire Point’s $55,000, 1,600-kilometre-range FP-1 have made the missile “ammunition now, and the scarce thing is the factory,” with Britain and Germany alone committing over $50 billion across a dozen countries to deep-precision-strike weapons.

Ground robots: Bloomberg reports a Ukrainian flamethrower-armed ground robot repelled a Russian assault near Dobropillia, part of a push to build at least 50,000 combat UGVs in 2026 to close the manpower gap with Russia, while Forbes documents Ukraine’s first known drone-delivered robot assault, an ARK-1 UGV carrying a TM-62 anti-tank mine dropped behind enemy lines by a heavy-lift drone, a tactic both armies are racing to copy.

Counter-drone: The US Marine Corps awarded an $11 million contract to Epirus for its HAVOC high-power microwave system, built to disable entire drone swarms including Russian fiber-optic-guided drones that have defeated traditional jamming with cable spools up to 50 kilometres long. The Army is meanwhile poised to sign its first laser “program of record” with AeroVironment for up to 20 systems, after Patriot missiles costing $4 million apiece were fired at $35,000 Iranian drones. Procurement is speeding up too: JIATF-401’s new Amazon-style counter-drone marketplace, built by startup Kaizen in under nine weeks under a $15 million contract, already lists Anduril, SmartShooter, DroneShield and AeroVironment, and Business Insider’s coverage of the same launch notes allied buyers from the UK, Romania, Australia, Poland and South Korea are already onboarded through the Foreign Military Sales Fast Lane. The Army also wants a Next Generation Counter-sUAS Missile priced under $150,000 that can leave the launch rail in under five seconds and integrate with the existing Coyote launcher, a direct response to the Patriot-versus-cheap-drone math playing out in the Gulf.

Big think: A Center for Security Studies essay from ETH Zurich asks whether Clausewitz’s idea of war as a political, human phenomenon survives an age of AI-enabled “precision mass”, while Small Wars Journal debates whether drones and sensors denying sanctuary 40 kilometres behind the front line mean the US Army’s Armor Branch will be “dead by 2035”, a debate with direct implications for how Canada spends its own armoured-vehicle budget.

Pentagon reform watch: A First Breakfast essay from Hudson Institute’s Nadia Schadlow argues Congress should fund industrial “capacity” the way SaaS funds standby compute, paying contract manufacturers retainers for surge capability ahead of a Taiwan contingency, a model already being tested through USSOCOM’s new SOF RACER consortium with GovSignals, promising non-traditional vendors a path to deliver technology in “weeks, not fiscal years”, the same standing-capacity logic Schadlow wants written into law. The White House and Pentagon are calling for the U.S. military to become an AI-first fighting force.

The Factory Is the Product

a month ago · 30 likes · Nadia Schadlow's The Overview, Marlinspike VC, and MT

Europe rearms: The Washington Post’s op-ed from a Ukrainian drone-company founder explains why ten European countries launched Freyja, a missile-interception coalition explicitly designed not to replace the American Patriot but to end Europe’s dependence on any single manufacturer or country. Days later, US intelligence linked an explosive drone found at a NATO logistics hub in Leipzig to Russia, prompting Germany’s interior minister to call it a sign of “daily hybrid warfare.”

Maritime autonomy: The Pentagon’s DIU solicited up to $100 million for unmanned surface vessels after three Saronic Corsair USVs struck Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base and evacuated two downed Apache pilots from the Strait of Hormuz, a demand signal Anduril is answering with talks to build a drone-boat production site at Baltimore’s historic Sparrows Point shipyard, a potential investment in the hundreds of millions, a bet that drone boats now matter as much as hulls.

Autonomous air: The New York Times details Taiwan’s plan to deter a Chinese invasion with a drone “Hellscape,” targeting 100,000 drones a month by 2030 and more than 210,000 aerial and maritime drones in total, while The War Zone reports unidentified drones were sighted over the joint US-UK base at Diego Garcia, previously targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles.

Secure your spot here.

🔫 Hot Shots

Stranger Pings: The Threat of CCP-Controlled Infrastructure in the U.S. Communications Backbone

Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf’s media tour keeps landing. George Hoyem, a former In-Q-Tel investor who helped Anduril land its first customer, writes that Schimpf may be “the clearest voice in defense tech right now,” arguing AI-enabled precision should be “more precise, more discriminating, and less prone to unnecessary collateral damage than older and ‘dumber’ alternatives.”

A16z’s American Dynamism film series turns industrial policy into cinema. The venture firm’s short-film series profiles founders rebuilding US industry, including an underwater-drone startup mapping the ocean floor and a portable nuclear-power venture, on the theory that “we know more about space than the bottom of the ocean.”

The UK puts £100 million behind first-time venture fund managers outside London. Britain’s Investor Pathways Capital Initiative aims to launch up to 10 new VC funds in every postcode, part of a broader £400 million push to diversify who controls early-stage capital.

A $30 kids’ smartwatch turned into a stalking tool. Wired researchers hijacked a child’s GPS smartwatch and remotely tracked, photographed and recorded a reporter, tracing the flaw to three Shenzhen-based platforms running tens of millions of devices worldwide: “millions of kids are being exposed and vulnerable to exploitation.”

FelixClark launches a scorecard to separate real dual-use companies from defence-adjacent marketing. The DURI Dual-Use Readiness Index scores startups on technical maturity, market pathway and capital readiness, built on the premise that “many companies can claim defence relevance. Far fewer can demonstrate it.”

A military GPS jamming exercise may have contributed to a fatal medevac crash. Futurism reports an experimental jammer at White Sands Missile Range disabled a medevac aircraft’s navigation before it crashed near Ruidoso, New Mexico in May, killing all four aboard, the first known case of military GPS jamming contributing to a civilian crash in US airspace.

Odds & Ends: Wuxly selected to supply the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with Canadian-made Duty Overalls. SAAS North announces DEPLOY for defence tech founders (Nov 5), and Invest Ottawa announces GCXpo (Sep 29)

Chinese-made camera parts in Royal Navy drones were phoning home. Britain’s £12 million K3 Scout uncrewed vessel fleet had cameras transmitting “heartbeat communications” to a Chinese IP address, forcing the Ministry of Defence to strip their connectivity before Gulf deployment: “If we cannot say with confidence what is inside our own military equipment, we cannot say it is ours, or that we are sovereign.”

The Army wants its AI battlefield network to police itself. Axios reports the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control platform, built around Anduril’s Lattice software, automatically quarantined a misbehaving application during testing at Fort Irwin, part of a $4 billion FY2027 push to fuse 40-plus applications into one operational picture.

China’s Palantir-style AI firms are surging. The South China Morning Post’s look at Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy tracks a Chinese firm claiming its AI flagged an unusual concentration of US surveillance assets across the Middle East more than 50 days before the US strikes on Iran, marketing itself as a Chinese answer to Palantir and Anduril.

The Jaguars are the NFL’s first team to fight back against drones. Ondas subsidiary Sentrycs will deploy cyber-takeover counter-drone tech at Jacksonville’s stadium this season, after the FBI seized more than 700 illegal drones around World Cup stadiums this summer.

Tank Talks with Matt Cohen

Buy Canadian receipts are in

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:02:57 GMT

Editor’s Note: Big congrats to the team at Greypoint Industries (YC S26). Keen Icebreaker community members will remember them as the winners of Canada’s first ever defence tech hackathon (hosted by us, and proudly backed by NordSpace, SkyWatch, DMZ and Build Canada) back in September.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

🍁 Six months of “Buy Canadian” receipts are in

The Logic pulled the contracts and found that more than 70% of Buy Canadian awards went to foreign-owned subsidiaries in the policy’s first six months. Just 4 of 14 deals, worth $726M combined, went to Canadian-headquartered firms, against a $37B annual procurement budget.

An independent analyst went deeper into the Treasury Board data and found DND awarded $7.94B in goods contracts in 2023 but only $1.96B reached Canadian-domiciled vendors, and that’s an upper bound, since subsidiaries of foreign firms count as “Canadian.”

Total DND awards grew 4.4x between 2021 and 2024. The Canadian share of goods awards fell from 56% to 12%. His manufacturing check is the kicker: shipments of navigational, control and radar instruments, the category closest to defence sensing hardware, grew just 2.5% since 2023 while communications equipment grew 18.8%. Canada quadrupled its contracting. Canadian factories never felt it.

The carve-outs have already started. CSE quietly exempted its entire $2B budget from Buy Canadian by declaring every purchase a “sensitive operation.” The Globe’s editorial board says procurement must stop doubling as regional economic development, pointing out our artillery buildout hits 12,000 shells a month only in 2029, “enough to cover a weekend of fighting.” A sharp Vanguard op-ed argues Ottawa fixed the buyer’s four problems but the SME’s four problems remain: visibility, selection, runway, and no lane from pilot to production.

Now what? The ecosystem is responding anyway. Source Canada returns October 22 with dedicated defence and deep-tech tracks, expanding to 350+ attendees with the defence track co-developed by The Icebreaker.

Ottawa’s Anvil and Vancouver’s Caseway are pitching homegrown alternatives to Palantir for military software, with Anvil’s CEO putting it bluntly: “There’s one customer in Canada in defence. You either win that customer or you lose everything.”

Bottom Line: The Canadian Shield Institute argues knowing what you’re doing is half the battle on a PBO-projected $230B defence ramp, and its research director’s companion essay traces Canada’s dual-use history from the Avro Arrow to quantum. The lesson: we captured Canadarm’s value, we gave AI’s away, quantum is the next test.

Paul Ziadé: Why Canada’s Defence Complacency Ends with North Vector Dynamics

In this episode of Tank Talks, host Matt Cohen sits down with Paul Ziadé, CEO and co-founder of North Vector Dynamics, a Calgary-based company building full-spectrum precision missile systems for Canada and its allies. A former tenured professor at the University of Calgary turned defence entrepreneur, Paul brings a deeply personal and historically lite…

2 months ago · 24 likes · 2 comments · Ripple Ventures

🍁 Washington calls Canada’s Plan B a waste of time.

Despite the procurement figures above… Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, took to X to dismiss the “middle powers” strategy as a distraction that wastes allies’ “time, money, and political capital,” insisting “no alternative country or countries can compete with the U.S. defense industrial base.” The Globe confirmed the 3.9M-view thread was aimed squarely at Mark Carney’s doctrine, with Colby adding that access to the US industrial base “is a privilege, not a right.” Carleton’s Fen Hampson called it American “bipolar disorder”: you can’t tell NATO allies they’re on their own, then complain when they go out on their own.

The Founder Who Refused to Quit | Samuel Witherspoon, ANVIL

In Chapter Two of Canadian Explorers, I sit down with Samuel Witherspoon to discuss persistence, national security, and the decade-long path to building ANVIL…

2 months ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Ethan Marcoux

Canada’s response has been to keep signing. CBC reports Canada is joining the UK-Japan-Italy sixth-generation fighter program as an observer while the 88-jet F-35 order stays under review, and the US ambassador flew two F-35s over his July 4 party to make his feelings known. The Economist says the old laggard is turning to Europe for its security, with 80%+ of Canadians backing much higher defence spending. Evan Dyer breaks down why Canada picked Germany’s TKMS 212CD for up to 12 submarines at a reported $24B, passing on a Korean boat that launches ballistic missiles. The Carney-championed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank is lining up $135B with nine founding nations and a Canadian HQ, backed by JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Canada’s biggest banks. Even James Stavridis, NATO’s former supreme commander, is urging Canada to diversify away from US primes toward Airbus, Saab, Pilatus and Asian shipbuilders as it commits nearly $30B to the North. And Trump just ordered 11 polar icebreakers after a golf game with Finland’s president, triggering billions in no-bid contracts. The Arctic race is on whether we show up or not.

🤝 Deal Corner

The primes just became VCs.

Defence primes have joined a record US$4.1B in venture rounds for military startups this year, per FT and Dealroom data, and the full FT analysis shows Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems leading the charge: Lockheed’s venture fund grew from $400M to $1B with a new London office, BAE put €50M into two funds, and Airbus anchored a €500M dual-use vehicle. City AM counts 42 defence M&A deals in H1 alone, up 56% year over year. Klaus Hommels closed Europe’s largest dedicated defence VC fund at €262.2M, completing the Spotify investor’s full pivot from consumer tech to strike systems.

Stateside, Vanity Fair profiled Harpoon Ventures, the SEAL-heavy San Diego firm riding a market where VCs deployed US$19.8B into defence tech in Q1 2026 alone, up from US$5.7B in Q1 2024, and Harpoon just closed an oversubscribed US$155M Fund IV on the strength of it. Even the banks are in: Jamie Dimon put US$24M into a submarine plant at the Philadelphia Navy Yard under JPMorgan’s US$1.5T security initiative, declaring “the arsenal of democracy has been reignited.” The Pentagon itself is dangling $400K salaries to poach Wall Street bankers for its Office of Strategic Capital, which lends up to $150M per deal across 31 tech categories and plans to deploy US$200B+ over three years.

Sunil Rao

In Defense Tech, Capital Is No Longer the Validation

Helsing raised $1.8 billion this week at an $18 billion valuation. A day later, Singularity emerged from stealth with an $80 million Series A to build lower-cost air-defense systems…

2 months ago · 1 like · Sunil Rao

🍁 Davie launches Davie Autonomous in Ontario, partnering with newly minted unicorn Kraken Technology Group after its US$175M Series B at a US$1B valuation to build uncrewed maritime vehicles, with multiple Ontario production sites in talks.

🍁 Ottawa commits nearly $2B for 190 armoured combat support vehicles from General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, a deal CBC reports will sustain 6,000+ Canadian jobs a year for eight years across a supply chain from B.C. to Nova Scotia.

🍁 NordSpace backs North Vector Dynamics, an undisclosed strategic investment pairing Markham rockets with Calgary missiles inside a DND-backed hypersonics network.

Challenging Geopolitics

Turning Salt into Missiles

This article came about because I went looking for ways to invest in America’s missile boom following the rate at which it is expending munitions in the Iran war. What I found was one of its most cri…

2 months ago · 15 likes · 1 comment · Challenging Geopolitics and Ed Shannon

🍁 Airbus invests in Medicine Hat’s Landing Zones Canada, taking a board seat in the drone threat-emulation firm announced at Farnborough, and banking Canadian industrial-benefit credit against its military transport contract.

Autonomous Manufacturing for Ukraine | Kath Intson — Explorer Spotlight #8

On June 10, 2026, Moscow called Canada a “warmonger" after a Canadian company had signed a drone manufacturing deal with Ukraine. Russia then threatened to publish that company’s address…

2 months ago · 1 like · Ethan Marcoux

🍁 CSMC lands $4.5M from FedDev Ontario to push its micro-nuclear reactor toward a fueled Arctic demonstration, framed by Minister Evan Solomon as defence industrial base building.

🍁 Quebec gets a $29.6M drone hub: the BOREALIS uncrewed-systems hub in Mirabel pools 30 organizations under Espace Aéro, with CBC noting the nearly $30M flows over just two years under Canadian Joint Forces Command sponsorship.

🍁 Magellan Aerospace will build the M-72 anti-tank weapon in Canada under the Munitions Supply Program, a sovereign manufacturing win for one of the most fielded shoulder-launched weapons on earth that gives the CAF a resilient domestic source.

2 months ago · 18 likes · 5 comments · Louise Boucher

What's next in defense?

🍁 Calian and six Atlantic partners form CAMSC, Canada’s first integrated Arctic maritime security consortium, built on a region with 200+ defence companies and 34% of Canada’s marine workforce.

Helsing picks West Virginia for its first US plant, a $50M facility targeting 2,000 HX-2 strike drones a month after a $1.8B raise at an $18B valuation. A rare German-press look inside its secret Bavarian factory run by the ex-Tesla executive who scaled Model 3 production reveals a plant designed to relocate by container in an emergency.

Helsing’s ‘crazy’ valuation raises defence tech bubble concerns

Anduril talks a $100B valuation just two months after doubling to $61B, per Reuters reporting on the two-stage structure under discussion. Bloomberg meanwhile reports its year-old Rheinmetall partnership has been significantly scaled back, even as Anduril signs with Poland’s PGZ for 3,000 Barracuda missiles.

The Big Byte

Inside Anduril: How the $61B Defence Tech Company Structures Its Leadership by The Big Search & Industrial Base Alpha

Let’s start with the basics. Anduril is a $61B defence tech company that builds autonomous systems, AI-powered software, and advanced hardware for military and security applications (Sourcery’s definition…

2 months ago · 8 likes · Benjamin Lussert

Neros wins up to US$500M from the US Army for FPV drones, with the WSJ noting the former teenage drone racers now build 1,200 units a week at ~$2,000 each, targeting a million a year by 2028.

Drone Warfare: What the Pentagon Knows and a Private Doesn't

2 months ago · 23 likes · Kevin McCarville

Cambridge Aerospace nears $300M at a $3.4B valuation, less than two years after founding, with its Skyhammer interceptor priced to match the Shaheds it kills and a claimed $5B pipeline.

A SpaceX vet raised $65M to pull wire harnesses out of the Cold War era. Senra Systems had just closed a $65 million Series B.

Counter-drone money is pouring: Hidden Level won a US$100M Pentagon-wide OTA for passive drone detection, Allen Control Systems raised US$200M at a multi-billion valuation for its Bullfrog robotic gun, Brinc pulled in another US$125M to replace DJI in American policing, and former acting US defence secretary Chris Miller’s FPF raised US$10M for a $30K interceptor that he pitches bluntly: “$3M a pop to kill a drone that costs $50,000. Nuts.”

System Notes

Venture Building in Aerospace: Systems, Constraints, and Entry Points

Why I rewrote this…

2 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Haris Rehman

The picks-and-shovels round: Arkenstone emerged from stealth with US$35M to build defence tech’s compliance back office, and AI cyberwarfare startup Twenty hit a US$1.2B valuation on Khosla’s US$30M cheque to “industrialize cyber warfare.”

🎙️ Ep 27 - Arena Physica: Building Electromagnetic Superintelligence

Electrical and RF engineering are becoming more and more important as more hardware becomes software-defined. However, the software tools for electromagnetic engineering have not kept up with the 21st century. In the newest episode of the Mission Matters Podcast…

2 months ago · 6 likes · Maggie Gray, Akhil Iyer, and Pratap Ranade

Ukraine’s Magura drone boats go American: UForce signed with Oregon’s ReconCraft to produce the battle-tested USVs in the US for the first time, targeting eventually thousands of units a year.

Related: a new investor map shows who actually funds Ukrainian defence tech, with $35B in production capacity chasing just ~$57M in disclosed 2025 VC. If you want in, there’s a closed-door investor day on the eve of Defense Tech Valley 2026 in Lviv this September; The 20-Somethings Running Ukraine’s War Machine; War in Ukraine: has the tide really turned?

The Icebreaker | Matthew Lombardi on Canadian Defence Startups

Matthew Lombardi is the co-founder of The Icebreaker, Canada’s defence innovation network and newsletter. He is also a director at ONE9, Canada’s first national security venture capital firm…

2 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Ethan Marcoux

⚔️ Combat Readiness

🍁 Kit for Canada: Ottawa launched the Defence Drone Initiative, a supplier marketplace across five streams with applications open to August 14, covering six priority areas from ISR drones to counter-drone interceptors, no prior defence experience required. The formal RFSA is live on CanadaBuys now. DND also stood up the Canadian Deep Precision Strike Capability program with closed industry sessions this month. Long-range fires, made in Canada.

🍁 Division math: Derek Dobson’s essay on fielding a division, not just declaring one argues the C5ISRT digital backbone, not tanks, is the pacing item for Canada’s new Manoeuvre Division, with roughly half the Army’s vehicle fleet unavailable at any given time.

Ground robots: The NYT documents how a robot army is remaking ground warfare in Ukraine, with UGVs running thousands of monthly supply, evacuation and assault missions. The Washington Post profiles Foundation’s Phantom humanoid loading a mortar as armed robots edge toward weapon of choice. Ukraine’s Ark Robotics prices ground robots at $20,000 or less because a $200,000 UGV is a dead UGV.

Robotization of the Battlefield with Roman Tkachenko - Founder of Tencore

2 months ago · 5 likes · Louise Boucher

The kill zone: Reuters’ interactive reconstruction of Ukraine’s 30km-deep drone kill zone includes a soldier who spent 300+ days in a single foxhole. The CIA director says AI drones give Russian recruits 20 to 30 minutes of battlefield life expectancy. Eric Schmidt calls it the biggest revolution in the history of warfare, with 96% of Russian casualties in March coming from drone units.

Deep strike: Joshua Yaffa charts how Ukraine brought the war a thousand miles into Russia, with Fire Point now producing in ten days what took all of 2024. Russia is hitting back at the industrial base itself: a ballistic missile destroyed a US-owned drone factory in Kyiv, apparently the first direct Russian strike on a US defence company in this war.

Counter-drone: Ukraine’s Tryzub laser burns holes in Shaheds from 5km away and is nearing mass production. Russian lorries now wear zebra stripes designed to fool machine vision, not human eyes. The Marines picked the Bullfrog AI gun with a claimed cost-per-kill as low as $10, and a new British firm called Agon will train arms companies against enemy drone swarms with practice, practice, practice.

Big think: Phillips Payson O’Brien argues fighter jets are passé and Western brass are the new cavalry officers. West Point’s Modern War Institute counters that the drone revolution isn’t one, since 9,000 drones a day still need industry, logistics and EW cover. The Dispatch asks whether US military culture can adapt to autonomous weapons faster than China’s. And a Marine planner contends the first waves of amphibious assault will be unmanned, after Ukraine’s July uncrewed amphibious landing.

Pentagon reform watch: Hegseth created an autonomy czar as single joint integrator for unmanned systems and is steering billions toward startups while calling traditional vendors slow and bloated. The department also froze its CMMC cyber rules after realizing compliance could cost small firms $7B a year. Pete Newell’s verdict on all of it: the Pentagon built a faster engine, nobody built the steering. An Army acquisition officer adds ammunition, having built for $1,700 in AI tokens a tool traditional contracting would price at $840K+ and 6,000 hours. The make-or-buy line has moved.

Cheap at scale: APFIT crossed US$2B in cumulative awards with a final FY26 round of $592M across 30 selections, and the next cohort will prioritize tech “made cheaply at scale”. The program’s own stats show $10M–$50M awards cutting fielding time by two years. The $1B Drone Dominance Program is buying kamikaze drones in four phases, and its newest solicitation wants 1,200 bomber drones at no more than $20,000 each, responses due August 5. Canadian drone makers, read the fine print: Blue List rules apply.

Maritime autonomy: A Navy officer warns that without overseas repair frameworks the fleet gets broken drones far from home and hangar queens. Splash Industries ran unmanned resupply to two amphibious ships at RIMPAC on a $4.2M seed round. IQT’s CEO describes a Saronic vessel pulling off the first combat troop rescue by a maritime drone near the Strait of Hormuz. 🍁 And Aeryon Labs co-founder Mike Peasgood says we need to talk about the killer robots as he builds autonomous hydrofoils at Waterloo’s ENVGO.

Software sovereignty: France and Germany signed a declaration to build a European Palantir rival on France’s Arcadia platform, after both countries’ security services dropped Palantir. Alex Karp says the German snub involved “conversations about witchcraft.”

Europe rearms, unevenly: The UK’s Defence Investment Plan puts £5B into drones, the largest such investment in British military history, though startups call it too slow. Economists propose mandatory SME procurement shares to fix a continent where top-10 contractors take up to 90% of spending. Rheinmetall broke ground on a €350M gunpowder plant as investors cool on old-style primes. BCG says the real fix is multiyear demand commitments so contractors will actually build capacity, while its aviation team projects exquisite systems still holding 80% of the market through 2033 even as attritable segments grow 15-40% a year.

Going all in on European defense — Alex Ferrara, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners

2 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Louise Boucher

Stockpile paradox: NATO officials warn against stockpiling millions of drones that will be obsolete before the war starts, with Ukraine’s Frontline Robotics updating products 20 times a month. The Atlantic tallies why the US is running so low on weapons: two-thirds of Patriot interceptors gone since February. CSIS’s progress report counts 10,000 new firms entering the US defence industrial base in two years, and flags the Canada-Finland-US ICE Pact on icebreakers moving to implementation. Ukraine’s Brave1 keeps the demand signal honest, funding exoskeletons, dugout-busters, lasers and combat humanoids across 53 new priorities. Airbus just joined its prime alliance.

Autonomous air: A NYT opinion documents fully autonomous AI drones firing missiles over the Mojave as the Pentagon requests US$54.6B for its new autonomous warfare group. Archer and Anduril unveiled Thunder, an autonomous attack rotorcraft aimed at Apache operators, first flight 2027.

Space: The Mitchell Institute’s workshop report maps space superiority through the spectrum of conflict in seven recommendations. Slingshot Aerospace won a US$69.2M Space Force contract for its MENTAT training environment, its largest ever. 🍁 Canada is in the game too: a new tender seeks system definition for the Surveillance of Space 2 optical capability, Canada’s own eye on orbit.

Axis watch: The Economist tracks China’s maritime militia massing 1,000+ vessels in 450km swarms near Taiwan. CNN finds Chinese deep-sea research ships spent only 6% of their time actually researching their mining zones, going dark near submarine routes instead. A leaked police database shows China tracking 12,000 foreigners, with Canadians filed under a “Five Eyes Alliance” label. Beijing banned rare-earth shipments to 14 European defence-linked firms. Evan Osnos’s New Yorker dispatch on the future being made in China notes 70%+ of global drones are built there, and Moonshot’s new 2.8-trillion-parameter open-source model now rivals top US systems. The tech race and the drone race are the same race.

Nathan Mintz: “The Submarine and PAC-3 contracts exceed the combined value of all OTAs awarded in the last two years. They dwarf by a factor of 8.5X the total lifetime federal obligations of the NatSec100 companies ($16B) and exceed the total private capital raised for those companies ($118.2B)”

🍁 Home front: A hostile intelligence service cloned the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s website to phish for classified information. Ex-CSIS director David Vigneault warns Canada’s openness is now its biggest vulnerability, citing a downed Shahed carrying Canadian-made antennas. Sweden’s answer to the same threat environment: a brand-new foreign spy agency comparable to MI6. Iran shows where this goes, pinging Middle East mobile networks to hunt US personnel and, per the NYT, attacking water systems in at least seven US states, with HuffPost reporting 30+ Minnesota water systems hit in one coordinated wave. Critical infrastructure is the front line. Canada’s is not exempt.

🔫 Hot Shots

🍁 Greypoint Industries, founded by Canadian infantry veterans and winners of Canada’s first defence hackathon, Icebreaker, made Newsweek’s case for why defence innovation is moving beyond traditional contractors. Their counter-swarm thesis: neutralize the operator, not the drones.
🍁 North Vector Dynamics CEO Paul Ziade went on The Techne Connect to talk leaving tenure for hypersonics.
🍁 Canadian kit is protecting Ukrainian women in combat: NP Aerospace’s curved plates and Logistik Unicorp’s carriers anchor the first body armour designed for the 75,000 women serving, with 48% more protection than flat plates. “Women are not just small men.”
🍁 Middle East turmoil upended global helium supplies, and Canada holds a fifth of world reserves while producing 2% of output. Helium is the only one of 34 critical minerals without the tax treatment. Fix that.
🍁 Canada’s aerospace sector put up $33.1B in GDP and 218,700 jobs in 2025, with R&D intensity 4.5x the manufacturing average. AIAC wants a national industrial aerospace strategy to match.

🍁 Vancouver’s QSE was selected for Canada’s quantum trade mission to the Netherlands this September. Post-quantum encryption is becoming an export product.
🍁 Breaking in: Alacrity Canada published a defence literacy field guide for Canadian SMEs, and Carleton launched a two-day practical certificate in Canadian defence procurement taught by former ADMs. Cheaper than learning by losing bids.
🍁 Jobs desk: Dominion Dynamics is hiring a Director of Operations to run the factory floor in Ottawa or Toronto, and BDC’s StrongNorth Fund wants an associate with a STEM brain and a Secret clearance in Toronto or Vancouver. CSMC needs a corp dev team in Toronto, and North Vector Dynamics needs a head of growth

Robert Asselin

Canada Is Entering a Historic Defence Expansion. Will It Change Our Economic Trajectory?

A defence build-up can do more than buy equipment. It can help build a more technologically powerful economy—creating new research-intensive industries, more productive firms and lasting sovereign capabilities…

2 months ago · 2 likes · Robert Asselin

🍁 Ticker watch: a markets piece on the counter-drone billions puts Volatus Aerospace’s Mirabel expansion and CAD 9M NATO contract next to DroneShield and Kratos, with analysts’ targets at double the current price.

Nuclear is quietly having its defence moment: BloombergNEF sees global capacity jumping 44% to 535GW by 2036, with China holding nearly half the reactors under construction.
Ottawa working on ‘Maple List’ to help validate Canadian drones for the Armed Forces

Nodes & Nuance

The Five Layers of AI: Where are the Next Opportunities?

Since 2021, we at Two Small Fish Ventures have been investing in deep technology startups across the AI tech stack, including semiconductor technology. Then, in mid 2025, we shared the evolution of our investment thesis on the five interconnected layers shaping the next frontier of AI: vertical AI platforms, physical AI, AI Infrastructure, advanced comp…

2 months ago · 14 likes · 4 comments · Eva Lau

Special Competitive Studies Project

SCSP Summer Reading & Watching List 2026: Highlights, Tech Briefs, Podcasts & What’s Ahead

Welcome to SCSP’s Summer Reading List! As the summer heats up, so does the pace of global innovation and strategic techno-economic competition. This year, we’ve curated an essential collection of reads, listens, and broadcasts from the Special Competitive Studies Project—including our newly launched President’s Tech Brief —a live show to keep you inform…

2 months ago · 35 likes · SCSP

🛡️ ONE9: The Firm That Built Canada’s Defence Venture Market

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:02:22 GMT

Editor’s note and disclosure: The Icebreaker’s co-founder Matthew Lombardi recently joined ONE9, the security and defence investment platform of Kensington Capital Partners Limited. The Icebreaker and ONE9 already co-founded and co-chair CANDIN, Canada’s Defence Investor Network.

🎯 Why this issue exists

Every week we report on Canada’s defence rebuild: the half-trillion-dollar commitments, the rearmament from 28th place, the founders and funds finally showing up. But readers keep asking the same thing: who actually built the private capital side of this ecosystem?

This is the reference piece on ONE9, Canada’s first national security tech investment and innovation platform.

🍁 First in, when nobody wanted in

ONE9 wasn’t founded during the 2025 defence boom. It was founded in 2013 by Glenn Cowan while he was still serving in Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2), Canada’s tier-one special-mission unit - the Canadian peer of the units that produced the operators now founding America’s biggest defence-tech companies.

Glenn didn’t parachute into defence from finance; he came up through the sharp end of it. A retired JTF2 Squadron Commander, he spent his career on special operations: combat tours in Afghanistan, sensitive missions across the Middle East, and hostage-recovery operations in Africa. He built ONE9 on a conviction that is now his team’s motto: venture capital is a special operation — small teams, asymmetric bets, mission first.

That operator background is the sourcing and diligence edge. ONE9’s partners are the end-users the technology is actually built for, which is why they can tell a demo from a deployable capability before an LP dollar moves.

Canada's First National Security VC | Glenn Cowan — Explorer Spotlight #3

ONE9 is Canada’s first national security venture capital firm. It was founded in 2013 by Glenn Cowan, a former JTF 2 (Joint Task Force 2) Squadron Commander in Canada’s special forces. In 2025, ONE9’s venture capital business was acquired by Kensington Capital Partners…

3 months ago · 3 likes · Ethan Marcoux

In March 2022, three years before Ottawa rediscovered defence, ONE9 launched Special Mission Fund I with Shopify co-founder Daniel Weinand as General Partner, anchored by Kensington Capital Partners Limited, the only institutional investor willing to back defence at the time, and backing from investors including Shopify President Harley Finkelstein. Harley “backed ONE9’s defence-focused fund in 2022, when few Canadian investors wanted anything to do with the sector.”

And the portfolio performed like a firm that knew the terrain before the hype cycle arrived: Tomahawk Robotics (exited to AeroVironment in 2023), Strider Technologies, goTenna (acquired by Forterra in 2025), Hidden Level, Slingshot Aerospace, North Vector Dynamics, Stirling X. Counter-UAS, secure comms, space domain awareness, intelligence - the exact categories every generalist fund is now scrambling to enter, ONE9 underwrote years ago.

🏛️ Institutional firepower: the Kensington platform

In 2025, Kensington Capital Partners acquired ONE9. Today, ONE9 is Kensington’s security and defence investment platform: one brand spanning three integrated arms — venture investing (with institutional backing from AGF Capital Partners), ONE9 Capability Labs (the operational and value-creation arm), and its Arctic joint venture, Sapujjijiit. Kensington manages roughly C$2.1B across venture, growth, and mid-market buyouts, is majority-owned by AGF, and is building a scaled defence franchise.

Translation for LPs: special-operations sourcing and battlefield validation, wrapped in institutional-grade investing infrastructure and a ~30-year GP track record. That combination doesn’t exist anywhere else in Canada.

And the platform just gained a new steward. In July 2026, Kensington named Saar Pikar — former head of venture and growth at OMERS — as President, reporting to CEO Tom Kennedy, with direct oversight of the venture and growth business, including ONE9. One of the country’s most senior institutional venture investors is moving from OMERS, one of Canada’s largest pension investors, where they funded deals such as Dominion Dynamics and Cohere, to oversee Kensington with defence and security venture investing squarely in the mandate.

🧠 The powerhouse task force

Defence investing is a full-contact sport, and ONE9’s bench is unlike anything else in this country.

Since joining Kensington, Glenn now leads a deep team alongside a roster of strategic advisors and consultants with diverse backgrounds and long demonstrated track records of performance strategically located across the globe.

George Hoyem spent 15 years as EVP of Investments at In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s strategic venture arm, personally leading 40+ investments; he joined ONE9’s Investment Committee in 2025. When the man who helped the CIA pick winners for a decade and a half chooses a Canadian platform, that tells you where the puck is going. His recent essay on NATO decoupling from US defense tech is required reading:

George Hoyem

NATO Is Decoupling from US Defense Tech

A new defense-tech cycle is emerging across the allied world. The headline story is not simply that governments are spending more on defense. As the recent NATO conference highlights, allies are under pressure to spend more, move faster, and build more of the critical technology stack inside trusted national and allied ecosystems. Canada, the UK, and NA…

2 months ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · George Hoyem

Rounding out the team: A US Naval Academy graduate, former US and UK naval aviator and the founder of a $300M corporate venture platform. A retired Tier 1 US Army special operations soldier who started in the 75th Ranger Regiment, deployed 20+ times across the Middle East and North Africa, served through the August 2021 Kabul evacuation, and holds a Bronze Star with “V” device.

And of course Michael Smith, a serving reserve officer in the CAF Judge Advocate General branch — you’ve seen him in op-eds, and this month on the Canadian Army’s official podcast, on how international humanitarian law shapes the weapons Canada develops and fields:

No other Canadian platform can put special operators, a CIA-affiliated venture veteran, a corporate VC builder and two of the country’s most senior defence statesmen.

🌍 Forward-deployed in Europe

While many global investors read about the European rearmament cycle, ONE9 lives in it. Glenn was the sole private investor on the Canadian delegation at the NATO Defence Industry Summit in The Hague, sitting in roundtables with Defence Minister David McGuinty and Procurement Secretary Stephen Fuhr.

And this spring, Glenn went further forward than any Canadian VC: ten days across Europe, including time embedded with the Canadian-led NATO Multinational Brigade in Latvia, on the alliance’s eastern flank. That’s the drone-saturated, electronic-warfare reality of modern land combat, seen up close, on the exact ground where Canada’s soldiers are deployed and where the next generation of battlefield technology is being proven or discarded in real time. ONE9 holds a permanent forward operating presence across the fastest growing defence market on Earth. Deal flow follows presence. Presence follows commitment.

🔬 Capability Labs: the value engine

The go-to-market motion for startups is unique in defence. Capability Labs, ONE9’s innovation hub and venture studio, builds security-focused companies against validated end-user demand, runs innovation-as-a-service for public-sector partners, operationalizes capabilities, and supports startups through the valley of death between demo and deployment.

And the Labs has real receipts. Take Dominion Dynamics, the Ottawa company whose Arctic “digital fence” we watched span 5,200 km on Op Nanook, whose Arctic Training Centre partnership we covered in September, and which went on to close the largest defence Series A in Canadian history (C$139M, 2026). Before that mega-round, a Kensington fund backed Dominion’s seed, and ONE9 Capability Labs housed the company, supported its early innovation, and helped it recruit transitioning Canadian Armed Forces veterans. That’s the Labs model working as designed: capital, space, and operator talent at the earliest and riskiest moment, not innovation theatre.

The Labs model is also why ONE9 joined forces with Invest Ottawa to open Area X.O to defence entrepreneurs, plumbing the national ecosystem directly into its pipeline.

🧊 The North is not a metaphor

Sovereignty talk is cheap; ONE9 builds in the Arctic. Glenn partnered with Harry Flaherty, CEO of Qikiqtaaluk Corporation, to create Sapujjijiit Inc., Canada’s only Inuit-majority-owned, full-spectrum Arctic defence company, in which ONE9 Capability Labs is a full partner. It’s a working channel between the defence tech sector and northern and Indigenous businesses. In a procurement environment where Arctic capability and Indigenous partnership are both strategic and mandated, ONE9 is the only venture platform with that channel built. A testament to being early in the Arctic is that ONE9’s portfolio company goTenna/Forterra was the first wireless mesh communication network deployed to support emergency management in Nunavut:

🤝 The network is the moat

ONE9 co-founded and co-chairs CANDIN, Canada’s first and only private capital network for defence and security, modelled on peer groups across the US, Australia, and AUKUS. The firm’s reach runs from JTF2 alumni networks to In-Q-Tel’s Rolodex to NATO’s industrial machinery. Even ONE9’s comms game is levelling up:

💰 Bottom Line

Canada’s defence rebuild needs a private capital champion with operator DNA, institutional backing, allied networks, and a decade of receipts.

ONE9 didn’t join the defence tech wave — it spent thirteen years building the beach the wave is now breaking on. If you’re a founder building sovereign capability, an LP seeking exposure to the most durable spending cycle of our generation, or an ally looking for Canada’s serious people, you now know where to find them.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Canada finally builds the buyer

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:02:12 GMT

Release the drones: For two years the complaint from Canadian uncrewed-systems founders has been the same: there’s no door to knock on. As of this week there is one. The Canadian Joint Forces Command (CJFC), with LGen Molstad owning drones across the CAF, and the Defence Investment Agency (DIA) running the plumbing, have opened a standing marketplace for pre-qualified Canadian drone suppliers. The Request for Supply Arrangement (RFSA) posts today. This is the buyer showing up.

What it actually is: An RFSA is not an RFP and not a contract. It’s a pre-qualified pool. You clear a pass/fail bar once, you get a Supply Arrangement, and from then on you’re on the list that gets emailed the RFPs when a specific requirement lands. Think of it as the guest list, not the party. Qualification runs on experience, capacity, and security screening - technical evaluation comes later, at the actual solicitations. Miss this window and there’s another every three months through year one, then every six months after that. So the door reopens, but late arrivals watch the first contracts go to whoever qualified first.

Five streams to qualify under (you can pick more than one):

Uncrewed and counter-uncrewed systems and components — the operational core
Data, electronic warfare, and cyber systems that ride with the drones
Systems integrators
Test, evaluation, and training services
Innovation and experimentation — the on-ramp for lower-TRL, earlier-stage players to get in the room and grow into stream one

That last stream matters most for the early-stage ecosystem. It’s the first time the department has drawn an explicit path from “promising prototype” to “operational supplier” inside the same mechanism.

Six urgent use cases go first. This is where the demand signal is loudest, so read it as a shopping list:

Low-cost tactical ISR drones — cheap and attritable is the whole point
Complex-terrain UGVs, starting from commercial off-the-shelf
A modular explosive payload family — open architecture, pre-certified, swappable across platforms, killing the current mess of improvised and proprietary one-offs
Low-cost counter-drone interceptors with low collateral effects — minimal explosives, safe around people and infrastructure, manufacturable at scale, and useful at home
Maritime autonomy — surface and underwater systems for Canada’s ocean approaches
Sovereign deep precision strike — strategic range and payload, with domestic production capability. This is the ambitious one, and the word “sovereign” is doing a lot of work.

The through-line across all six: low cost, attritable, and built at scale. Ottawa has watched the same lesson play out overseas and is buying accordingly.

The calendar:

Today, July 23: RFSA posts. Get registered on CanadaBuys now if you aren’t; you can’t see the documents otherwise.
July 30: industry engagement session.
August 14: RFSA closes.

Bottom Line: This is the most concrete thing to come out of the Defence Industrial Strategy so far. The DIS promised 70% of acquisitions to Canadian firms and named uncrewed systems as one of ten sovereign capabilities; the DIA was built to cut the RFP maze. This RFSA is the first time all of that turns into a form a founder can fill out. The bar is deliberately low at this stage to pull in competition, which means the real filtering happens at the RFP round — qualifying is table stakes, not a win. But if you build drones, counter-drone, payloads, maritime autonomy, or the data and EW layer around them, and you’re not registered on CanadaBuys by close on August 14, you’ve chosen not to be in the market Canada just built for you.

We’ll be tracking who qualifies and which RFPs drop first. If you’re going through the process, reply and tell us how it’s going.

Special Edition: Buy Canadian Conference Launch

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:03:09 GMT

The rules changed this year. On June 15 the federal Buy Canadian threshold dropped from $25M to $5M. The $2B Sovereign AI Compute Strategy is in market. Defence spending is climbing. For once, policy moved in Canadian entrepreneurs’ favour.

Now the hard part: execution. Canadian defence and security startups build world-class tech and still can’t survive our own procurement gauntlet. Canada doesn’t have an innovation problem. It has a buying problem.

That’s why The Icebreaker is helping launch the Defence Track at Source Canada 2026 — Raymond Luk’s national procurement summit, back at the Hilton Toronto on October 22 after a sold-out first year.

This one isn’t a conference. It’s a domestic trade mission. Pre-vetted buyers matched to Canadian companies, 1:1 meetings running all day, and briefing rooms with the people who actually sign the contracts. Last year: 250 attendees, roughly 70 corporate buyers, and more than 100 private buyer-seller meetings in a single day.

The Defence Track puts Canadian-owned and Canadian-controlled defence and dual-use companies in the room with government buyers, corporate buyers, and capital. The Sovereign Technology Track covers quantum, AI, cybersecurity and deeptech.

Use code ICBRKR-SC26 for 20% off any pass (capped at the first 100 passes).

Early Bird pricing runs through August 22, and space is limited. The first year sold out and 2026 caps at 350–400 people.

Grab your pass at sourcecan.ca

Canada starting from 28th place

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:02:45 GMT

Editor’s Notes: Thanks to the team at Reaction Dynamics for a tour of the factory floor last week in Montreal, and to LGen Molstad and the VCAA for hosting a terrific roundtable on defence capital in Calgary; big congrats to COVE’s Robyn Warrier; hiring: North Vector Dynamics, CSMC, and AEDC.

The Icebreaker is on summer break for the next two weeks. Back in your inbox on August 4!

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

In 1965, Canada spent 2.6% of GDP on defence and had 107,000 people in uniform. Today we sit 28th on the Global Firepower index - one spot below Algeria - with roughly 71,000 troops, one of four submarines operational, and the distinction of being the only G7 country that can’t launch a rocket. Stephen Maher’s Maclean’s feature is the definitive anatomy of the half-trillion-dollar rebuild: missiles for Latvia announced in 2022 that arrived in May 2025, a Nanisivik naval facility that took 18 years to become a summer-only gas station, and an F-35 program where Canada has committed $27.7B for 88 jets but paid for just 16. Retired general Wayne Eyre says he grew frustrated with the lack of “U” in the Urgent Operational Requirement process. Defence analyst Philippe Sauvé is blunter: “Institutionally, we avoid risk completely.”

The companion piece profiles the founders and CEOs cashing in on the rebuild - and it’s a who’s-who: Dominion Dynamics testing its Arctic “digital fence” across 5,200 km on Op Nanook, Sapper Labs at ~$25M/yr in federal contracts, IMT Group’s $305M munitions deal, Calian booking $200M in a single quarter, and LeafStar’s $100M private small-arms plant bringing ~300 jobs to Ontario. Founder Fady Mansour: “70 cents of every dollar went to the U.S. - that’s changing fast.”

A Canadian Era of Startups, Defence & Greatness | Harley Finkelstein, Shopify

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein backed ONE9’s defence-focused fund in 2022, when few Canadian investors wanted anything to do with the sector…

2 months ago · 4 likes · Ethan Marcoux

The Canadian company arming Ukraine with drones

Watch this one. CBC’s Jennifer Yoon has an exclusive video look at the Canadian company supplying drones to Ukraine - a battlefield where Kyiv needs more drones than it can produce, even with domestic industry running flat out. A Canadian firm stepped into that gap. The real story: what its front-line experience teaches Canada about its own modernization. Combat-proven beats brochure-ready. Ottawa should be studying this playbook, not just applauding it.

The next defence fight is over trust, not money

Britain’s government imploded over an unfunded £25B-a-year defence gap. Murray Brewster argues Canada is next unless Ottawa shows its math: $81.8B budgeted, a $540B decade pledge - and no published five-year projections. Carney promises transparency in the fall budget, with 4% by the 2029 NATO review. Eric Reguly warns the submarine program alone could hit $100B all-in, and IMF data shows defence sprees widen deficits by ~2.6 points of GDP. Reality check: at the Ankara summit, where Kerry Buck warned “the cost of drama is too high,” Rutte admitted the old 2% target was “a bit plucked from the air.”

Bottom Line: Canada is rebuilding from 28th place with real money and real companies finally moving. But the UK just showed what happens when ambition outruns fiscal credibility. The fall budget is now the most important defence document of the decade.

George Hoyem

NATO Is Decoupling from US Defense Tech

2 months ago · 7 likes · 1 comment · George Hoyem

Up to $1M in funding and additional technical services available for technologies with defence and civilian applications. Advisory support is available now.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 3DBioFibR wins the inaugural DMZ Ventures $100K Dual-Use & Sovereign Tech Investment Prize — judged by The Icebreaker and BDC. DMZ Ventures awarded the prize at Startupfest to the Halifax company producing collagen and spider-silk biofibres at scale — US Navy contracts already in hand, applications spanning defence textiles and surgical materials. Over 100 companies competed. The Icebreaker sat on the judging panel: “Canada cannot afford to outsource the technologies that underpin our security, resilience and strategic autonomy… What stood out about 3DBioFibR is that they’re building a capability that matters for both commercial markets and national strength. We need more founders tackling hard, strategic problems like this — and more investors willing to back them early.” At the same festival, Moncton’s AgroGene Solutions took the $100K Best of the Fest from 275 pitches, part of $825K in total prizes.

🍁 Nord Quantique posts another error-correction breakthrough — the Sherbrooke company (last valued at US$1.4B) pushed bookend errors below 0.1% on its grid-state qubit, another step toward fault-tolerant machines. Timely context: only six companies worldwide build quantum cryogenics — one is Canadian — and quantum sovereignty is defence sovereignty.

🍁 Canada Rocket Company raises $22.5M in under six months — incorporated November 2025, with 22 hires including seven Canadians repatriated from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and ArianeGroup now building the methalox medium-lift R-2, with an Etobicoke test site and hot fire targeted by year-end.

Cheap to Kill: The Disposable Soldier and the Gamified War.

🍁 Maritime Launch lands Isar Aerospace on a 10-year deal — signed at the NATO summit: US$3.75M per quarter plus ~$100M in pad build-out at Canso, with Spectrum launches from 2028 and up to 40 per year by 2029.

🍁 Larus books $10M+ in defence AI awards — $8.3M from IDEaS for Army tactical intelligence plus $2.5M for RCN maritime domain awareness, extending a CAF relationship dating to 1999.

🍁 Canada’s NATO Innovation Fund entry inches forward — the $107M-over-20-years commitment still needs sign-off from 24 LP nations, possibly not until fall.

Auterion and Skyfall ink a 50,000-drone deal — 50,000 Shrike FPVs with Skynode S AI autonomy are headed to Ukraine, worth $100M to Auterion and funded by a European NATO nation. More than double Auterion’s prior largest order, with a swarming update coming.

Ukraine’s defense tech sector is starting to look less like battlefield improvisation and more like the early stages of a real industrial base; updates to Brave1

Jatin Modi

On the evening of 26 June 1813, in a palace on the western edge of Dresden, a foreign minister spent nine hours trying to make an emperor feel the cost of a war, and failed…

2 months ago · 4 likes · Jatin Modi

Kraken Technology raises $175M at a $1B valuation — the UK maritime-autonomy firm (not St. John’s Kraken Robotics) closed a Series B led by DTCP with the NATO Innovation Fund and Rheinmetall aboard, and holds a Davie partnership for Canadian production of its 55-knot K3 Scout USVs.

Forterra wins a $114M Army contract for Ukraine — the Sandhills Project puts 105 Lancer autonomous ground vehicles into the fight, delivered in under six months.

Skapion raises a $36M seed for counter-swarm defence — UP Partners and Khosla co-led the round for founders including the ex-Rafael GM behind Iron Dome and David’s Sling.

Surtr raises $4.8M for c-UAS sensor fusion — the YC-backed startup founded by Shield AI and Anduril alumni is already testing with Brave1 in Kyiv at sub-100ms latency.

Aurelius Systems: $0.10 per shootdown — the ~$12M-funded startup’s Archimedes laser turret killed 20+ quadcopters at T-REX in June. Only 19 directed-energy systems have been fielded in 60 years — Aurelius is betting on Detroit manufacturing to change that.

Who is building the picks and shovels in defense?

2 months ago · 13 likes · 4 comments · Louise Boucher

Related: Reaction Dynamics’ CEO wants Canadian LPs to back moonshots — top-5 VC fundraising is down 50% since 2021 — while AGF Capital Partners argues the defence capital cycle is durable and moving well beyond the primes.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Ground robots: The first American autonomous ground vehicles are fighting in Ukraine — 100+ Forterra Lancers have run 1,100+ missions, hauled 777,440 lbs and completed 88 casualty evacuations in nine months. One soldier: “the most important UGV in Ukraine… we are dying to get more.”

Do regular tanks still matter?

No infantry, no losses: Ukraine captured a Russian position using only ground robots and drones — Zelensky called it a first. Machine-gun UGVs and multi-swarm operations are now doctrine, not demo.

Breaching goes autonomous: The US Army picked Caterpillar, Forterra, IDV USA and Overland AI for its new autonomous minefield-breaching program — the deadliest job in land warfare, handed to machines.

Saronic Corsairs, a 24ft ASV:

The Pentagon’s drone bible: JIATF 401’s “Small Drones, Big Problems” paper lays out a first-principles counter-UAS framework built on five Ds: Detect, Deny, Disrupt, Defeat, Discipline. The data: FPVs account for 60–70% of destroyed Russian systems and 70–80% of casualties, and Shaheds made up 66% of Iran’s counterattack. Its warning — drones’ “happy time” ends when defenders adapt.

Ukraine opens the arms store: Kyiv approved its first transparent weapons-export mechanism for partner countries — with ~800 producers making 4M+ drones a year and capacity to double, combat-proven Ukrainian kit is now for sale.

Interceptors, printed: SkyDefense’s 3D-printed CobraJet VTOL interceptor hits 350 mph in hybrid form, launches from a mothership, and fires Mach-1 VIPER rounds produced by the thousands each month.

Axis watch: A joint investigation by The Insider, Der Spiegel and Le Monde exposed secret Russia-China military forums: a three-level plan to defeat Starlink up to physical destruction, a 2023 Almaz-Antey protocol for joint hypersonic-intercept air defence by ~2030, and 200+ Russian operators trained on Chinese drones at six sites in China. Beijing trades tech for combat data.

Robert Asselin

Economic Security Is Now Driven by Science and Technology

Policymakers often discuss economic security through the language of supply chains, critical minerals, subsidies, tariffs, procurement and trade diversification. Those issues are important, but they miss a larger strategic point…

2 months ago · 4 likes · Robert Asselin

AI export walls rise on both sides: Beijing is weighing curbs on overseas access to Qwen, Doubao and GLM-5.2 — the mirror image of Washington’s Mythos directive. 🍁 Michael Geist’s warning: Canada must fight for frontier-AI access in the USMCA talks or settle into “the second tier of AI.”

Europe’s conversion problem: NATO fixed its cash flow — now it must turn money into munitions, as Rutte puts it. The Economist finds the gap on the factory floor: BAE’s Hägglunds plant went from $211M revenue in 2018 to $1.1B in 2025 and is expanding capacity five- or six-fold — demand still outruns supply. The backdrop: WSJ’s inside account of Europe’s rupture with America, where Macron told nearly 30 leaders “There is no going back” during a five-hour midnight session in Brussels.

ICYMI: NATO's new web portal for industry is now live

🍁 Kit for Canada — strike: Norway’s Joint Strike Missile could give Canada a common precision-strike architecture across air and undersea domains — two internally on each F-35A, canister-launched from Type 212CD torpedo tubes.

🍁 Kit for Canada — sensing: CDR makes the case for a “pocket AWACS” built on Saab’s LoyalEye AEW package riding the MQ-9B SkyGuardian — 11 of which Canada is already buying — with 40+ hours of endurance per orbit.

🍁 Kit for Canada — space: Canada joined seven NATO allies to build HALO, a layered satellite mega-constellation for comms, ISR and missile tracking — stacking on top of its Starlift membership.

Kate’s Substack

Wrong - Speed is NOT the Geran 3/4/5 Interceptor Problem

I first told those who read me that the Geran 2 was done in April 2025. We knew then that we were facing a new threat. That threat is not a faster drone. It’s a cheap cruise missile…

2 months ago · 7 likes · 3 comments · Kate McKenna

Big think — evolution or revolution? Yaroslav Trofimov asks whether today’s hundreds of billions in conventional platforms will look like investing in horses and arrows just before the machine gun arrived. The US-Israel failure to decisively defeat Iran despite massive precision-weapon expenditure broke the old assumptions.

Big think — the empty arsenal: Anduril chairman Trae Stephens tells Arena the US burned ~1,000 Tomahawks in the first weeks of the Iran war against production of a few hundred a year — resupply timelines stretch to 2030. His prescription with Katherine Boyle in the Washington Post: “just war” theory doesn’t forbid terrifying new weapons — but America must get there first.

Big think — the counterpoint: A US Air Force veteran and defence investor warns against “vibe patriotism” — founders and VCs marching with rucksacks and calling equity “service.” Building for the mission is honourable. It is not sacrifice, and conflating the two lowers the moral barriers to war.

🔫 Hot Shots

🍁 Mitacs opens a Defence & Security call — and forgot the munitions. The program offers $20K–$25K internship units, up to 30 per project, with applications due August 17 across eleven priority areas spanning AI, quantum, sensors, space and Arctic sovereignty. Munitions and energetics — explicitly named in the Defence Industrial Strategy — appear nowhere. Canada’s most acute industrial gap didn’t make the list.

🍁 Ottawa scraps the open LUV competition — phase 2 of the $4.9B light utility vehicle program is dead, with only Canadian firms — Roshel, GM Defense Canada, Armatec, Terradyne — invited to the restructured process. AM General and Oshkosh are out.

🍁 Innovative Solutions Canada rebuilt — the program returns with $79.9M over five years under Buy Canadian phase 2 and a supplier registry by end-2026. As one founder put it: “a contract is better than a grant.”

CanadaxEurope

Canada chose TKMS as preferred partner. It still needs South Korea and an Indo-Pacific Defence Industrial Engagement Strategy.

In the wake of yesterday’s big announcement selecting TKMS as the preferred bidder for the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project, CanadaxEurope reached out to Mike Petric from CanadaxIndoPacific for a take on the reaction…as well as what’s next for Canada and the region…

2 months ago · 14 likes · 2 comments · Mike Petric

🍁 Built here, bought there — Raymond Luk’s Impact Group interviewed 31 founders of foreign-acquired Canadian firms and found that in 93% of cases, strategic control moved abroad. “Canada should stop acting like the waiting room for Delaware.” Same issue notes Telesat won the Defence Investment Agency’s first-ever procurement and MDA’s ~$920M bid for 70% of France’s CLS.

🍁 DND is now Canada’s biggest buyer — federal defence postings jumped 62% in June, with DND at 583 postings in Q2, while Alberta’s sovereign-compute pre-qualification drew 298 plan takers.

🍁 Markham wants to build the defence tech Ottawa is buying — the city is positioning its 1,500+ tech firms and 35,400 knowledge workers against a DIS worth ~$180B in procurement and $290B in infrastructure over the decade.

🍁 Trucking software finds a defence lane — Vancouver’s Switchboard is pivoting fleet software into defence logistics via UBC Sauder’s Scale Up program. “Trust is table stakes.”

🍁 AVSS passes 2,000 systems built this year — the Fredericton drone maker’s record pace runs on ~75% international revenue across 20+ countries, plus its new Flying Beehive air-launched FPV line.

#IBG doctrine promises manoeuvre & strike in 24 hours. In 2030 scenario that means - generate your own drone superiority bubble, over your axis, organically. Robots make first contact. Manned elements exploit. My essay 👇\nsameerjoshi73.medium.com/persistent-rob…","username":"joe_sameer","name":"Sameer Joshi","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1994747240125284352/7mlj-9eW_normal.jpg","date":"2026-07-12T02:41:07.000Z","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":4,"retweet_count":63,"like_count":150,"impression_count":35356,"expanded_url":{"url":"https://sameerjoshi73.medium.com/persistent-robotic-overwatch-the-art-of-manoeuvre-in-the-kill-zone-c638231a4a3d","title":"Persistent Robotic Overwatch: Restoring Manoeuvre Inside the Drone Kill Zone","description":"The drone wall on the modern battlefield is 1915’s trench line in a new dimension. The answer echoes 1918 — a new combined-arms method…","domain":"sameerjoshi73.medium.com","image":"https://pbs.substack.com/news_img/2075906143340367872/NaHs1T55?format=jpg&name=orig"},"video_url":null,"video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

🍁 Canada angles for the Moon Base — with Gateway cancelled, Canadensys (17 systems already on the lunar surface), Mission Control and MDA are vying for NASA’s lunar utility vehicle, and CSMC won $1M from CSA for a lunar nuclear reactor with Arctic dual-use potential.

🍁 Procurement school is in session — Carleton’s NPSIA launches a Practical Certificate in Canadian Defence Procurement December 10–11 at $800, taught by Philippe Lagassé and former ADMs.

The Ugly American meets the Ugly Ally — Stephen Nagy argues allied free-riding and condescension helped create Trump: Canada “cannot publicly denigrate the U.S… then request expedited trade deals, security guarantees.” Meanwhile Politico finds Canadians turning into genuine defence hawks at exactly the right moment.

DIANA picks 10 for Decision Superiority — zero Canadians. NATO’s accelerator awarded €100K each to its latest cohort in the Decision Superiority challenge. Canada’s absence from the list speaks for itself.

Odds & Ends:

America should rebuild its manufacturing base; the new generation of American industry according to Reid Hoffman
The defence tech Valley of Death
The Big Search mapped 600+ 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫 Anduril Industries 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬. Two core insights from the data
How EIF is helping defence innovators
Ukraine’s Operation Auchan: How one operation halted the enemy’s mechanized offensive for six months
Renting Our Future: U.S. Tech Hegemony, Canada’s Sovereignty Race, and the Coming Realignment
Drones are machine guns
Top 100 defence innovators
Keeping our defence supply chain sovereign
How to Make Hardware Venture-Shaped; Robotics is having a software moment
BRiley Securities Q2 A&D report; has the defence market peaked?

Photos from the front
PQC is not a 2030 problem. It is a today problem with a 2030 deadline
Hybrid threats target democratic institutions, critical infrastructure and societal cohesion in the EU

Medical Manufacturing Anywhere | Dr. Harvey Hawes — Explorer Spotlight #6

In war, disasters, and remote conditions, the demand for medical supplies rises when supply chains are most likely to fail. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine’s Ministry of Health estimated that 100,000 war-related amputations had been performed by mid-2024…

2 months ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Ethan Marcoux

Keeping Score on Procurement Reform

Over the last year, the Trump administration has prioritized procurement reform, and specifically, the acquisition of commercial products. In Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “Wartime Footing” speech …

2 months ago · 15 likes · 6 comments · Madeline Hart

Industrial Base Alpha

The Philosophy of Vertical Integration

To vertically integrate or not to vertically integrate…

2 months ago · 10 likes · 11 comments · Matthew Bernard

The Line

Al Vigier: Canada's AI strategy shouldn't include secret Palantir bills

By: Al Vigier…

3 months ago · 55 likes · 10 comments · Line Editor

Startup Riders

🌊 n8n's Growth Playbook: 0 to $100M ARR

👋 I’m Ivan. I study how top 1% startups grow…

3 months ago · 36 likes · 4 comments · Ivan Landabaso

Submarine decision: Why Germany won

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 10:02:43 GMT

Editor’s Note: Thanks to our pals at Platform Calgary and Torys LLP for hosting The Icebreaker at a private defence tech dinner at the Calgary Stampede; and to the VCAA for hosting a defence capital roundtable later this morning. Special shout out to Matt Berry and Evan McCann for wrangling this first-time Stampeder through the chaos.

In the back half of this week, The Icebreaker heads to Montreal to help DMZ Ventures and BDC judge a $100K Dual-Use and Sovereign Tech Investment Prize at Startupfest.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Germany’s TKMS will build Canada’s fleet of 12 submarines — the largest single defence procurement in Canadian history. The contract value: $20–30B for the hulls, up to $40–50B including operations, maintenance, and upgrades over the life of the fleet.

The framing matters. This wasn’t a purely military decision. Ottawa explicitly said the winner would depend on economic benefits — not just submarine design. TKMS countered with a jaw-dropping pitch: $86B added to Canadian GDP and 650,000 job-years over the term of the deal. Hanwha came in hard too — $70B in trade and investment pledges, 25,000 annual jobs from 2026 to 2044, a steel mill commitment, and it literally shipped a submarine to Canada to show off. Ottawa chose Germany anyway.

The strategic logic is NATO alignment. TKMS proposed a three-country model — Canada, Germany, Norway — building, training, and maintaining together. Two Arctic nations, all NATO. The Walrus flagged the harder question before the decision landed: does Canada really need twelve submarines designed for last-generation warfare, or should it buy eight and field dozens of autonomous underwater vehicles — including from Kraken Robotics in St. John’s? Canada’s answer is twelve. History will judge whether that’s the right call.

Reality check: Canada currently operates four submarines. Typically one is operational at a time. Twelve gives Canada three deployable at any given moment. That’s a genuine Arctic deterrence posture — the first in decades. But delivery runs mid-2030s to early 2040s, and Canada hasn’t ordered new submarines since the 1960s. The procurement clock is already running.

Bottom Line: Canada’s submarine decision is the most consequential defence procurement since the F-35. It signals NATO alignment over economic hedging, bets on a three-ally construction model, and commits Canada to a conventional underwater deterrent for the next half-century. The industrial fight now moves to who actually builds what, and on Canadian soil.

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 Dominion Dynamics raises $139M Series A — Ottawa-based Arctic sensing and ACP developer. Lead: Georgian Partners. Backers include Bessemer, OMERS, BCI, BDC, RBC, Valor Equity. Total raised: $169M since June 2025 launch. CEO Eliot Pence (ex-Anduril) calls it the largest Series A ever by a Canadian defence startup. Still no federal contract — 50% chance first contract lands in the US.

🍁 Canada to join NATO Innovation Fund — Pending approval from 24 member nations. Canada set aside $107M over 20 years in 2024 but never followed through. Was one of only 8 NATO allies not backing the fund. Initial investment up to €15M per company. Contributions count toward Canada’s 5% GDP target.

🍁 Canada announces founding partners for global Defence Bank — The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) aims to raise up to £100B (US$133B) in cheap finance for allied nations. ~10 founding nations to be announced at NATO Turkey summit. Canada likely sole non-European founder. Canada’s potential contribution: up to €1.5B. Supporting banks: JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, RBC, BMO, CIBC, Scotiabank, TD.

🍁 CADSI hits record 1,788 members — Up ~750 year-over-year; nearly 1,400 above 2021 low. Big Six banks (minus TD and BMO) now members. CIBC, BDC joined in 2026. 47 academic members (+62% YoY). Controlled Goods Program applications surged 78% above prior year in February.

🍁 Orqa + Remote Robotic Systems: $150M Canadian drone partnership — Croatian drone leader Orqa partnering with Ottawa-based RRS to build Canadian sovereign capability. Target: 10,000 systems/month by 2029. Up to 100 jobs in Ottawa and Toronto by Q4 2027. Canada becomes first non-EU nation in EU’s SAFE initiative. Signed with both Carney and Croatian PM present.

Where Do Defense Tech Founders Come From?

Where do great defense tech founders come from? As a venture capitalist (VC) investing in early stage, national security startups, one of the most important (and most difficult) parts of my job is evaluating startups’ founding teams. When evaluating early stage startups, the team…

3 months ago · 19 likes · 4 comments · Maggie Gray

Defence tech funding hits $35.6B in H1 2026 — 40% YoY increase. Q1 alone was $19.8B — largest single quarter ever recorded. Autonomy is the dominant theme: $16B TTM across 212 deals. UAV subsector up 254% TTM, UGV up 284%. Capital is concentrating — top 5 rounds = 48% of H1 total, Anduril’s $5B Series H alone = 14%. Median round size doubled YoY from $11M to $20M.

Ondas acquires DZYNE Technologies for $876M — Drone and C-UAS rollup Ondas ($ONDS) expanding with DZYNE’s ULTRA (70+ hr endurance, 450 lb payload), LEAP, IonStrike interceptor, and new Blitz Group 1 drone. New business unit: Ondas Sentinel. On pace for $525M revenue this year. Portfolio spans US, Europe, Israel.

Harpoon Ventures closes $155M Fund IV — San Diego early-stage VC now at $450M+ AUM across four funds (Fund I: $55M → Fund IV: $155M). Strategy pivoting to infrastructure/”picks and shovels” — 3D-printed batteries, automated shipbuilding. “Are we in a bubble? Yes. The tourists are the ones who get screwed.”

Netherlands bets €30M on drone software over hardware — Dutch Ministry of Defence signs 3-year strategic partnership with Amsterdam-based Intelic, whose NEXUS C2 software lets drones from different manufacturers operate together. First country to formally fund a software-first approach to drone procurement. Exploring golden share. NEXUS in combat use in Ukraine since 2025.

Six Robotics raises €12M seed — Oslo-based swarm coordination company. Valkyrie software lets a single operator command multiple heterogeneous drones as one team. Built to 90 people before taking outside money. DTCP Defence led. Already integrated with Norwegian Armed Forces, Stark’s kamikaze drones, FACNAV. “Europe cannot afford to depend on others for the software that defines what its forces can do.”

Jamie Dimon wants JPMorgan in the weapons business — Dimon considering shift to invest JPMorgan’s own capital directly in defence companies — not just provide loans. Framed around US weapons shortage exposed by the Iran conflict. L3Harris flagged inconsistent federal procurement as barrier to rocket motor scaling.

Marc Andreessen and Blake Masters appointed to DoD policy board — a16z founder and former Thiel Capital COO now providing “independent strategic advice” to Hegseth.

Related: a16z: DoD contracting for startups 101 | MITS Capital: Wall Street to Warzone podcast

@EliotPence joined @jordihays and @johncoogan on @tbpn to chat about our record-setting raise and the opportunity to build a defence neoprime here at home. ","username":"DominionDynamic","name":"Dominion Dynamics","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/2065161887759704066/qAWZ3QSF_normal.jpg","date":"2026-07-03T16:09:50.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NYXv!,w_1028,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:best,fl_progressive:steep/l_play_button_usfui2,w_88,e_colorize:0/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F__ss-rehost__tw-video-preview-13_2073070542152757248.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/8fP0vCeMl6"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":1,"retweet_count":3,"like_count":35,"impression_count":1274,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2073070542152757248/vid/avc1/1280x720/PqJfOcAyUmHplOjH.mp4","video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Drone czar: Hegseth signed a memo creating DRPM-UxS — a Pentagon-wide drone czar reporting to Deputy SecDef Feinberg, with authority over all UAS Groups 1–3, all autonomous ground vehicles, nearly all unmanned surface vessels, and all autonomy/AI/swarming software. ~$54.6B in FY2027 budget scope. “Adversaries collectively produce millions of unmanned systems each year. The United States has been slow to field these capabilities at scale.” DIU becomes primary industry interface.

🎙️ Ep 26 - Techquisition: The Pentagon's New Drone Czar?

🚨EMERGENCY POD🚨…

3 months ago · 3 likes · Maggie Gray and David Rothzeid

Loyal wingman goes mainstream: US Air Force confirmed General Atomics FQ-42 and Anduril FQ-44 Fury for production — the world’s first large-scale CCA fleet (~1,000 aircraft). Germany, Australia, Poland also accelerating. Canada has 88 F-35s coming and no autonomous ecosystem to pair them with. Dominion Dynamics’ Scout ACP is the domestic answer — but Anduril, GA, and Boeing/RAAF MQ-28 are ahead on capital and flight hours.

Ground robots: Eurosatory 2026 outside Paris — UGVs dominated, not tanks. 50+ manufacturers. Ukraine contracted 25,000 UGVs in H1 2026 alone, ran 50,000+ missions. Rheinmetall Canada’s Mission Master and General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada’s TRX give Canada world-class UGV capacity. Problem: no political will to field it. “The challenge is not innovation, but fielding capability at scale.” CDR

UFORCE’s Oleg Rogynskyy joined CNN International’s The Brief to discuss how Ukraine is rewriting the playbook of modern defence and why the future of deterrence lies in affordable, autonomous mass.

The electronic warfare arms race behind Ukraine's drones — with Andriy Chulyk (Sine Engineering)

3 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Louise Boucher

Russia’s shadow fleet ran an 18-month nuclear surveillance campaign — IISS analysis of 144 incidents across 12+ NATO countries. Targets included RAF Lakenheath (US nukes deployed July 2025), France’s Île Longue submarine base, and NATO air bases at Kleine-Brogel and Volkel storing US air-launched nukes. Drones launched from “dark sailing” vessels with transponders off. None captured or shot down. GRU assessed as orchestrator. “A series of tactical successes for the Kremlin and a strategic failure of allied defences.”

NATO Maven reaches full operational capability — Project Maven AI targeting system now at full capability within NATO SHAPE. NATO SHAPE

🍁 Canada Arctic: spending ≠ readiness — Macleans longform: 1/3 of Inuit live in homes in poor repair; TB rate 37x the national average; $17.69 box of Cheerios; food bank use up 80%. CSIS: “the infrastructure gap in Nunavut is creating national security risks.” CDS Carignan: “geography alone no longer guarantees the security of our northern flank.”

🍁 From spending to readiness — Canada’s talent problem — “Scaling investment is not the same as scaling capability.” The bottleneck won’t be capital; it’ll be coordinated talent, training, and procurement. Building blocks exist — CAE simulators, Irving Shipbuilding, Magellan Aerospace — but the system doesn’t connect them. BHER

🍁 Canadians are becoming defence hawks — Politico poll: 52% say Canada poorly prepared to defend itself; 61% say too few troops; 53–27% margin prefer buying from Europe over US; 52% support domestic production even at higher cost. Military recruitment hit a 30-year high — 8,000+ sworn in last fiscal year.

🍁 Skilled Canadians want to come home — Brain drain reversing. High-skilled workers citing US political climate, cost of living, and Canadian opportunity as pull factors. Financial Post

Pentagon manufacturing bottleneck: Manufacturing — not funding — is now the primary constraint on US defence capability. Companies need right mix of facilities, skilled labour, and reliable suppliers to deliver in months not years. Rep. Wittman: “Shipyards are turning more into assembly sites rather than primary production facilities.” Could take 2–4 years to materially improve.

airship-industries.com 200+ ton capacity, fuel efficient airships can deliver loads to unimproved fields with transpacific range - no runway - no problem. ","username":"JimCoutre","name":"James Coutre","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1845833170140471296/kOerjhvs_normal.jpg","date":"2025-11-08T01:20:47.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XgBv!,w_1028,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:best,fl_progressive:steep/l_play_button_usfui2,w_88,e_colorize:0/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F__ss-rehost__tw-video-preview-13_1986967050733166592.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/AGwf1KaacQ"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":24,"retweet_count":43,"like_count":673,"impression_count":153324,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1986967050733166592/vid/avc1/886x484/Qh61gqtxRNRX0KqU.mp4","video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

DoD can prototype. Production is another story. — No data on how many OTA contracts or SBIR grants actually convert into programs. “The challenge is what does it lead to?”

Pentagon hiring hundreds of software engineers — “War Force” program: hundreds of engineers for 2-year DoD stints, embedded down to unit level. Builds on Tech Force (1,000+ hires at $150–200K/year). AI talent priority for CDAO’s AI Acceleration Plan.

Navy Innovation Unit gets 200+ applications — Tech-focused Reserve unit drew senior execs from hyperscalers, defence primes, and defence-tech startups. Mirroring Army’s Detachment 201 (which commissioned Palantir CTO and Meta CTO as Lt. Cols). Commissioning begins fall 2026.

Logistics are the next war’s biggest vulnerability — “All logistics operations will be contested” in peer conflict. Unlike Iraq/Afghanistan where rear-area sanctuary was guaranteed, a war with China or Russia won’t offer the same protection.

AI warfare: point of no return — WSJ on Ukraine’s AI arms race. Eric Schmidt: “Future warfare will be predominantly robotic and automated.” Ukrainian drone CEO: “Either robots will eliminate us in fifty years, or the Russians will take us out in a year.” Anthropic and OpenAI now have dedicated national security offerings.

Canadian Cyber in Context

Canada has a Defence Digital Strategy

3 months ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Alexander Rudolph

Europe’s rearmament paradox — $559B spent by NATO Europe last year. Germany alone: $114B (+24%). Yet the FCAS program just collapsed, the Franco-German tank program is stalled, and the Stoxx Europe Targeted Defence index is down 15% since January. NUPI: “Europe’s Achilles heel is no longer financial, it is institutional.”

UK Defence Investment Plan praised by startups — Long-awaited DIP published. European drone startups broadly positive but flagging execution risk.

🔫 Hot Shots

🍁 UVic MARMOTSat launching on SpaceX Falcon 9 in July — University of Victoria’s second CubeSat will probe the ionosphere for climate change signals and fly an open-source radio system. PacifiCan funding: $5.4M. Next mission: PolarLink (2027) focused on Arctic communications with space-to-space optical links.

Vermeer launches “Recovery” for GPS-denied drones — New feature for its Visual Positioning System corrects drift mid-flight without satellite data. 95% success rate at 1km drift; ~80% at 3km. Tested in Ukraine under real operating conditions. Customers: Lockheed, Northrop, Anduril, AV, Firestorm. VPS trained on 25,000+ hours of aerial video.

Deviro, Leleka, Bulava — Ukraine’s triple drone debut — New Ukrainian FPV and strike drone models entering service. Combat-proven ecosystem expanding. The Defender

Flying Sea Drones | Dr. Mike Peasgood — Explorer Spotlight #5

Canada has the longest coastline on Earth at over 240,000 km, and a Waterloo-based company is building six-foot-long autonomous boats to help defend it…

3 months ago · 1 like · Ethan Marcoux

Hypersonics VC funding hits 12-quarter high — $413.1M in Q2 2026 across just four deals. Castelion ($350M Series B + $105M Navy contract), Hermeus ($350M Series C at $1B valuation), Rocket Lab ($190M hypersonic test contract). The real VC play: propulsion, thermal protection, test infrastructure — not full missile programs. Visible US opportunity: mid-teens billions through end of decade.

BVP defence tech roadmap — five frontiers for 2026 — Defence tech advanced more in 24 months than the previous 3 decades. Five frontiers: autonomy from concept to combat, AI in DoW workflows, advanced manufacturing, edge/network resilience, energy/materials independence. China controls ~70% of rare earth production and 90% of processing. European defence spending projected to grow 3.4x in six years. Palantir at ~65x NTM revenue. Check out monthly comps from BCI.

Wall Street to Warzone: Perry Boyle (MITS Capital) on investing directly in Ukraine’s defence ecosystem. Innovations in drone tech, building the defence industry from scratch under wartime conditions. “It’s not a storm — it’s the climate.”

Lorenz Meier

Drones Are Becoming Cell Phones

3 months ago · 7 likes · Lorenz Meier

MITS Capital / Ukraine: Also see the deep-dive on Deviro, Leleka, and Bulava drone systems — Ukraine’s drone output ecosystem expanding beyond FPV into new strike categories.

Related:

This Mine Predicts Major Wars. It’s Opening Again
America seeks its McDonald’s model for missile making
TACTIQL joins the Oracle Defence Ecosystem
Ukraine opens door to arms exports

True North Strategic Review

Canadian Coast Guard to Charter Finnish Icebreaker

Another surprise today. Every so often, something drops that gives me a bit of a giggle. Today is no different. The CCG has put out a new ACAN today, announcing their intent to charter a Polar Class 3 icebreaker for the upcoming season…

3 months ago · 12 likes · 2 comments · Noah

Inside Ukraine’s Interceptor Drone Race: A Pilot’s View

Are interceptor drones already autonomous? Can a pilot sitting in Ukraine intercept Shaheds in the Gulf? Is it enough to buy hundreds of these systems from Ukraine to protect your own country’s facilities? I discussed some of these questions with the operator of STING drones, one of the most effective Ukrai…

3 months ago · 62 likes · 2 comments · Olena Kryzhanivska

Canada's spy agency goes offensive

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:02:59 GMT

Editor’s Note: Congratulations to Greypoint Industries — the team that took home top prize at Canada’s first-ever Defence Tech Hackathon last year, which we were proud to host here at The Icebreaker. Jordan and the rest of the crew have now earned a spot in Y Combinator. From an Arctic-sovereignty idea built in a single weekend to one of the most competitive accelerators in the world — that’s exactly the kind of ambition we started The Icebreaker to champion. We couldn’t be prouder, and we’ll be watching what comes next.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Canada’s electronic spy agency doesn’t usually brag. But buried in CSE’s 2025–2026 annual report — released this week — is a first: CSE publicly confirmed it conducted an active cyberoperation against foreign criminals brokering fentanyl precursor chemicals, disrupting and “diminishing their ability to operate.” It also disclosed it took concurrent action against 10 of the most significant ransomware groups harming Canada and allies simultaneously. Not one at a time. Ten!

The numbers behind the year: 3,216 cyber incidents responded to. 97,000+ threat notifications sent. 67 pre-ransomware alerts pushed to Canadian organizations before attackers could pull the trigger. A 25% increase in alerts and 28% increase in advisories over 2023–24. CSE now has 4,178 employees — up 337 in a single year — and is entering what the report calls “sustained expansion and transformation.”

Reality check: This is not your father’s signals intelligence agency. CSE is deploying staff to Latvia and Lithuania through its Deployed Cyber Security Officer program. It co-chaired the G7 Cybersecurity Working Group during Canada’s 2025 presidency. It led the Arctic Intelligence Coordination Group. It coordinated cyber defence for the 45th federal election, the G7 in Kananaskis, and is embedded in FIFA World Cup 2026 planning across North America. It’s also leading Canada’s post-quantum cryptography migration — publishing the government-wide roadmap while simultaneously chairing the interdepartmental working group.

Bottom Line: CSE’s overt disclosure of an offensive cyberoperation against fentanyl networks is not an accident. It is a signal — about what Canada is now willing to do, and willing to say it did.

Related:

🏆100k Pitch Contest in Montreal next week:

DMZ Ventures is launching the $100K Dual-Use and Sovereign Tech Investment Prize at Startupfest, investing in startups driving Canada’s resilience and national security. The Icebreaker is aboard to help judge.

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 Canada’s $100B submarine decision is now a bidding war. A South Korean attack submarine docked in Victoria in late May. Germany’s defence minister stood beside Canada’s in Ottawa and made the case for European alignment. Both Hanwha and TKMS meet Canada’s operational requirements — PM Carney has said it “ultimately comes down to the broader benefits being offered.” The industrial lobbying campaign is unprecedented in Canadian procurement history. Decision imminent.

🍁 GlobalEye: Saab chosen, L3Harris blindsided. Ottawa bypassed the standard RFI process and opened sole-source talks with Saab for Canada’s NORAD-linked surveillance aircraft. L3Harris Canada — which had readied its Aeris X (built on a Bombardier 650 airframe) — said it was “quite surprised.” The political catch: fully integrating GlobalEye with NORAD requires US stealth communication technology that has never been shared with a non-US aircraft. Bill C-31 would expand procurement exceptions from 4 to 14 — and may retroactively justify the decision. L3Harris says it can still deliver by 2032.

🍁 Griffon upgrade suspended. The federal government put the $800M CH-146 Griffon Limited Life Extension program on hold over technical complexity — specifically, problems with the mission system computer. Bell Textron (Mirabel) was notified. It’s unclear whether all 82 helicopters will be upgraded or only a select number. The program aimed to keep the fleet flying until 2039; the revised scope will now only target the mid-2030s. Replacement program: ~$18B, deliveries starting ~2033.

STARK raises €500M at €3.5B valuation. The two-year-old Berlin drone company — Virtus loitering munitions (130km range, GNSS-denied), Cascade (100km, tube-launched), Gambit (ISR quadcopter), Vanta (maritime USV), and Minerva (C2 software) — just quadrupled its valuation from earlier this year. Founders Fund and Sequoia led; NATO Innovation Fund participated. STARK holds a €2.8B German military framework contract for Virtus. More than 80% of the new capital goes directly to R&D and manufacturing. CEO: “The challenge facing Europe is no longer whether we can innovate, it’s whether we can scale.”

3 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Louise Boucher

Shifting the Narrative

Booz Allen buys Ultra I&C Mission Solutions for $720M. Ultra’s flagship product ADSI is the Army’s most widely used tactical data fusion and situational awareness tool — it’s already on a $86.8M Guam IBCS contract and a $39M Marine Corps aviation C2 contract. The acquisition also brings Knox (ruggedized AI edge compute, runs on MQ-9), Rain, ACTS, Apex, and CyberFence into Booz Allen’s portfolio. Deal closes by end of September. ~220 people, $720M — a pointed bet on defence tech over consulting.

Anduril leads Army NGC2 common data baseline. The US Army selected Anduril to integrate 17 fragmented C2 programs of record into a single converged data layer. Partners: Palantir (Foundry), Raft (data registries), plus Govini, Microsoft, Striveworks, Rune, Shift5. Falls under Anduril’s existing $20B 10-year enterprise agreement. At Ivy Mass, Team Anduril took connected devices from 10 to 2,500+ and added 17 new applications in a single demonstration. NGC2 is the Army’s answer to JADC2.

Mach Industries closes $300M Series C at $1.8B. The Merge’s breakdown is essential reading on the most polarizing company in defence tech. Ethan Thornton (Thiel Fellow, founded Mach at 19) is running six programs simultaneously: Viper (jet-powered strike), Dart (counter-drone), Glide (standoff), Pike (long-range), Atlas (maritime strike — selected for DIU RIMES in June), and Venom. The factory thesis: 115,000 sq ft in Huntington Beach, 12,000 micro-jet engines annually, Exquadrum solid rocket motors in-house. Roughly half of this year’s revenue comes from B2B component work — other defence companies paying Mach to source scarce inputs they can’t find elsewhere. Public contract obligations: ~$1.76M. Valuation: $1.8B.

Valor Equity raises $2.5B Fund VII. Antonio Gracias’s firm — long allied with Elon Musk — is raising its next fund on the back of SpaceX going public on June 12. A portion already earmarked for SpaceX shares.

🍁 L-SPARK looks to launch defence-tech accelerator. The Kanata-based startup accelerator — backed by Terry Matthews’s Wesley Clover, 160+ alumni, $200M+ in follow-on capital — is in early-stage talks to build a dual-use defence accelerator for Canadian SMEs looking to access the defence establishment through primes. The federal government plans to raise the domestic defence contract share to 70% (from 43%) within a decade, creating 125,000 new jobs.

🍁 DefSec Technologies raises $2.5M. The Kanata-based company (formerly Kwesst Micro Systems) — battlefield laser detection, soldier systems, anti-riot tech, DND software services through Thales Canada — sold 673,006 shares at $3.74 in a registered direct offering. Board member: Ret. Gen. Rick Hillier. Revenue Q1: $2.1M (up from $1.3M). Stock is down ~80% over 12 months. The raise buys runway.

🍁 Q-Branch Dual-Use Accelerator — now taking applications. Canada Q-Branch is screening scaleups for its dual-use accelerator, targeting federal markets and Texas expansion. Applications open now.

Related: France drops Palantir for a reason. ChapsVision won DGSI — German intelligence chose the same. The 2026 defence tech landscape is no longer a two-company story: defence-national security VC investment in early 2026 already exceeds $14.6B — surpassing the prior full-year record of $9.6B set in 2025. 2026 is the execution year.

Related:

Red Team Hack winners

Defence tech is hot again, but not every startup is real (25:19)
@IridiumComm’s global satellite communications network and rare spectrum, Rocket Lab becomes a ","username":"RocketLab","name":"Rocket Lab","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1494443717452709900/Y7Lg2mm__normal.jpg","date":"2026-06-29T11:13:55.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2Sw_!,w_1028,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:best,fl_progressive:steep/l_play_button_usfui2,w_88,e_colorize:0/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F__ss-rehost__tw-video-preview-13_2071551778701946880.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/bCrFWDPtW9"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":166,"retweet_count":537,"like_count":3280,"impression_count":338365,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2071551778701946880/vid/avc1/1280x720/pvsgLJ0sAqYmcpMo.mp4","video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

⚔️ Combat Readiness

The jellyfish swarm over Iran. When the downed F-15E pilot was debriefed, he described a “minefield of drones” — multiple Iranian systems hovering in formation, moving as one, with smaller drones dangling below like legs. “Real alien shit.” CNN confirmed the intelligence community remains split on how to interpret the account — the pilot had a concussion — but the capability described is “one-to-many meshed networking,” which Russia and China already possess. If Iran has it, with Chinese assistance, the implications for every US air operation in the region are significant.

Drone warfare in Ukraine: Hornet strike drones

Since April, when my first report on the mysterious “Martian” drone came out, we have learned that it is the Hornet drone developed by the American Swift Beat LLC (now Perennial Autonomy). It is almost silent, resistant to jamming, fast, flies at low altitude, and has AI-based technology…

3 months ago · 58 likes · 2 comments · Olena Kryzhanivska

The Iran war is straining the arsenal. Trump met with Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, and Honeywell at the White House to demand faster production of Patriot, THAAD, Tomahawk, and AMRAAM. Hegseth simultaneously held a separate, unannounced meeting at the Pentagon with Anduril, Castelion, Leidos, and CoAspire — the message: if the primes can’t deliver, the new entrants will. Iran launched over 8,000 missiles and drones in the conflict. The US naval base in Bahrain took significant, publicly unacknowledged damage — command headquarters, satellite communication facilities. Most personnel were evacuated. “Two US fatalities” versus 13,500 Iranian targets struck. The math is not symmetrical — but the base is in rubble.

Arsenal of scarcity — the numbers. AlixPartners’ missile supply chain breakdown is the most data-dense read of the week: Iran produces 100+ missiles per month; the US produces 6–7 interceptors. The supplier base has contracted from 5,000 firms to ~1,000. There are 100+ identified single points of failure at the sub-tier level. GMLRS is scaling from 6,000 to 14,000 units annually — and its ammonium perchlorate comes from one domestic facility, its polymer binder from a single supplier (with degrading quality), its spherical aluminum powder from one qualified manufacturer. China controls 91% of rare-earth magnet capacity; the DFARS restriction on Chinese samarium-cobalt and NdFeB magnets kicks in January 2027 with no assured domestic alternative at scale. “Capacity is the new capability.” L3Harris makes this argument directly: it is not sustainable to defeat hundred-dollar drones with million-dollar interceptors.

🍁 Canada’s top soldier names the threat. CDS Gen. Jennie Carignan, in an exclusive interview with CTV: “The threat to our continent is mostly related to the new missile technologies and the new vehicles of delivery that Russia is developing.” North Korea, Iran, cruise missiles — medium and long range. The CAF is reorienting from expeditionary theatres to continental defence, with emphasis on the Arctic: air defence systems, underwater sensors, space.

🍁 Canada–UK drone warfare training, with asterisks. 350 British and Canadian soldiers are training at Suffield, Alberta — replicating Ukraine lessons: one-way attack drones, electronic warfare, constant surveillance, electromagnetic threat. The capability gaps identified: Canada needs more drone fleets, more electronic warfare units, more counter-drone systems — and a dedicated airborne EW/SIGINT aircraft (RCAF currently has none). The Falcon Shield (Leonardo) is adopted; Leonidas (Epirus) neutralized 49 drones in a single pulse during testing. The MC-55A Peregrine (Australia’s advanced EW jet) is the model Canada is being told to pursue.

Kill zone: the front line no longer exists. LRT’s ground-level Ukraine reporting is required context for every procurement conversation: the kill zone now stretches dozens of kilometres from Russian positions, defined by drone range. Even 15km is “extreme danger.” Soldiers operate in scattered positions 1.5km apart. “War used to be louder. Now you get a false sense of security because it’s quiet, but you can be killed very quickly and out of nowhere.” FPVs: 5–6 launched per Russian soldier. One battlefield insight distilled: “90% of what we knew about warfare will no longer help.”

Drones are the problem, not the answer. MWI West Point’s Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley (Ret.) makes the machine gun analogy: drones have raised the cost of maneuver, not made maneuver unnecessary. They cannot seize ground, hold it, or compel a population. The Ukraine front moves in hundreds of meters per month despite the most intensive drone warfare in history. The decisive system will be whatever restores maneuver under drone threat — directed energy, EW, autonomous ground systems, cheap counter-drone that doesn’t require million-dollar interceptors. “The visionaries who understand this will win the next war.”

The Hopium

The Half Of The Boom Nobody's Funding

I’m Const. 12 years in US manufacturing. Ran a machine shop, built DigiFabster (quick quoting for job shops), worked with hundreds of manufacturers across 40+ countries. This newsletter chases one thing: the gap between the headline and the data. Someone’s always selling hopium. I find it…

3 months ago · 3 likes · Const

China’s Arctic 3D build-up. The Diplomat: China’s 15th Arctic expedition sent two deep-sea research vessels as motherships for manned submersibles Fendouzhe and Jiaolong — conducting joint under-ice operations for the first time, 40+ dives over 56 days, reaching 5,277m at the Gakkel Ridge. The Wukong 6000 AUV hit 3,800m in its first Arctic tests in 2024. The 14th Five-Year Plan explicitly tasked a “three-dimensional space-ground-sea monitoring capability” in the polar regions. The PLA frames the Arctic as a “strategic commanding height” from which the entire northern hemisphere can be reached. No evidence of Chinese submarines in Arctic waters yet — but the data collection infrastructure for that capability is being built.

Russia’s nuclear icebreaker myth. MacDonald Laurier unpacks the gap between Russia’s Arctic narrative and reality: 8 nuclear icebreakers in service (no other country has any), 4 under construction, but the Rossiya program was scaled back from 3 ships to 1, older ships retire in 5–10 years, sanctions are inflating costs and slipping delivery timelines, and the Transarctic Transport Corridor is “mostly propaganda for domestic consumption.” Canadian and US polar icebreakers are expected by 2040 — using Finnish shipyards that formerly built for Russia.

MQ-28 Ghost Bat debuts in the Pacific. Australia’s MQ-28 flew in Exercise Valiant Shield — its first large-force combat exercise — marking the first operational appearance of a loyal wingman alongside F-35s and F/A-18s in the Indo-Pacific. Significant: this is allied, not just Australian hardware.

China studied US stealth — and got it wrong. USAF China Aerospace Studies Institute fellow Maj. Derek Ecklebe: China treats stealth as a technology problem; the US treats it as a system — technology integrated with tactics. China’s J-35 replicates F-35 features but “prioritizes hardware metrics over software-defined adaptability.” Chinese air defences are formidable not because of any single radar but because of unified IADS integration. The strategic risk: if Beijing believes it has neutralized American stealth, it may feel emboldened on Taiwan.

Space acquisition: the next war starts here. Former USAF No. 2 Gen. Jim Slife, in his first op-ed since leaving service: current “exquisite” space systems are massive, multi-billion-dollar soft targets. If one gets jammed or destroyed, replacement takes years. The answer: proliferated, commercially-developed, agile orbital systems that can maneuver, service, and “fire back.” The procurement path: Commercial Solutions Openings and Other Transaction Authorities as the norm, not the exception. Congress has already given acquisition leaders the authority — the barrier is institutional will.

The post-quantum clock is running. The Department of War’s PQC Strategy sets two hard deadlines: all DoW systems must support PQC by December 31, 2030; all must exclusively use PQC by December 31, 2031. A Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer would give an adversary the ability to decrypt classified data, forge software signatures, access C2 systems, and gain unauthorized control of warfighting platforms. QKD and quantum networking are explicitly prohibited as substitutes.

Sea drones sink ships. Bloomberg: in an unannounced exercise in the Philippines, US special forces guided Magura-class uncrewed surface vessels — the same Ukrainian-developed drones that ravaged Russia’s Black Sea fleet — into a decommissioned target ship. It sank within seconds. First Indo-Pacific trial. The Pentagon is now studying this capability as a China counter.

Business cooperation between Ukrainian and Western defence producers in the unmanned tech sector is booming — so soon I may need to launch a special newsletter just to cover these developments…

Ukraine Drone Brief

3 months ago · 35 likes · 1 comment · Olena Kryzhanivska

USCYBERCOM: talent problem, structural fix. Line of Departure proposes treating cyber operators like special forces and doctors: centralize under one command (model: Space Force), tie mission directly to NDS, and pay retention bonuses akin to jump pay or medical school debt relief. Author: COL Charles McGrue, 35 years of service.

Related: SE3 Labs raises €5.5M (Lakestar, Sequoia Scouts) for spatial AI — helps operators command autonomous swarms in contested environments. In continuous use by the Bundeswehr, in Ukraine, and multiple allied forces. Askari raises $9M seed for a hand-launched, fully autonomous, computer-vision-guided interceptor (Rift Alpha: 2km range, ~60 m/s, hits Group 1–2 drones) — “mega oversubscribed,” turned away $4–6M, ~90% intercept rate in Tier One testing.

Eyes Only with Wes O'Donnell

Drones Changed the Ukrainian Battlefield, but Human Infantry Still Hold It

Note: I wrote this article this morning for my Medium audience of 55K people. Then, I liked what I had written so much, I said “Wes, I bet your Substack readers would like this…” So, I’m also sharing it here. If you follow me at both places, I apologize f…

3 months ago · 82 likes · 13 comments · Wes O'Donnell

🔫 Hot Shots

War by other means. Palladium Magazine’s piece is the most important long-form of the week. The argument: as drones, robotics, and AI reduce the dependency on human soldiers, political power shifts from citizens to the private firms that build and operate the systems. When Ukraine’s 13th Khartiia Brigade overran Russian positions near Lyptsi in December 2024 with zero Ukrainian personnel physically present, it demonstrated both the potential and the political implication. SpaceX reportedly negotiated subscription tiers for drone control with the Pentagon mid-conflict. Anthropic’s Claude was used in Iran strikes while the company and DoW were in a legal dispute over autonomous weapons use. “War is and will forever remain the continuation of politics by other means. It would do us good to remember that politics is, and continues to remain, our domain.”

China has matched Anthropic on cybersecurity. WSJ: Zhipu AI (Z.ai) can now identify security vulnerabilities on par with Anthropic’s Mythos in certain contexts. It still trails in other areas — but the parity on vulnerability discovery is the number that matters. The White House is revising US AI export regulations in direct response.

Iran attack on NSA Bahrain: the damage picture. WSJ satellite analysis reveals the extent of what Iran destroyed at Naval Support Activity Bahrain — strikes from late February through June. Command headquarters and at least a dozen structures severely damaged; two satellite communication facilities hit. Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged the extent. Iran launched 8,000+ missiles and drones total. “No casualties” — but most personnel were evacuated. A small team remains on-site.

Ukraine’s defence tech: investment opportunity of the decade. Business Ukraine makes the case: 4 years battle-tested, 50x production scale-up, ~4 million drones manufactured in 2025 (target: 7 million in 2026), 90% of Russian casualties now caused by Ukraine-made products. Ukrainian howitzer: $2.5M, 2-month delivery. Western equivalent: $4.3M, several years. Interceptor drone: $1,000 vs. $50,000 for a Shahed. Export permits now being issued; 10 export hubs across Europe opening. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have signed framework agreements.

Lithuania went from 5 defence companies to 200. The New Defense Post tracks the boom: Lithuania is spending 5.38% of GDP on defence in 2026 (~€4.8B). Rheinmetall’s €180M 155mm ammunition plant comes online in 2026. KNDS is assembling Leopard 2A8s locally. A state defence holding company is forming. The ecosystem now includes ~110 innovative companies in UAVs, lasers, photonics, ICT, and engineering — and FPV drones are shipping directly to Ukraine from Vilnius.

Frankenburg takes aim at €100M Series B. The 2.5-year-old Estonian missile startup is building the Mark I — a compact, precision-guided interceptor — targeting 200 missiles/day production from facilities in Germany and the UK (via Babcock). Backers include Expeditions, Blossom Capital, Plural (Series A lead). A Series B at this scale would push the company toward unicorn status. CEO Kusti Salm: “The era of scarce air defence is ending.” New MOU with Milrem Robotics to mount Mark I on UGVs — distributed short-range air defence from unmanned ground platforms.

Why VC rules don’t apply to defence tech. Medium/Titus van Heur: defence tech companies don’t have a funding problem — they have an architecture problem. Standard VC fund lifecycles (10 years) create artificial exit pressure misaligned with multi-year sovereign procurement cycles. Capital needs quickly outgrow VC balance sheets; companies need institutional project finance and sovereign debt structures, not dilutive equity rounds.

AGF Capital Partners: the defence opportunity is durable. The investment case: capital is flowing beyond the traditional prime contractor ecosystem into tech firms, industrial suppliers, and emerging businesses. A significant portion of defence spending remains unallocated — creating a multi-year pipeline. The combination of sustained government spending, evolving procurement frameworks, and private capital is driving an investable cycle. AGF: ~C$14B in alternative AUM.

🍁 DND Drone Surge IDEaS challenge is live. DND/CAF are offering: $35K (Round 1), up to $350K (Round 2), and up to $650K (Round 3) for scalable, low-cost, attritable FPV drone systems. Canadian companies only. The goal: accelerate domestic UAS manufacturing capacity.

🍁 Wyvern selected for NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition program. The Edmonton hyperspectral imaging company is the first pre-Series A company accepted — among 14 selected globally. Wyvern previously received support under Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy and has inked partnerships with foreign governments and NordSpace.

🍁 Qubic raises $2.5M USD for quantum signal amplifiers. The Sherbrooke-based spin-off of Institut quantique and University of Waterloo — cryogenic amplifiers that read superconducting qubits without overheating — raised from Two Small Fish (lead), UC Investments, Quantacet, and UCeed. First customer: US-based Quantum Machines. Defence demand is growing. Total raised: ~$10M CAD. Target: 30 employees by end of 2027.

ISC Challenge: quantum laser for CBRNE detection. NRC is offering up to $1.5M CAD (Phase 2, up to 18 months) for a field-deployable quantum cascade laser system that can detect hazardous chemicals at safe standoff distances for defence/security applications. Deadline: July 21, 2026.

European Sky Shield Initiative primer. Defence Post’s guide: ESSI is not a system — it’s a coordinated architecture of Patriot, IRIS-T, SAMP/T, and future directed-energy capabilities across Germany, Poland, Czechia, Romania, and others. It runs alongside NATO’s integrated air defence structures, pools costs, and aims to cover ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, swarms, hypersonics, and electronic jamming simultaneously.

Orqa: Croatia’s drone champion. L’Express: founded in 2018 in Osijek, Orqa builds dual-use drones with a European value chain — breaking dependence on Chinese components that dominate the market. The military drone market hit $18.2B in 2025 and is expected to exceed $30B by 2034.

The Pentagon rethinks how it does R&D — The Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering has finalized its Defense Research Enterprise Review, a blueprint to modernize the department’s sprawling lab network, cut bureaucratic friction, and push combat-ready technology out the door faster. A signal worth watching for anyone tracking how the U.S. wants to maintain its technological edge

The money is rotating “to atoms” — PitchBook’s Q1 2026 data shows roughly $16 billion poured into robotics and physical-AI startups across nearly 500 deals — an all-time high on both counts, and about 4.5x the deal value and 2x the deal count of a typical quarter from 2021–2025. Robotics has now leapfrogged fintech to become the second-largest private-market category, fueled by megadeals for the likes of Shield AI and Saronic.

Canada’s defence strategy has a workforce problem — Mark Norman argues that the real Achilles’ heel of Canada’s $180-billion Defence Industrial Strategy isn’t procurement — it’s people. With a structural shortfall of 20,000+ skilled trades workers a year and a 125,000-job pledge that lacks a credible plan, he warns the strategy could quietly default back to buying from foreign suppliers. His prescribed fix: an independent annual labour assessment, a dedicated defence-trades pipeline, and a tilt toward dual-use firms.

Where the drone money might go — Barron’s makes the case for drone stocks as the Pentagon leans harder into unmanned systems, with names like Kratos Defense among those drawing analyst attention across the sector.

China’s seabed push blurs mining and war — A CNN/Mongabay investigation tracked China’s deep-sea mining fleet and found the vessels spent just 6% of their time in designated mining zones — raising questions about dual-use missions like seabed mapping and submarine tracking, as Beijing holds more International Seabed Authority licenses than any other nation

Following the defence dollars — The Department of War launched a public Investment Intelligence Center, an interactive dashboard tracking over $6.7 billion in Defense Production Act and industrial-base investments since 2015 — searchable by sector, year, location, and funding mechanism. It’s pitched as a demand signal to industry and private capital.

Drones are the problem, not the future — In a sharp counter to the prevailing hype, retired Major General Eric Wesley argues at West Point’s Modern War Institute that drones are the machine gun of our era — a lethal tool that has made maneuver more costly, but not less necessary. Drones can destroy tanks and strike deep, yet in Ukraine the front still moves only hundreds of meters a month, because no drone can seize ground, hold it, or “knock on a door and secure a city block.” His warning: the next war will be won not by whoever builds the most drones, but by whoever solves the drone problem and restores ground maneuver — through electronic warfare, directed energy, cheap counter-drone tech, and autonomous ground systems.

The $20,000 drone that should wake up the Pentagon — On June 8, a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache — a roughly $30 million aircraft — went down over the Strait of Hormuz, with early indications pointing to an Iranian loitering munition costing about $20,000. Both pilots survived, pulled from the water within two hours by an uncrewed Navy surface vessel in the first sea-drone rescue in U.S. military history. The episode crystallizes the cost-asymmetry problem now reshaping air defense: cheap, mass-produced drones against exquisite, expensive platforms and interceptors.

Related:

Anduril: Why we choose to ‘fight unfair’
Cybersecurity coding bootcamp aims to help Canadian veterans transition to tech jobs
The Digital Sovereignty Trap
Charted: How Many Years of Supply Life Are Left for Commodities?
From Five Companies to Two Hundred: Lithuania’s Defence Boom
The Right Way for Europe to Spend More on Defence
SAFE bids run in pairs, so go find your European partner before a tender shows up, not after:

Marconi on Startups & Exporting

Marconi Technologies is a Montreal-headquartered defence communications company that officially launched in May as a standalone, Canadian majority-owned defence prime with approximately 300 employees and operations across Canada, the UK, and the US…

3 months ago · 3 likes · Ethan Marcoux

The US Navy is shifting its munitions strategy by investing in Project Blackbeard
The Canadian Space Agency has disclosed $5.05 billion in contracts since 1999, and about 80% of it is one company
RAND documents the US defence ecosystem
Will Canada Lose Its Nerve? Canada Has Defence Momentum. Now Comes the Hard Part
The real defence cluster — Huntsville, Alabama

A housekeeping note. We’ve been slowly moving off Substack and onto a new distribution list manager. Nothing about the newsletter changes except how it reaches your inbox — same time, same place: 0600 EST. If your next issue doesn’t land at 0600 EST as expected, please reply and let us know so we can make sure you don’t miss a beat during the switch.

Canada's defence business census results

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:01:21 GMT

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Canada doesn’t have a defence SME problem. It has a conversion problem.

That’s the headline finding from the first-ever national survey of Canadian defence SMEs — conducted by The Icebreaker and BDC, released last week to coverage in the Globe and Mail, BetaKit, and Financial Post. Six hundred and forty-two business owners. Proprietary data. The most comprehensive picture of Canada’s defence SME ecosystem ever assembled.

The findings are not comfortable:

Canada’s defence sector is splitting into three speeds. A small group of defence-heavy firms — companies deriving the majority of their revenue from military contracts — are already operating at or near full capacity. Twenty-one percent are producing flat-out. Thirty percent face significant labour shortages. Seventy-four percent need $1M+ in financing. Thirty-nine percent need $5M+. They are sprinting and they are running out of road. The middle cohort — defence-light SMEs — sees the opportunity, but is moving cautiously, still anchored to civilian revenue streams that are themselves slowing (Canadian manufacturing: three consecutive years of recession). And then there is the third group: 374 firms that want in — and can’t find the door. These are the companies that will determine whether Canada’s defence industrial ambitions are real or rhetorical.

“Canada has absolutely no shortage of defence-capable small businesses,” said Icebreaker co-founder Matthew Lombardi. “What we have is a problem with conversion. We’re asking some proven suppliers to sprint while they’re already operating near capacity — and then we’ve got a lot of firms that can help, but the path into defence is extremely murky, and in a lot of ways, it’s too expensive for newcomers. The bottleneck is not from the business owners — it’s this obstacle course we’ve created from capability to contract.”

The data backs it up. Half of defence SMEs seeking financing in the next 12 months expect it to be difficult or very difficult to obtain. Not because of weak credit history or insufficient collateral — those are rarely cited. Because lenders face reputational and legal concerns that prompt many to avoid the sector entirely. Only a quarter of defence-heavy SMEs say their current financial institution fully meets their needs.

The barriers are not abstract. They are: Controlled Goods Program registration. ISO 27001 cybersecurity certification. AS9100 quality systems. Security clearances. Procurement processes so opaque that 38% of interested entrants say they plan to hire external consultants just to navigate them. Meanwhile, SMEs represent 92% of all businesses in Canada’s defence sector and 40% of its employment. The backbone is under-resourced and under-supported.

“Leaving our startups behind is now Canada’s biggest national security risk”

Reality check: Canada has pledged to reach 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035 — ~$159B per year, more than double current spending. The federal government has pledged to procure Canadian wherever feasible. BDC has a $6B defence platform and is launching a matchmaking program to connect SMEs with prime contractors. These are the right moves. But as BDC chief economist Pierre Cléroux put it: “We are at the beginning — there’s a lot of work to do.”

Bottom Line: The spending is coming. The demand signal is real. Eighty-seven percent of defence-heavy SMEs expect growth in defence revenues in the next 24 months. But growth without capacity is a bottleneck, not an opportunity. If Ottawa wants domestic capability this decade, the on-ramp for small businesses needs to get dramatically easier — faster. The Icebreaker and BDC will keep pushing until it does.

Related:

Startups, Sovereignty, and the New Defence Economy with Juno’s Hunter Scharfe
Very useful new report from the Procurement Ombuds explaining the defence procurement system in depth
Canada Needs a Procurement Bridge for Proven Defence Technology
“Buy Canadian” won’t fix defence procurement until Ottawa defines “Canadian”
Last week, CCI’s Dana O’Born testified before the Standing Committee on Science and Research, speaking about the Dual-Use Mapping that CCI undertook last year in partnership with The Icebreaker
Northern Defence, a short film about Canada’s Arctic

🏆Canada can’t build sovereign capability without backing the startups building it:

That’s why DMZ Ventures is launching the $100K Dual-Use and Sovereign Tech Investment Prize at Startupfest, investing in startups driving Canada’s resilience and national security.

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 The pipeline nobody fixed. Matthew Lombardi and Abdullah Snobar (DMZ Executive Director, CAF veteran) in the Globe and Mail: “Leaving our startups behind is now Canada’s biggest national security risk.” The indictment is data-backed — Canadian SMEs wait an average of 18 months for a security clearance just to propose a contract. IDEaS has no contracting mechanism. “If one envisions the defence ecosystem as a pipeline, Canada is well-supported at the beginning and well-equipped at the end. However, there is underinvestment in the middle section. This is where Canadian startups often fail, while foreign defence firms — primarily American — succeed.”

Should dual use be a hedge against the defence procurement system?

Wars trigger $12bn venture capital rush into defence tech. Funding this year has already surpassed 2025 total as soaring valuations fuel fears of a hype cycle.

Feds’ defence spending ambitions opening market for private capital

🍁 MDA goes shopping in Colorado. MDA Space is acquiring Blue Canyon Technologies from RTX for $874M cash — all-cash, expected to close end of 2026. The play isn’t the satellite bus technology. It’s the US security clearance. As a US-domiciled prime, MDA can now bid on classified defence contracts it was previously locked out of. Opportunity pipeline: ~$45B.

🍁 NorthStar locks RCAF contract, eyes NYSE. The Montreal-based space surveillance firm secured a $40M+ CAD contract with the RCAF’s 3 Canadian Space Division to track objects in orbit and detect threats. This fall, it goes public via SPAC merger with Viking Acquisition Corp at a $300M USD valuation.

🍁 Marconi Technologies: Canada’s first SAFE contract. The Montreal firm will deliver C$10M+ in ORION tactical radios to Poland’s Cyber Command — announced by PM Carney at G7 in Évian. Canada is the only non-European member of the €150B SAFE procurement scheme. Deliveries run through 2030, touching ~100 Canadian suppliers. Partner: Polish firm Enamor International. CBC | The Deep Dive

🍁 NordSpace opens Rocket Factory 1 in Markham. 60,000 sq ft. Up to 255 employees. Consolidates design, engineering, manufacturing, integration, and mission control under one roof. Part of an $8M federal project. Also in the works: a 50-acre propulsion test range in Eastern Ontario and a commercial launch hub in Newfoundland. A 200,000 sq ft medium-lift facility breaks ground later this year.

How to Win a Space War

3 months ago · 145 likes · 1 comment · Christian Keil and Alex Oliver

🍁 NorthForge rolls out the Dispatch. An all-electric tactical motorcycle with 80%+ Canadian content. Specs: silent operation (<50dB), operational range of -45°C to +45°C, 200km range, 110 km/h top speed, 200kg cargo capacity, 10-year service life. Battery: SysNergie (Magog, QC). The whole unit disassembles with 3 tools and ships in a 5’x3’x2’ crate. Presented at CANSEC. Ready for trials. Canadian Defence Review

🍁 Canada’s $80B submarine contract: dealmaking blitz. Hanwha vs TKMS — both are carpet-bombing Canadian industry with partnerships ahead of a decision. Hanwha: 70+ partnerships, GM/APMA 51% MOU for military vehicles, $275M Algoma Steel investment, claims $96B economic impact. TKMS: Seaspan teaming, EllisDon facilities design, E3 Lithium battery partnership, torpedo factory proposal, claims $86B impact. Decision imminent.

CCA dual-award: USAF buys both. The Air Force ordered both the Anduril FQ-44A Fury and the General Atomics FQ-42A Dark Merlin into production simultaneously — 4 months ahead of schedule. ~$1B in FY27 budget. Target: 150+ combat-capable CCAs by end of decade at sub-$30M per unit. Anduril is the only company holding both hardware and software (mission autonomy) CCA contracts.

Rune TyrOS: $99M Army logistics AI contract. 5-year IDIQ. TyrOS predicts and tracks gear, fuel, food, and parts from edge devices to command level. Platform includes Saga (frontline AI agent) and an Autonomy Development Kit for autonomous vehicles. Open to any Army component and joint force partner.

Impulse Space closes $500M Series D. Tom Mueller — SpaceX’s founding propulsion engineer, builder of the Merlin engine — has now raised >$1B total for Impulse Space at a ~$4B valuation (up from $1.8B). Contracted backlog: $200M+. The company was selected alongside Anduril for Golden Dome space-based interceptors — a $185B program. Mira has flown 3x; Helios targets 2027. The Merge

Powerus raises $30M from Unusual Machines. Florida drone roll-up spanning heavy lift (Kaizen: 100–2,000 lb), FPV quadcopters (Tandem), and maritime USVs (Agile Autonomy), plus Guardian 1+2 interceptors. Has a deal with USAF to supply “at scale.” Tectonic Defense

Kate’s Substack

The Drone Arms Race Trap is About to Snap Shut

In the skies over Ukraine, a relentless arms race defines the war’s grinding reality. Russia launches hundreds of drones and missiles in nightly barrages. Ukraine counters with thousands of cheap interceptors. On paper, this favours the defender - low-cost tools neutralizing higher-cost threats. In practice, it is a classic trap: the defender must innov…

3 months ago · 5 likes · Kate McKenna

BAE Systems goes LP. €50M split between Lakestar (Switzerland, raising $300M defence fund) and Expeditions (Poland, >€200M committed). BAE is becoming a recurring LP in European defence VC — and may add more funds.

🍁 JPMorgan extends security bet to Canada. JPMorgan’s Security and Resiliency Initiative — a US$1.5T global pledge across defence, aerospace, energy, and infrastructure — has extended to Canada. Canadian ops doubled revenue over 5 years. The bank is also backing the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), HQ’d in Canada. Globe and Mail

🍁 Canada’s growth-stage gap. Canada ranks near the bottom of the OECD for SME lending per capita. Growth-stage investment ($5M–$25M range) “plummeted to almost zero” last quarter. Proposed fix: a Canadian Debt Growth Fund backed by pension capital, private lenders, and a government guarantee.

Canada's First National Security VC | Glenn Cowan — Explorer Spotlight #3

3 months ago · 2 likes · Ethan Marcoux

🍁 Nova Scotia Spaceport: strategic, not just economic. The case for a $200M federal investment (90% spent domestically) over 10 years: a 2-year global launch waiting list, 10,000 direct aerospace/defence jobs in Atlantic Canada, and Isar Aerospace already signed a LoI with Maritime Launch Services (Canso). MacDonald Laurier | Globe and Mail

France drops Palantir. DGSI chose ChapsVision. German intelligence did too. Europe is actively decoupling from US tech in its most sensitive national security applications.

Related: How Canadian SMBs can use ITB obligations to win defence work — Dewis Ventures breaks down the 10 Sovereign Capabilities, the new 2026 policy (9x R&D multiplier, 5x Strategic Investment), and the 90-day approval standard against a $180B procurement target by 2035.

Related:

GUILD is betting AI can do what decades of Pentagon reform couldn’t
Pentagon inks pair of rare earth mineral loans for $1.2 billion
Traysar emerges from stealth with $25M seed for subterranean defence tech
NSA chief says Mythos breached ‘almost all’ classified systems in hours
- Anthropic to disable its most advanced AI models after US order limiting foreign access
- AI models capable of devastating attacks on governments and business months away, rare Five Eyes statement warns
- Hostile states behind three-quarters of attacks on Britain’s critical infrastructure, cyber chief warns
Earlybird raising €500m defence fund with French investor AVP
How a former Russian TV anchor ended up suing Canada’s go-to rocket company
French battlefield software startup Comand AI raises €32m from Blossom Capital, Saab
- Everyone Wants Innovation. Nobody Wants Integration.
Less crew, more ground: UGVs dominate Eurosatory lineup
Anduril explores Israeli expansion as defence-tech boom accelerates:

The rise of Israeli Defense Startups - with Aaron Applbaum, GP at Kinetica

3 months ago · 4 likes · Louise Boucher

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Ukrainian MOD launches TrophyLab for partners to study captured Russian tech. The Ministry of Defence has launched TrophyLab, a secure platform that it said will allow allied governments, research institutions, and defence manufacturers to study captured Russian military equipment recovered from the battlefield.

🎙️ Ep 25 - UFORCE: The Ukrainian Startup Sinking Russian Warships

UFORCE has flown 220,000+ combat missions, sunk 14 Russian warships, and downed two Su-30 fighter jets. Its Magura USV was the first naval drone in history to sink an enemy warship in combat. Its Nemesis UAV flies thousands of missions every night…

3 months ago · 2 likes · Maggie Gray

Ukraine’s blackout missile. The DART launches from aerostats at 12–18km altitude. Navigation guides to 6km, then a solid-fuel engine burns to target without course correction — making it effectively unjammable. Payload: graphite filaments designed to short out Russian electrical grids. Up to 10kg. Trials are “imminent.” The aerostat is the quiet innovation here: cheap, persistent, hard to kill, and capable of carrying signal repeaters 100km+.

True North Strategic Review

Let's Talk About the Canadian Army Deep UAS Capability and Canadian Army Loitering Munitions Projects (and other drones)

When discussing almost any Army projects, the inevitable question of drones is bound to pop up. Doesn't matter what it is. If it exists? Drones will be brought up by someone. We talk a lot about drones here, and for good reason…

3 months ago · 15 likes · 1 comment · Noah

Air-launched ballistics are back. The USAF is requesting ~$50M for a new Air-Launched Ballistic Missile program. Think Mach 6–10 on a ballistic arc — not hypersonic, not cruise. The last US attempt was the AGM-48 Skybolt, cancelled in 1962. China already has two fielded variants (YJ-21 anti-ship, JL-1 nuclear). Israel flew Sparrow/Rocks variants in Operation Epic Fury. The USAF is playing catch-up — but the solid rocket motor supply chain is already at its limit.

Missile Defense's Unforgiving Logic Comes Back to Haunt Russia

Screenshot: Security Service of Ukraine…

3 months ago · 144 likes · 8 comments · Fabian Hoffmann

Canada’s fighter decision: a senator draws the line. Senator Patterson (Ret. Rear-Admiral, 34 years CAF) is explicit: Canada’s next jet must have 5th-gen capability, full sensor fusion, and data linking. No mixed fleet — it “endangers interoperability.” CF-18s retire 2032.

Canadian bacon: Can Canada actually build a fighter industrial base? The Gripen E-only option runs C$7–10B; the full Saab package (Gripen E + GlobalEye) hits C$15–20B+. Canada currently lacks fighter final assembly, flight test, military certification, and secure software integration capacity. A phased approach isn’t optional — it’s the only viable path.

Canada’s Arctic Blind Spot: Closing the undersea domain security gap

Institutional speed is the real gap. VAdm (Ret’d) Ron Lloyd’s paper on Institutional Command and Control (iC2) identifies the core problem: Canada’s institutional processes are calibrated for bureaucratic tempo, not iterative software, drone, or EW cycles. The proposed fix: synchronize authorities, enterprise systems, and industrial capacity under one command rhythm. Metrics that matter — time from identified need to funded experiment; time from feedback to fielded software modification.

The backlog is the strategy. Deloitte’s US defence manufacturing report: the 3 largest primes carry a combined $557B backlog — 2.7x their 2025 annual sales and 30 months of coverage. Munitions lead times run 2–4 years. The bottleneck isn’t innovation — it’s throughput. The most acute constraint is the sub-tier supply chain, not the primes themselves.

Pentagon weaponizes antitrust exemptions. Under the Defense Production Act, the DoD is now allowing solid rocket motor suppliers to share production data without triggering antitrust violations. The goal: get all SRM providers in one room to coordinate capacity. $1B already invested in L3Harris SRMs.

@julia_hornstein \n\ntheinformation.com/articles/missi…","username":"leomschwartz","name":"Leo Schwartz","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1791481555325538304/jMCmRNWe_normal.jpg","date":"2026-06-17T21:54:45.000Z","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":1,"retweet_count":6,"like_count":64,"impression_count":62841,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

France fields its answer to Maven Smart System. Arcadia: AI-powered battlefield command built with Mistral AI, Safran.AI, Thales, and Airbus. Decentralized field-deployed server mesh, open architecture, synthesizes intel and generates courses of action — while leaving decisions to commanders. Tested at NATO CWIX in Poland. Defense News

NATO eyes a digital Arctic backbone. Task Force X-Arctic is targeting a fully digitized, data-centric multi-domain awareness capability in the North Atlantic and Arctic by summer 2027 — crewed and polar-ready uncrewed systems under human control with interoperable C2. China-Russia Arctic cooperation is the stated driver. NATO ACT

Wargame before you procure. War on the Rocks makes the case: the most consequential insight from USMC logistics wargames was that sensors were attrited far earlier than assumed and war reserve materiel was misaligned to actual conflict needs. Fix the model before you fund the program. War on the Rocks

Systems war, functional org. The PLA is organized around systems confrontation and destruction. The US Army is organized around warfighting functions — siloed, slow to adapt. Proposed fix: pilot the Information Warfighting System as the first single-owner, unified battle rhythm system. Precedent exists: IWTF-A at Bagram, 2018–2020. Irregular Warfare Journal

The Navy is commissioning tech civilians. The Navy Innovation Unit is standing up a pathway to commission AI, data science, robotics, software, cloud, and cyber professionals as Reserve officers — O-1 to O-6. FY27 start. TS/SCI required. Remote-friendly.

🍁 ProtoPod: Calgary hypersonics. Paul Ziadé of North Vector Dynamics is building hypersonic propulsion and counter-drone systems in Calgary. His thesis: speed of execution is sovereign capability. ProtoPod

Related: DIB Accelerator Conference — Philadelphia, August 25–26. DoD senior officials, investors, defence industrial base. International participation welcome.

Powerus teams with Swarmer to add swarming capability to its drones

Most aerospace organizations put engineering at the gravitational center of the company. A subset of European NewSpace and drone startups don’t. The structural difference is small on paper but profound in practice…

🔫 Hot Shots

🍁 Data residency is not data sovereignty. Senator Hay’s column is a useful primer for anyone in Canadian defence procurement. The CLOUD Act and FISA allow US agencies to compel data from US-headquartered cloud providers regardless of where the servers sit. “Data is the new above-ground critical mineral.” Sovereignty criteria need to be embedded in procurement protocols — not treated as an afterthought.

Red Lines on Chinese AI. CNAS names 7 companies: Alibaba, Baidu, DeepSeek, MiniMax, Moonshot, Tencent, Zhipu. Open weights, API pricing designed to undercut US alternatives. The finding that should get more attention: DeepSeek agents are 12x more likely to follow malicious instructions than US counterparts. Applications span offensive cyber, influence campaigns, surveillance, and bioweapons contribution. Trump’s AI Action Plan directed risk assessments — only 3 published, all delayed.

MissionThread

Where the mission lives

3 months ago · Ian Hawthorne

France’s sovereign messaging platform wasn’t. Tchap — built as a secure alternative to foreign messaging apps for France’s 825,000+ government users — was breached by a hacker going by “misere.” Claims: 73,467 accounts compromised, 13.5GB of files, 643K+ messages exfiltrated. Vector: account hijacking, not a zero-day.

The deepfake era is here and experts are scared. Hany Farid — the NYT’s go-to deepfake forensics expert — says “I feel as if I’m going blind.” A fabricated image of a Pentagon explosion erased $500B from markets. Deepfakes from the Iran war are now virtually indistinguishable from authentic footage. The detection gap is closing faster than the tools to close it. New York Times

This is the second in a two-part series on The Acquisition Reckoning…

The Reckoning

3 months ago · 11 likes · 7 comments · Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor

The Apocalypse Early Warning System. Kyle McDonald built a tracker that monitors business jet anomalies as a proxy for insider knowledge and coming geopolitical shocks. The premise: when unusual private jet movements cluster ahead of a public event, someone knew something. Worth bookmarking. Kyle McDonald

Anthropic draws a line. SourceCAN flagged it: Anthropic has disabled its models for foreign nationals in specific contexts. The quiet expansion of AI access controls as a geopolitical tool is underway — and most people aren’t watching. SourceCAN

Odds & Ends:

Inside Canada’s $500 Billion Defence Spending Gamble
Defence Acquisition & Capability Delivery. Part 1: Procurement Is Not Capability
Ramping up defence manufacturing in America [VISUAL GUIDE]

The Sinews of Civilization: Fire, Food, Water, Force

Weapons of Mass Production: A Strategy for Tapping America’s Entire Industrial Base

Gabriel Collins, J.D and Kai Hartman (ENS, USN)[1…

8 months ago · 4 likes · The Sinews of Civilization

Inuit call on Ottawa to be better partners or they will look abroad
Canada solidifies agreement with Australia to buy Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar system
The space economy is expanding far beyond rockets and satellites [VISUALS]
- Emboldened by SpaceX, Investors Are Piling Into All Things Space
- Ontario teachers make billions from SpaceX IPO
Coyote interceptor downs drone swarms with electromagnetic weapon
‘Defence-as-a-Service’ is more than SaaS with guns
Search the US defence budget using AI
Teaching the humans in the loop: supporting and integrating Ukraine’s unmanned systems training into Europe’s Security Architecture
A masterclass in US defence technology acquisition reform
US Army ran a free and open competition last year to replace its software command and control system for counter-UAS and short-range air defense. Anduril won that competition, and Lattice is now becoming the centerpiece of that new program of record: IBCS-Manevuer
Lessons from Reindustrialize: Electrification is the revolution emerging from this defence build-out
Do you believe that growth in Aerospace & Defence, automatically means growth for suppliers?

1st Autonomous Kill Happened 2 Years Ago

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:02:22 GMT

Editor’s Note: Thanks to the NATO Association of Canada and the Canadian International Council for hosting us as part of a lively discussion on AI & Warfare at the Canadian Forces College during Toronto Tech Week!

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

New Scientist reports that a senior figure in Ukraine’s defence industry confirmed a test near Bakhmut approximately two years ago: ten AI-driven quadcopter drones were sent toward the front lines, activated “Terminator mode” — and killed Russian soldiers with no human involvement at the terminal stage. Confirmed casualties: “a couple of soldiers and one truck.” No recordings exist. Responsibility was inferred from the aftermath. There is currently no international ban on fully autonomous lethal weapons. The UN has called for one. Ukraine’s own government prohibits AI in the final stage of target engagement — though it used it anyway, in a test that apparently worked.

The Promise & Peril of Autonomous Weapons: A Primer

This is not a hypothetical. It happened. The question now is what it means:

New Scientist’s reporting is corroborated by BetaKit, which noted the milestone while covering Russia’s threats against Canada. The ICRC’s SIPRI researchers put the policy problem plainly: IHL compliance depends on the system, how it’s used, and the circumstances — and compliance ultimately rests with states, not companies. Almost no major defence AI company — Anduril, Palantir, Helsing, Shield AI, Anthropic — references IHL on their website or in their recruiting. “Responsible” and “ethical” branding is not the same thing as legal compliance.

3 months ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · Louise Boucher

The New Lords of War

France is at least trying to build it in from the start. Its Arcadia battlefield AI command system — described by Gen. Patrick Justel as “our response to Maven” — was tested at NATO’s Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX) in Poland. Built with Mistral AI, Safran.AI, Thales, and Airbus. Highly decentralized, field-deployed server mesh. Open architecture. Built to synthesize information, generate courses of action, and leave decisions to commanders. Britain is moving too — MoD awarded a £227K prototype contract for Project STRONG: a single analytical platform that fuses intelligence, generates courses of action, and supports deployment of effects across cyber, information, and supply-chain domains.

Reality check: US CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper sent a memo to his commanders on May 26 reminding them: “Our commitment to the law of armed conflict is not a constraint on our lethality — it is the source of our legitimacy.” The memo came as Hegseth called rules of engagement “stupid” and Trump threatened Iranian civilian targets on social media. The gap between what CENTCOM is saying internally and what civilian leadership is saying publicly is not small.

Bottom Line: Autonomous lethal AI is operational. The legal frameworks are not. The companies building the systems don’t mention IHL. The governments deploying them are sending contradictory signals. Canada, which is about to spend $68B/yr on defence and is signing drone production deals with Ukraine, has no public position on autonomous lethal systems. That is a policy vacuum that will not stay empty.

🏆Canada can’t build sovereign capability without backing the startups building it:

That’s why DMZ Ventures is launching the $100K Dual-Use and Sovereign Tech Investment Prize at Startupfest, investing in startups driving Canada’s resilience and national security.

Selling to Defense: What Founders Need to Know Before They Build, Pitch or Scale for the Defense Market

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

🤝 Deal Corner

🍁 Russia calls Canada a warmonger — and threatens to publish Sentinel’s address — Following the Airlogix + Sentinel R&D drone JV announced at CANSEC, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called Canada a “warmonger” and vowed to publish “the addresses of all Canadian production facilities participating in the drone deal.” Russia’s ambassador said Canada was trying to profit from the conflict. Sentinel CEO Kath Intson: “The Canadian DND and Sentinel deal will proceed as planned.” Defence Minister McGuinty: “We’ve seen this before.” 🍁

McGuinty to lead defence trade mission pitching Japan on Canadian military tech
McGuinty urges businesses to ‘take risks’ as Canada builds defence-tech ecosystem
Are Canadian investors too timid to invest in defence tech?

🍁 Isar Aerospace raises $400M CAD for Spaceport Nova Scotia — German rocket builder Isar Aerospace secured a Series D bringing total funding to ~$1.3B CAD. Maritime Launch Services signed an LoI to pursue orbital launches from Canso, NS — and DND has already signed a $200M sublease for a dedicated pad. Isar’s two-stage Spectrum rocket: 1,000 kg to LEO. Launch window attempt: June 15–21 from Andøya, Norway. If they succeed there, Canada could see its first orbital launch attempt by 2027–28. Mid-to-high inclination orbits from NS are optimal for defence communications and Earth observation. Isar is also cooperating with TKMS on the Canadian Patrol Submarine bid. 🍁

🍁 Geopolitical feature flagging: it’s here — Anthropic abruptly disabled its newest Fable and Mythos models for all foreign nationals — Canada included — following a US government directive. SourceCAN’s Raymond Luk frames this as “geopolitical feature flagging”: access to critical technology switched on or off by nationality. Canada sits in the “foreign national” category alongside Russia and China. The risk isn’t just being cut off — it’s being given a degraded version. Also last week: DND opened its $166M Valcartier research complex (80+ new labs) 🍁

ICEYE raises €1B at €10B valuation — Finnish SAR satellite startup ICEYE — previously valued at €2.5B just six months ago — closes a Series F led by General Atlantic. Revenue: €250M+ in FY25. EBITDA: €100M+. Contracted backlog: €1.5B+. Customers: 7 European nations, NATO, Poland most recently. Used in Ukraine for strike planning. Currently producing 50 satellites/year; targeting 100 by 2028.

SellingtoDefense

Technology is changing fast, and conflict is changing with it. From Ukraine to the Middle East, wars are increasingly being shaped by drones, autonomy, cyber capabilities, and space systems. Gone are the days when the large primes deliver everything the Department of War needs, including years-long contracts and rigid specifications. Dual-use commercial…

3 months ago · 16 likes · SellingtoDefense

Gardar: Norway’s €80M fund backing Ukrainian builders — Sandwater’s new fund invests in Ukrainian defence tech from seed to Series B — tech that is already operational at the front. Backed by Norwegian billionaires including Johan H. Andresen and Gustav Witzøe. Named after the Old Norse word for Ukraine (Gardariki). The thesis: front-line builders are innovating faster than VCs can fund them. Norway supplies hundreds of millions in equipment and is already co-producing NASAMS missiles with Ukraine.

Hermeus hits Mach 1.21 — and raises $350M — The hypersonic startup hit its first supersonic milestone at White Sands on May 26 — Quarterhorse Mk 2.1, third test sortie, less than 90 days after maiden flight. DIU expanded the contract ceiling to $219M — the largest in DIU history. Series C: $350M (Khosla Ventures), including $150M in debt. Total raised: $500M+. Valuation: $1B+. The Chimera engine transitions from turbojet (Mach 3) to ramjet at Mach 3.5 — the critical unproven step. New CEO: Zach Shore (effective June 1). Production: dropping build times from 6–8 weeks to 48 hours by switching to 304L stainless steel.

DEFCON AI wins $115M Marine Corps logistics software contract — The Red Cell-incubated startup becomes the prime software integrator for Marine Corps Logistics Command and Control modernization — integrating Palantir Maven, Anduril Lattice, and Rune’s frontline sustainment software into a single DevSecOps pipeline. Base year: $20M. Five-year total: $115M. Model could scale across JADC2 ecosystem.

Hadrian: $730M raised, $900M Navy partnership, 30-day operator training — The automated aerospace manufacturing startup just opened a 2.2M sq ft factory in Cherokee, Alabama to produce components for Virginia-class and Columbia-class submarines. Total investment in the facility: $2.4B ($900M Navy + $1.5B private). Army contract: $80M ceiling for Red River Army Depot. Valuation: $1.6B. Claim: a non-machinist operator is production-ready in under 30 days.

STARK unveils Cascade + Gambit at ILA Berlin — Germany’s fastest-growing drone company added two new systems at the Berlin Air Show. Cascade: tube-launched loitering munition, 100km range, 4.5kg payload, GPS-denied AI nav, <1 minute setup, 10+ fit on a vehicle. Gambit: man-portable ISR/strike quadcopter, 25km range, 6kg, fiber-optic link option. Also raising ~€300M at €2.5B valuation. Sequoia, 8VC, Thiel Capital, In-Q-Tel, NATO Innovation Fund already in.

Alta Ares (France) raises €50M Series A — Counter-drone AI startup founded 2024. Pixel Lock: onboard computer vision for drone interception — widely deployed in Ukraine. X-Lock (VTOL interceptor, 270 km/h): contracts in Europe, Middle East, Asia; deployed across three active conflict zones simultaneously. Black Bird (turbojet interceptor, 670 km/h): prototype stage. Lead: Air Street Capital.

Related: DoD expanded classified AI work to 8 companies — SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Reflection. Anthropic excluded. | PhysicsX raises $300M Series C — Physics AI for aerospace and defence engineering and manufacturing | Europe’s defence IPO wave accelerating — Rheinmetall, KNDS, and others preparing for capital markets

Related:

AGF on the Changing Security and Procurement Landscape
Lockheed Martin is writing seed checks now
MDA Space, Calian, and Kepler tapped to lay groundwork for Canada’s next-gen satellite system
Cohere says it is not working with Palantir
Inside Canada’s $500 Billion Dollar Defence Spending Gamble
⚠️ITAR by Default = Self-Sabotage?
Canadian Defence Spending; Stuck in Old Paradigms?
When an AI system misjudges a drone flight path and causes damage, who pays?
James Yurichuk: What does Canadian owned and operated really mean?
Silicon Valley Re-Enlists: How the Valley Rediscovered the Pentagon:

Defence Finance Monitor - Analysis

Defence-Tech Earn-Outs and the Price of Uncertainty

Defence-technology acquisitions rarely involve assets whose value can be measured cleanly at signing. A target may own relevant technology, early customer traction, sensitive intellectual property or a promising position in future procurement cycles, but its commercial value often depends on events that are external, delayed and regulated: export licences, cyber certification, programme eligibility, government contract awards, funded orders, delivery acceptance and the conversion of technical promise into recognised revenue. For acquirers, this creates a valuation problem that ordinary multiples cannot resolve. For sellers, it creates the opposite problem: how to be paid for future value that is plausible but not yet bankable. Earn-outs, deferred consideration and other contingent price mechanisms have therefore become part of the transaction architecture through which defence-tech uncertainty is priced, allocated and monitored after closing…

3 months ago · 1 like · Defence Finance Monitor

ROAR brings together the people shaping the future of robotics, autonomy, and public safety innovation in Canada

This year, we are honoured to feature General Wayne Eyre, former Chief of the Defence Staff for the Canadian Armed Forces, as a keynote speaker. With more than 40 years of military leadership experience, General Eyre has led through some of Canada’s most complex domestic and international security challenges, offering a rare perspective on leadership, readiness, and the rapidly evolving role of advanced technology in modern operations.

Join us at ROAR for an inside look at how robotics, drones, autonomous systems, and emerging defence technologies are transforming public safety, industrial operations, and national security. This is where operators, innovators, agencies, and industry leaders come together to see what is next and what is already possible.

Get your tickets: https://www.roarconference.ca/conferences/east

⚔️ Combat Readiness

2029 warning:

Canadian-backed firm CanBalt plans 500m euro defence park in central Lithuania
Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, speaking to CBC in Ottawa: “The majority of German society is now convinced that there is once again a threat.” Russia could challenge NATO by 2029 — a view shared among Western allies based on coordinated intelligence. Russia has $1T allocated for defence through 2036, investing 7.5–10% of GDP. It is outpacing NATO in artillery shells, missiles, and drones. The Pentagon is cutting 50% of strategic bombers, one-third of fighters, and restricting submarines designated for NATO. Germany is building the strongest conventional military in Europe — and explicitly preparing to defend without US support.

Why Does It Take Years to Get a Patriot Missile From Factory to Front Line?

Ukraine struck Russia’s Baltic Fleet at Kronstadt dry dock — a Steregushchiy-class corvette (one of the fleet’s most capable air defence platforms) was hit. Result: Russia’s Baltic Fleet has lost ~one-third of its medium-range air defence capability. Estonia’s military intel: “this will certainly hamper air defence capability in the Kronstadt area for the future.”

@USNavy rescue in the Strait of Hormuz is a direct result of DIU’s Production-Ready, Inexpensive, Maritime Expeditionary (PRIME) Small Unmanned Surface Vehicle (sUSV) program. \n\nThe Saronic Corsair used in the operation was developed through DIU’s competitive","username":"DIU_x","name":"Defense Innovation Unit","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/2013986759550414848/9idqgMXZ_normal.jpg","date":"2026-06-10T13:11:10.000Z","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":7,"retweet_count":52,"like_count":244,"impression_count":17547,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

First-ever sea drone rescue operation: a Corsair unmanned surface vessel from Task Force 59 (US Fifth Fleet, Bahrain) rescued two US Army soldiers from a downed AH-64 Apache near Oman — shot down by an Iranian Shahed drone. Corsair specs: 24 ft, 1,000 lb payload, 35+ knots. The crew was recovered at 3:30 AM local, then hoisted into a helicopter. The Navy holds ~50 Corsairs and awarded a $392M contract for autonomous vessels last year.

Related:

Drone wars: Shooting down drones one at a time [VIDEO]… A $200 Drone Can Sink a US Coast Guard Boat. Nobody Is Fixing It… As technology levels the field between stronger and weaker nations, old-fashioned wars of conquest might no longer be possible

Senators want a new Robotic and Autonomous Systems Combatant Command — four-star general to lead it; special acquisition and T&E authorities; modeled partly on Ukraine’s drone-focused military service. SASC passed the NDAA version 18-9. Hegseth already announced a sub-unified command for autonomous warfare.
CCA race at Berlin Air Show: Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat flew in from Australia, teamed with Rheinmetall. Helsing’s CA-1KA (kinetic attack) targeting maiden flight early 2027. Airbus showing U760 Ravenstorm full-scale model. General Atomics says its Gambit is already in the US Air Force’s CCA program and “ready today.” Germany on the clock: Pistorius says if they want it by 2029, contract must close “by next year.”
Foundation Robotics’ Phantom humanoid robot — San Francisco-based, $24M in US military research contracts, two units in Ukrainian military trials. Capabilities: 80kg carry, autonomous navigation, potential frontline weaponization. Battlefield deployment still “some way off.”
War on the Rocks: wargaming as acquisition reform — the most consequential insight from recent Marine Corps logistics wargames: sensors are attrited earlier than previously assumed, and war reserve materiel is misaligned to actual conflict requirements. “A single monolithic joint wargame is too limited.” Recommendation: distributed service-level games first, then merge into a DoD institutional series.

Canadian bacon:

Montréal-based defence technology firm Marconi Technologies has been awarded a contract exceeding $10 million to supply made-in-Canada ORION tactical radios to Polish Cyber Command.
Estonian Industry Minister seeks to strengthen ties in first visit to Canada:
- “In 2025, [Estonia] committed to having innovation procurements account for at least 2 per cent of the volume of all public procurements and 5 per cent of all procurement costs. By 2035, the country aims to have those numbers increase to 5 and 10 per cent, respectively.”
If a foreign government can switch off the AI, the cloud, the chips, or the software your military and economy depend on, your physical security is on loan
GlobalEye NORAD integration faces a hard wall: the Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL) used by F-35s is not shared with foreign companies. Without MADL, Canadian surveillance aircraft using Link 16 would “light up like a tree” to enemy EW. Experts say the likelihood of the US licensing MADL to Sweden is “virtually nonexistent.” A “bridge capability” workaround would take years and cost billions. Canada would need Trump’s explicit sign-off. 🍁
Canada is falling behind on Arctic strategic power delivery — northern communities still rely on diesel delivered by air and sea. Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation (CSA-funded) is developing nuclear microreactors for Arctic bases; Alberta is funding a $10M prototype; CSMC has a Telesat partnership for remote oversight. Sax wants DND to designate a Canadian Forces base as a demonstration site. 🍁
North Vector Dynamics CEO Paul Ziadé on the ProtoPod: building hypersonic propulsion + counter-drone systems in Canada. Core message: speed of execution is the sovereign capability. Academia to defence tech in one generation. 🍁
MaRS on dual-use: the Pentagon has already been investing millions into Canadian health startups for decades. “Canada is playing catch-up right now.” Ottawa’s $241M dual-use fund is on the table. Trevor Grosse: procurement is “so complex and opaque” that only a small community can navigate it. 🍁
DIB Accelerator Conference: Philadelphia, August 25–26 — DoD senior officials, investors, defence industrial base. “Solutions Proving Ground” for manufacturing, readiness, and operations. International participation welcome.

BDC StrongNorth's First Cyber Bet | Karl Holmqvist — Explorer Spotlight #2

May 27th, 2026 - Lastwall, a New Brunswick-based cybersecurity company, announced a $16m investment round led by BDC through the StrongNorth Fund as the fund’s first cybersecurity investment…

3 months ago · 2 likes · Ethan Marcoux

Ukrainian front: Inside Ukraine’s AI-Enabled Drone Campaign Targeting Russian Logistics Deep Behind The Lines… Ukraine is currently codifying 150 new systems per month

🛡️🌏 Not Those Shades of Gray 🌏🛡️

Red’s Hellscape: Far More Dangerous Than Blue’s

In a bid to deter war over Taiwan, Admiral Paparo has dripped details into public view of his Hellscape plan to turn the waters east of China into a fiery death box for any armada seeking to attack Taiwan. Lethal UUVs (Uncrewed Undersea Vessels), loitering munitions, and one-way USVs (Uncrewed Surface Vessels) would flood the Taiwan Strait. In the Penta…

2 years ago · 39 likes · 5 comments · Austin Gray

Mapping Canada’s Defence Innovation Landscape

Canada’s defence ecosystem is moving quickly.

Over the past several months, Canada’s defence and security accelerator, Vimy Forge, has had the opportunity to engage with founders, operators, investors, government officials, and industry leaders from across the country. We recently concluded our second residency week with the Black Flight cohort. One observation continues to surface:

There is significant innovation happening in Canada’s defence and dual-use sectors, but there is no comprehensive picture of where that innovation exists.

Read an update on the Vimy Forge Black Flight Cohort, which recently crossed the halfway point of its first program as Canada’s first Defence Accelerator.

As governments make decisions on policy and funding, financial institutions evaluate investment opportunities, and organizations like Vimy Forge design programs to support innovators, everyone is asking similar questions:

Who is building what?
Where are those companies located?
What capabilities are being developed?
How mature are those technologies? Where are the gaps?

Today, there is no single source of truth that provides those answers.

To help address this challenge, Vimy Forge is launching a national initiative to map Canada’s defence, security, and dual-use innovation landscape.

The objective is simple: build a living picture of Canadian capabilities, aligned to Canada’s Key Sovereign Capabilities and Technology Readiness Levels, creating better visibility across the ecosystem for innovators, industry, government, investors, and end users.

This is not an application to a Vimy Forge cohort or accelerator program. It is a collaborative effort to better understand the landscape and strengthen the connections needed to accelerate Canadian capability.

If your organization is developing technology relevant to defence, security, resilience, critical infrastructure, or sovereign capability, you are invited to participate.

Learn more about the initiative or complete the Expression of Interest to help map Canada’s defence innovation landscape.

🔫 Hot Shots

AI war: Three ex-DOGE staffers are raising $130M from a16z, Sequoia, and others for a startup that aims to use AI to secure government systems… Senate pushes DOD to create new combatant command for unmanned systems… ASML is the only company capable of manufacturing the machine that creates every advanced AI chip in the world

George Hoyem

AI at the Edge Is About to Kill Your Cybersecurity Stack....

For most of the past two decades where I invested in dozens of Cyber Security companies, cybersecurity has been a layering exercise: another agent on the endpoint, another dashboard in the SOC (Security Operations Center), another stream of alerts that still ultimately depends on human triage. The acronyms have changed faster than the architecture—scan…

3 months ago · 3 likes · 3 comments · George Hoyem

Grey war:

US + Five Eyes officially warned that Russia could launch a military challenge to NATO by 2029. Nordic intelligence has documented Moscow stationing up to 115,000 troops along NATO’s Baltic perimeter. Russia’s drone attack on June 2: 656 drones, 73 missiles, 33 Iskander ballistic missiles, Tsirkon cruise missiles. Ukraine shot down 11 of 33 Iskanders.
DoD released its updated 1260H List of 188 Chinese military companies operating in the United States. List updates ongoing. Additional government actions reserved.
Pan-domain warfare: joint → combined → multi-domain → all-domain → pan-domain. Canada is already using the terminology. The gap is integration: “Even in Ukraine, seamless integration has proven challenging.” Adversaries are advancing with “greater clarity and coherence.”
Small Wars Journal on autonomous sabotage: third-party drone warfare enables near-zero political cost intervention. Creates “stalemate without the hurt” — reducing the pain threshold that drives peace negotiations. Deniability is the feature, not the bug.
Gardar’s thesis on Ukrainian builders: “There are more innovative ideas being developed and used by technologists on the front lines than there are startups productising them.” Norway is building the investor-founder-user triangle. Canada should be doing the same.
Russia seems to be threatening a *commercial* satellite that provides imaging services to Ukraine
- The most important thing SpaceX has built is a cost curve. Canada’s path to sovereign launch is no longer theoretical:

SpaceX & the Sentient Sun

3 months ago · 206 likes · 7 comments · Marc Andreessen and Michael McGuiness

Odds & ends: Subcontractor Flow-Down Obligations in Defence Supply Chains… It’s hardware’s turn to eat the world… Germany Drops Jet Project With France in Setback for European Defence Sovereignty… Software, not drones, will define the next war… Have you heard about the US Army Open Solicitation?… Pentagon Needs Flexible, Agile Production Facilities

Launching the Creative Defense Network

If you’ve followed Defense Tech and Acquisition, you know we don’t just analyze the defense acquisition system, we’ve spent our careers trying to transform it. From congressional panels, think tank c…

3 months ago · 27 likes · 6 comments · Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor

Launching a $100K Investment Prize

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 10:02:52 GMT

Editor’s note: One year ago, The Icebreaker sent its first issue to a handful of defence tech investors and curious founders.

Today, we’ve been cited in RBC’s defence finance white paper, featured on CIBC Capital Markets’ podcast, quoted by Canadian and international media over a dozen times, and invited to testify before Parliament. We’ve helped deploy $300K into Canadian startups, hosted the country’s first defence tech hackathon, brought over a dozen corporate sponsors into the fold, conducted two national studies that created proprietary defence tech data, and spoken at business forums across the country as a subject matter expert. None of it happens without you — thousands of community members holding us to a 45%+ average weekly open rate. Year two starts now.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Defence startup VC funding has already hit $14.6B in 2026 — eclipsing the full-year record of $9.6B set in 2025. Just six years ago, the number was $1.6B.

The shift is structural, not cyclical: Anduril’s $5B Series H alone at a $30.5B valuation anchors the surge, with Mach Industries ($300M at $1.8B), Shield AI ($2B), and Saronic ($1.75B) filling out a roster of newly minted unicorns. Applied Aerospace & Defense just went public on the NYSE at a $3.25B valuation — raising $650M. The exit landscape is maturing.

Doing our part:

DMZ Ventures is launching a $100K Dual-Use & Sovereign Tech Investment Prize, live at Startupfest in Montreal next month. The Icebreaker will be a guest judge.
We’re looking for founders building companies that matter, not just to markets, but for Canada.

Here’s the deal:

$100K investment from DMZ Ventures
Direct access to our network of operators, founders, and investors
Fast-tracked entry into DMZ’s flagship Incubator

No long application. No gatekeeping. Just show up. Pitch. Win.

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

🤝 Deal Corner

Canada confirms $2.6B HIMARS purchase — 26 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems from Lockheed Martin, via US Foreign Military Sales. Delivery starts 2029. Range: 300km precision-guided — vs. the Canadian Army's current ~40km howitzers. Designed to incorporate future land-based anti-ship missile capability and protect Arctic coastlines. No Canadian manufacturer exists for the system. CBC confirms DND called this the only option that met operational requirements

Canada's first autonomous combat aircraft — Ottawa-based startup, founded by Eliot Pence (ex-Anduril), has C$21M seed (led by Georgian) + C$50M internally committed + C$500K NRC contract. Building a delta-wing ACP (Autonomous Collaborative Platform) for RCAF's Northern mandate: short/unimproved runway takeoff, Arctic range, heavy weapons load, satellite-linked ground supervision. Moving into a 35,000 sq ft Ottawa facility June 1. Subscale prototype target: 18–24 months

Calian + Cohere: sovereign generative AI for Canadian military ops — The two Ontario firms are partnering to deploy Cohere's North platform (secure enterprise AI) through Calian's defence training and mission support infrastructure. Use cases: mission planning, training assessments, workflow optimization. Extended through Calian VENTURES to give Canadian SMEs access. Cohere emphatically confirmed it is not working with Palantir — "Palantir is not a customer or partner." Context: DND has paid Palantir $46.8M to date

Zighra awarded DND contract for IntentHunter — Ottawa-based Zighra gets Innovative Solutions Canada contract to test IntentHunter: an AI platform that infers drone intent from multi-sensor fusion (RF, EO/IR, radar). Behavioural intent detection — not just signature matching. Designed for counter-UAS operator decision support

Allen Control Systems raises $200M at $2.2B valuation — Austin-based Bullfrog counter-drone AI turret company. Uses standard M240 machine gun + AI computer vision to kill drones. Series B led by Smash Capital. $120M+ in contracts: USSOCOM, Navy, Army, UAE, South Korea. Releasing thousands of units in next 12 months. Up from $170M valuation just a year ago

Mach Industries raises $300M at $1.8B valuation — Series C co-led by Infinite Capital + Ribbit Capital. CEO is a 22-year-old college dropout. Products: Stratos (stratospheric platform), Viper (turbojet one-way attack UAS), Pike (long-range strike drone), Dart (kinetic interceptor), Glide (high-altitude strike). Acquired propulsion firm Exquadrum for $50M. All publicly released products are under contract

Anduril $2B counter-drone sale to Kuwait — State Dept approved ~$1.98B FMS deal days after Iran attacked Kuwait’s airport with missiles and drones (June 3, 1 killed). Systems: Roadrunner-Munition, Anvil-Kinetic, Pulsar EW, Lattice C2, Sentry Towers. Kuwait’s pivot: from Patriot-only to layered low-altitude network

Deterrence + General Dynamics team up on munitions manufacturing — Automated manufacturing startup Deterrence (founded 2023) deploying AI-driven robotics and factory optimization software at GDOTS’s Mesquite, TX facility (155mm artillery projectile bodies). Long-term partnership; evaluating expansion across GDOTS ecosystem

Scotiabank: Canada’s defence scale-up by the numbers — Defence strategy targets: 70% Canadian share of acquisitions, 50% export growth, 85% R&D increase, 240%+ revenue growth. To hit 5% of GDP by 2035, PBO estimates ~$68B/yr above baseline — federal debt rises 6+ percentage points. The harder problem: Canada’s defence supply chain is still only 55% domestically captured. UAS domestic content: 30%

Defence Tech Grows Up: The question for families and investors is not simply whether defence tech matters. It is whether a specific company can move from promise to procurement, from demonstration to production, and from strategic relevance to repeatable revenue.

Vanguard Canada’s data portrait of the industry — $17.3B revenue (+87% since 2014), 70% of exports go to Five Eyes, European sales up 78% since 2022, R&D grants up 309%:

30 Startups for a Sovereign Canada | Canadian30

Canada is recognizing the need for national sovereignty through hundreds of billions of dollars in generational investments, such as the Defence Industrial Strategy, the Canada Strong Fund, and its new National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. According to The Canadian Shield Institute, Canada's defence spending is projected to increase…

3 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Ethan Marcoux

Keeping the Drone Swarm Alive

4 months ago · 156 likes · 6 comments · John Aguillard and Ryan McEntush

Related:

General Petraeus is warning that $54.6B in autonomous warfare spending — a 24,000% year-over-year increase — won’t produce an effective fighting force without doctrine, training, and force structure. Less than 2% of the autonomous warfare budget is directed toward doctrine and integration. “A drone without doctrinal concepts for employment is not a weapons system — it is an asset on a spreadsheet.” The bottleneck isn’t money or hardware. It’s the institutional machinery that turns both into capability
Andreessen Horowitz has led an $11M seed round in Westmag by David Hansen, a new drone motor company in the US
Six companies — AZAK, HavocAI, Leonardo DRS, Allen Control Systems, Picogrid, and Anduril — walked into a demonstration with separate products and walked out days later with a fully integrated autonomous hunter-killer ground vehicle system, presented directly to the Secretary of the Army. Built in under a week. The Hunter: AZAK chassis + Leonardo DRS ACHR radar. The Killer: AZAK chassis + Allen Control Systems Bullfrog counter-drone turret. Picogrid integrated the data flows. Anduril’s Lattice ran command and control. This is what modular open architecture actually looks like in practice — not a slide deck
KPMG on the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank — Canada hosting HQ, 6 Canadian banks signed on as partners, AAA-rated bonds, World Bank model
CD Howe: C.D. Howe did this in 1939 — Canada was the 4th-largest allied war materials producer within years; annual defence spending could approach $150B within a decade
BetaKit on public procurement as a growth lever — Buy Canadian policy currently reserves only 25% of contracts over $25M; US Buy American threshold is $10,000
CGAI on unlocking the minor capital portfolio — double the allocation to $1B/yr, raise threshold to $99M, ring-fence SME access
CIGI: Canada at economic war — 360-degree threat environment, every form of national power is a potential weapon
Canada as a global defence finance center

ROAR brings together the people shaping the future of robotics, autonomy, and public safety innovation in Canada

Get your tickets: https://www.roarconference.ca/conferences/east

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Ukraine’s Droid TW 12.7 robot held a contested intersection for 45 days — 12.7mm M2 Browning, operated from 10km, serviced every 2 days. Zero casualties. Zelenskyy wants 50,000 UGVs minimum. Russia already fields 32 distinct ground robotics systems
China published HG-STR — a “kill them all” swarm algorithm: autonomous targeting across a jammed, vision-blocked battlefield. Fixed-wing drones. 100% coverage rate in ideal conditions. Designed to hunt and eliminate every enemy target with no human command
Modern warfare aspires to be pan‑domain. What does that mean for western militaries?
Helsing officially launches Area 9 research division + RX-1 robot dog — Europe’s answer to Boston Dynamics. Led by Helsing Chief Scientist Antoine Bordes. Partnered with ETH Zurich and INRIA Paris. “Until now, robotics research in Europe meant depending on platforms built elsewhere.”
Thales RapidDestroyer RF directed energy weapon swept 80 drones in trials. Four-panel effector. Longer-range engagement
Lockheed blasted a Shahed-style drone using a JAGM from a Grizzly containerized launcher at Yuma Proving Ground — first time. Managed by AI-driven Sanctum platform + Fortem R40 radar. Integration completed in under 45 days. Grizzly fits in a standard 10-foot shipping container
Anduril set to win sole-source Marine Corps ACV counter-drone contract — Pulsar-L EW platform (25 lbs, Yeti-cooler size) for Amphibious Combat Vehicles. “Unusual and compelling urgency.” Already holds a $642M, 10-year Marine Corps cUAS program of record
Estonia rolls out drone detection network across 25+ cities. Meanwhile Canada has no national UAS detection architecture

Related:

Canadian bacon: Canada in discussions to join $1.6-billion NATO Innovation Fund… DND’s Strategic Partnership Framework is live: time-limited MOUs, 5-year reviews, sovereignty-first requirements (substantive decision-making authority in Canada, IP in Canada, audit rights). Selection: DIA + ISED + DND at Deputy Minister level. Approval: Secretary of State (Defence Procurement). UAS currently has only 30% Canadian content — the lowest of any sovereign capability area
Assured access to space underpins navigation, communications, and surveillance for the Canadian Armed Forces and our allies
Defence Advisory Forum structure: co-chaired by Secretary of State (Defence Procurement), Minister of National Defence, and Minister of Industry. Meets twice yearly. First meeting: September 2026. Industry members serve on rotation. Does not address specific procurement
Open IDEaS challenges this week — AI sensor fusion (up to $6.75M, deadline July 14) | Urban AI situational awareness (up to $6.75M, deadline July 14) | True North Precision: laser ranging on small drones ($2.1M, deadline June 10) | Sentinel Shield counter-UAS wide-area detection (up to $1M + $20M follow-on, deadline June 25) | ISED satellite cybersecurity ($2M, deadline July 2)

Europe's Hypersonic Moment - with Philipp Kerth, Co-founder of Hypersonica

4 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Louise Boucher

Iran roundup: A $35,000 Shahed drone costs 220x less than the Patriot interceptor used to kill it. Gulf states burned through over 1,000 Patriots in the first 10 days while Patriot production runs at ~600 per year. The US won’t replenish Tomahawks until late 2030. The lesson isn’t just about restocking — it’s about rethinking what “layered defence” actually means. Fences, helicopters, and gun systems do most of the work. Prestige platforms handle the rest
- New era of air and missile defence: four structural failures exposed — magazine exhaustion, limited penetrations still had strategic effect, insufficient coalition integration, cost asymmetry. Fix: fire-control-level integration + disaggregated survivable architectures + affordable magazine depth + offensive action as the centre of defence. Fixed systems are targets. Mobility is a survival requirement
- NYT interactive on Iran war drone cost asymmetry: Shahed-136 = $35,000. APKWS II intercept = $65,000. Coyote = $253,000. SM-2 = $4.2M. PAC-3 MSE = $8M per two-shot salvo. Directed energy laser = $3/shot. DoD allocated $1B in FY25 to research directed energy
Elbit America + Anduril team up on SIGMA mobile tactical cannon for Army self-propelled howitzer modernization — 155mm, 52-caliber, fully automated, on an Oshkosh 10×10. Anduril integrating Lattice. Built in the US with 300+ suppliers

Mapping Canada’s Defence Innovation Landscape

Canada’s defence ecosystem is moving quickly.

There is significant innovation happening in Canada’s defence and dual-use sectors, but there is no comprehensive picture of where that innovation exists.

Read an update on the Vimy Forge Black Flight Cohort, which recently crossed the halfway point of its first program as Canada’s first Defence Accelerator.

Who is building what?
Where are those companies located?
What capabilities are being developed?
How mature are those technologies? Where are the gaps?

Today, there is no single source of truth that provides those answers.

To help address this challenge, Vimy Forge is launching a national initiative to map Canada’s defence, security, and dual-use innovation landscape.

If your organization is developing technology relevant to defence, security, resilience, critical infrastructure, or sovereign capability, you are invited to participate.

Learn more about the initiative or complete the Expression of Interest to help map Canada’s defence innovation landscape.

🔫 Hot Shots

AI war: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Microsoft AI CEOs all signed a letter calling on Congress to mandate DNA synthesis screening — the AI biosecurity threat is real: AI lowers the knowledge barrier to engineering pathogens. A 2017 precedent: Canadian researchers recreated horsepox for $100,000 in mail-ordered DNA. Gene synthesis is now cheaper… Anthropic Urges Global Pause in AI Development, Flags ‘Self-Improvement’ Risk
Why does AI in War matter?
Trump signed an AI security executive order — stops short of mandatory safety tests. Instead: voluntary 30-day government review window before public model release. Creates an AI vulnerability clearinghouse. Delayed two weeks over innovation-stifling concerns
DoD expanded classified AI work to 8 companies: SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle. Anthropic excluded — blacklisted as a “supply chain risk” after contract dispute over ethical constraints on AI in warfare

Grey war: Five Eyes (FBI, MI5, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) issued an unprecedented joint warning on Chinese LinkedIn spying — targeting government and military personnel with access to classified info via professional networking sites… New cyber force would cost up to $11 billion to start, commission says
Electronic warfare does not arrive politely after the operation begins
A Ukrainian naval drone lost control under Russian EW and self-detonated in Romania’s Constanța port — a NATO member state. Three other Ukrainian drones blew up the same day. Russia’s EW is now routinely redirecting weapons into allied territory… Ukrainian drones are now autonomously intercepting Shaheds
War on the Rocks: the Pentagon’s AI edge is being distilled away — adversaries don’t need to hack US systems; they harvest frontier model outputs through APIs. The “Arena” leaderboard gap between US and Chinese models has narrowed from 17% in 2023 to 2.7%. Stanford researchers distilled Meta’s Llama for $600 vs. $82,000. Anthropic accused DeepSeek and Moonshot AI of generating millions of fraudulent API calls to extract Claude’s capabilities
Small Wars Journal on covert drone warfare: third-party state intervention via drone allows combat participation with near-zero political cost and high deniability. Creates “stalemate without the hurt” — reducing the pain threshold that drives peace negotiations
China’s new sailless mystery submarine spotted at JN Shipyard in Shanghai satellite imagery (June 1). ~120m long, X-form rudders, no traditional sail. Possible pumpjet propulsion. Faster, quieter, potentially seabed-focused. A second similar boat may have launched at Huludao — the nuclear-only shipyard. China has launched 15–20 submarines in 5 years across at least 8 new classes

Odds & ends: VanTech Journal: “Buy Canadian” in defence software is hollow without teeth — a vendor can satisfy one of three requirements (auditability, data residency, Canadian-controlled IP) and still win a contract. Azure holds ~4x the federal cloud volume of AWS. The F-35 review is still open because the data-control question turned out to be real
Canadian Shield Institute: data residency ≠ data sovereignty — CLOUD Act and FISA allow US agencies to compel data from US-headquartered cloud providers regardless of where servers are. Microsoft’s own lawyer confirmed before French lawmakers that European-held data could be transmitted to US authorities
CBC: Canada’s cloud market is “broken” — Amazon, Google, Microsoft control ~85% of Canadian cloud market. Switching costs are prohibitive. Domestic “sovereign” providers are “maplewashed dependencies” without interoperability rules
Xona Space Systems ($170M Series C) targeting Canadian Arctic with LEO Pulsar PNT network — signals 100x stronger than GPS, jam-resistant, cryptographically secure. DRDC funding: $850K. NRC + ISED partnership to distribute Canada’s UTC standard through the network. North of Edmonton: GPS coverage degrades
DIANA’s Challenges for 2027 have launched!
Ghost Bat sales poised to take off
Introducing the UK’s 13 defence unicorns
Anduril engineers introduce a pre-execution reliability layer that verifies and repairs agent decision before any execution occurs
The CAF wants UGVs
Japan’s Hidden Arsenal: The Sub-Component Revolution Nobody Is Talking About
Government as customer and capital source: Silicon Valley itself was built on this defence relationship
Pure-play space companies are carving out a growing share of the commercial space industry

US Out of Tomahawks Until 2030

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:02:02 GMT

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Silicon Valley Defense Group (SVDG) released its annual NatSec100, an annual pulse check on the overall health of the emerging defence technology ecosystem in the US.

The top 100 received $4.3B in US federal obligations in FY25 (+22% YoY); $16B lifetime (+36%). 38 new entrants made this year’s list.

Tectonic reports that SVDG teamed up with J.P. Morgan this year, with a big focus not only on helping Silicon Valley connect with defence, but also on helping institutional capital better understand how to deploy later-stage capital into these defence tech companies.

Source: Defense Tech and Acquisition

Pete Modigliani at Defense Tech and Acquisition writes that this year’s report captured six shifts in the defence tech landscape:

Washington Rewired the Rules. Executive orders, the Acquisition Transformation Strategy, DRPMs, OSC, EDU, Reconciliation, and the Innovation Adoption Kit.
The Battlefield Imperative. Lessons from Ukraine and Iran resulted in increase in AI and autonomy experimentation to central DoW modernization priority and reshaped capital flows, procurement priorities, and operational doctrine.
Production as the Bottleneck. Drones, counter-drone systems, munitions, advanced manufacturing, and shipbuilding are all facing the same constraint: production capacity has not kept pace with demand signals or private investment.
The Capital Stack is Being Rebuilt. OSC, EDU, equity stakes, DPA-backed financing, leasing arrangements, and large IDIQs represent a new theory of how public and private capital should work together in national security.
The Primes Are Adapting. Corporate venture capital funds are expanding significantly. Prime CapEx investment is up roughly 35% for 2026. Compensation ceiling tensions, subcontracting relationships, and M&A activity are all shifting.
The Exit Landscape is Maturing. Approximately 20 companies have graduated from the NatSec100 through acquisition or public offering since 2023. These exits represent the clearest evidence yet that defence tech is producing real liquidity events and that the asset class is becoming durable.

Related:

US defence startups at 1.3% of Pentagon obligations (up from 0.6%), still stuck moving from production to programming of record

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

🤝 Deal Corner

Canadian drones will head to Ukrainian battlefield under production deal

Drones made in Canada could be headed for the battlefield in Ukraine, thanks to a new corporate partnership between Canadian and Ukrainian drone makers.

National Defence says the drones will be made by the Ukrainian company Airlogix and Canadian drone maker Sentinel R&D, which is based out of Hamilton, Ont.

Also last week: Defence tech founders are frustrated with Canada’s approach to “dual-use” [N.B. This Toronto Tech Week event was co-hosted by The Icebreaker]

Eliot Pence: Canada’s defence buying timelines are “irrelevant” for modern warfare
Defence companies call on government, investors for more support
Why Canada’s defence tech needs to rewrite the operating model
At CANSEC, the PM announced a series of new supports, including new ITB rules, and a defence concierge service that will be available to SMEs
- Ottawa is also designating domestic defence champions — a Strategic Partnership Framework that lets the government bypass traditional procurement
- Ottawa has pledged to boost military spending. Canada’s defence companies want to know what it will buy — and when

Red Team Hackathon winners from Ottawa last week

Related:

Lastwall raises $16 million to defend critical infrastructure in cyberspace
Canada + Poland lock in drone deal via EU SAFE funds
PitchBook analysts identify PE and VC winners and losers across industrials amid Iran war
- Defence tech VC hits record quarter as combat, procurement, and AI signals converge
- BCI public comps for the month include defence (thanks Christian Grunt!)
Q&A: Erin O’Toole says Canada needs to play catch-up on defence innovation
Canadian defence supply chain: There are 2,880 organizations holding Controlled Goods Program registration in Canada, and 2,458 of them have no observed prime contract

This Founder Left Washington To Defend Canada’s Arctic
How Aurmada threads the needle of fashion and defence tech

SpaceX wins $4.16 billion US Space Force contract for threat-detection satellites
- The largest IPO in history
The Growing Canadian Defence Tech Bubble is Real, and It’s Going to Hurt
Telesat and Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation announce strategic collaboration agreement to ensure Canada’s sovereign energy future
Defence start-ups face a financing wall
The US ports and bases that would actually keep a mass of autonomous systems in the fight are treated as background infrastructure:

How I Spend My Time as a NatSec Venture Capitalist

No two days are ever alike in venture capital (VC), and no two venture capitalists spend their time in the same way. Each successful VC has their own unique strategy to see, pick, win, and support the best early stage technology companies. VC feedback cycles are long – it can take 5-10 years to know if an early stage investment is successful. As such, I…

4 months ago · 21 likes · Maggie Gray

Accelerating Canada’s Quantum Capabilities for Defence Will Unlock Broader Economic Opportunities

Special Guest POV by Gordon Harling, President and CEO, CMC Microsystems

The Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) underscores how critical Canada’s quantum industry is to national defence readiness, sovereign capability, cyber resilience, and allied interoperability.

After decades of early investment and visionary research, Canada has established itself as a global leader in quantum technologies. Quantum follows semiconductors as critical infrastructure across many applications beyond defence including vaccine discovery, materials research, and crop management.

Canada’s quantum strategy, as it relates to defence, is about more than just owning quantum computers; it is about retaining critical IP, manufacturing expertise, and research and development capability in Canada as quantum technology heads toward commercial viability. The government’s focus on bolstering sovereignty includes making Canada less dependent on foreign firms for sensitive technologies like quantum.

Recent defence spending and broader government investments are being used to accelerate innovation ecosystems, scale domestic quantum companies, speed commercialization, and support adoption of quantum technologies by the Canadian Armed Forces – and industry at large.

Canada punches above its weight in quantum technologies, whether it’s computing, sensors, or communications. All have been identified as key dual-use capabilities that can contribute to national defence ambitions and map directly onto current Canadian military requirements, and all three have been identified by Canada’s National Quantum Strategy (NQS) as key priorities.

The FABrIC program, managed by CMC Microsystems, is building domestic capacity in advanced technologies such as compound semiconductors, photonics, integrated sensors, and superconductors which are all critical for the fabrication of domestic quantum computers. FABrIC enables the creation of custom components from Canadian factories in support of many advanced technologies, including quantum. FABrIC also provides high-quality training for the designers of the future who will create trusted electronic components, components for secure communications, and advanced sensors.

Canada’s quantum industry is critical to helping the country defend its networks, field advanced military systems, and preserve technological sovereignty in a world where quantum advantage may shape both conflict and competitiveness.

Article continues here. [French translation available].

⚔️ Combat Readiness

Airbus picks Mistral AI as its sovereign defence AI partner

Airbus signed a full partnership agreement with Mistral AI, the Paris-based large language model company, to deploy AI across its commercial aircraft, helicopter, defence, and space divisions. The deal gives Airbus the ability to run models on-premises.

The Defense Post writes that on-premises AI deployment means running model inference on hardware physically inside a secure facility, air-gapped from external networks. The challenge beyond security is compute: large language models require substantial GPU infrastructure to run at useful latency. Mistral’s models are generally smaller and more efficient than US frontier models, making them better suited for on-prem deployment in resource-constrained environments.

The Factory Floor Nobody Imagined

4 months ago · 21 likes · 3 comments · Louise Boucher

Related:

Christian Leuprecht described current investments as barely getting Canada “out of the starting blocks” on a 100-metre run to sovereign defence. Canada still hasn’t finalized a comprehensive list of military needs, and may not be buying the best kit
Why Swindon is emerging as a centre for Britain’s drone industry
This Sam Altman- And Peter Thiel-Backed Aviation Company Achieves Supersonic Flight
Canadian bacon: Once overlooked, Davie now occupies a critical nexus between three allies that have pledged to shore up their icebreaking capabilities… Canada picks Swedish early-warning aircraft tech over U.S. bidders - was it a good idea… After the GlobalEye program, the Carney government is eyeing Gripen fighter jets… Ontario Unveils Framework for Defence Industrial Strategy
- Canadian Victoria Cross — independent military honours review board for Afghan cases established

Thought leadership: It’s time to rethink Canada’s space agency through a national security and innovation lens… Non-Arctic State Policies and Strategies Alignments with Canada… A Third Option for Canadian defence SMEs after the Permanent Joint Board on Defence Pause… Sovereign capabilities are not built on spending alone. They are built on the architecture that enables partnerships… Canada calls for NATO strategy to secure Arctic as northern flank of military alliance
- Easier to start, harder to win — the dangerous delusion of modern war
Drone wars: Seven Companies Advance to the US Navy’s MUSV Prototype Phase… Drone on drone intercept [VIDEO]… AUKUS to develop unmanned undersea vehicles, delivery set for 2027… President Trump says that the new ballroom will have a “Drone Port”
Uncommon Leadership
The Drone War Is Moving at the Speed of Conversation. The Pentagon Isn’t.
By Pete Newell…
Read more
4 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · BMNT

Iran roundup: The US won’t replenish its Tomahawk inventory until late 2030 — 1,000+ were fired in the Iran war; fewer than 200 are produced per year… The next hot defence category is cheaper and smarter missiles — a list of startups building them… DoD reverted to spreadsheets and phone calls during Operation Epic Fury to track munitions… During the Iran war, the US relied on Canada’s embassy in Abu Dhabi to distribute passports to ~1,000 Americans after US embassies closed

Arctic shelf: Polar regions are critical to space access: China leased antennas in Kiruna, Sweden (not being renewed) and is building its 6th Antarctic station

From the Ukrainian front: Ukraine is turning the tables, using AI drones to strike vital convoys supplying Russian troops… US Military Is Built for the Wrong Century… Russian EW capabilities… How China is secretly arming Russia’s drone arsenal

🔫 Hot Shots

AI war: A Helsing wargame found that 12,000 HX-2 AI-enabled strike drones could collapse a Russian three-front Baltic invasion (targeting Lithuania) within days — Russia would lose 1/3 of attacking troops in 10 days. The HX-2 runs at 60–80% accuracy in Ukraine. Semi-autonomous swarms: 1 pilot to 10+ drones… Anthropic’s Claude has been integrated into Palantir’s Maven Smart System and was used in US strikes on Iran… McKinsey survey: 600+ AI efforts across DoD. Most leaders are not yet seeing scaled impact… A Quiet Navy Shipbuilding Move Just Put Palantir’s Software Deeper Into the Yard

Grey war: China now controls 50.7% of global shipbuilding output — up from 35.9% nine years ago, backed by ~$132B in state support. The US holds 0.1%. A projected 200,000–250,000 worker shortfall over the next decade. The maintenance backlog is now 26 years deep… UK GCHQ Director Anne Keast-Butler: “China is now a science and tech superpower… the ground beneath our feet is shifting.” The West is “running out of time” to maintain its technological edge… Chinese forces used electronic warfare to drive off Dutch frigate HNLMS De Ruyter near the Paracel Islands during the Pacific Archer mission… MIGS Institute: Beijing’s United Front Work Department is conducting foreign interference across all G7 nations. Canada is explicitly named… Finland - ‘Cellular also impacted by interference’… What is a forward-deployed engineer?

Odds & ends: The Swedish deal, the defence bank and the West’s awakening from its long dream… Germany is pledging 4 Type 212-CD submarines by 2036, with both Germany and Norway each yielding one vessel from existing orders to prioritize Canada… Algoma Steel would supply material for the possible manufacturing of land defence vehicles in Canada… Convergence Design Services (Arnprior) and 13 Canadian partners built an all-Canadian electric military vehicle — autonomous and manned variants — in 4 months for a seven-figure prototype cost… Fulfilling The Promise of Canada: Charting a National Strategy for an Unstable World… AERALIS: Innovation, Hype, or the Reality of Defence Procurement?
- Canada is the only G7 country without a geodetic station… Warfighting and War Winning in Space… Blue Origin’s New Glenn failure is a reminder of how unforgiving spaceflight remains
  - The AI supply crunch is here
  - There is no country that can fully design and manufacture a chip independently
  - How the AI age is replaying history’s oldest power game — and why the dollar is still the answer:
  Currency of Power
  The Pax Without Peace
  Pax means peace. The Roman Senate coined the phrase, the historians burnished it, and every hegemon since has borrowed the concept. Yet if you survey the world in 2026 — trade wars, export controls, chip embargoes, rare earth weaponisation, drone-contested borders, stablecoin legislation passed in the shadow of geopolitical anxiety — peace is the last word that comes to mind. Even the …
  Read more
  4 months ago · 3 likes · Marieke Flament and Nicolas Colin

Mind of Things

PhDs who can fight

I had the pleasure of spending the last several days with Australian mates. Over that time, Admiral Bradley embodied Bill Donovan’s saying, “We want PhDs that can win bar fights.” This was the hallmark of what the OSS looked for, at least sometimes. The OSS recruited hard, smart men. They also recruited Julia Child. What does this tell us about the educ…

4 months ago · 11 likes · Justin Mc

The 60+ Companies Shaping Europe’s Security: Defence Database

Ukraine’s Battlefield Innovation Loop

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:02:50 GMT

Editor’s note: This morning, we’re co-hosting 100+ folks at Arctic Edge, one of Toronto Tech Week’s most oversubscribed events, in partnership with CSMC, Torys LLP, and RBCx.

Thanks to CIBC for hosting The Icebreaker at its Defence and Resiliency Summit last week in Toronto.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Ukraine’s edge is not just better drones. It’s a frontline innovation loop where soldiers report failures directly, engineers patch fast, and products either survive combat conditions or get exposed immediately.

In Ukraine, soldiers can flag failures straight to manufacturers, frontline labs can prototype fixes fast, and bad tech gets exposed immediately under real battlefield conditions. That is why “tested in Ukraine” only means something when a system has survived multiple rotations, operator feedback, and Russian electronic warfare — not a staged demo and a photo.

Reality check: Most Western firms still optimize for procurement cycles, not adaptation cycles. The best partners keep engineers near the fight, ship updates quickly, and build around end-user feedback; the rest are still designing for Western buyers while treating Ukraine like a side market.

Canadian drone maker Sentinel to build drones for Ukraine through joint venture.

Bottom Line: The real partnership model is not Western primes leading and Ukraine subcontracting. It is Ukraine owning the fast iteration loop, while Western partners bring certification, capital, and production scale — because the lesson from this war is clear: speed, affordability, and feedback density now matter as much as technical sophistication.

Related:

BetaKit Most Ambitious names Canada’s national security innovators to watch
- “We have no idea if there are Russian subs sitting on the ocean seabed under the ice.”
Canadian defence companies call on government, investors for more support
Defence Industrial Strategy will succeed or fail in the procurement office: Detailed technical requirements written in 2024 will be outdated on arrival, obsolete by 2025 and a liability by 2026
- Five steps SMB’s need to take to get into Canadian defence fast!
  - Do I need CMMC, or CPCSC, or both – and what is the difference anyway?

Security Compass helps you maintain end-to-end security traceability across your control framework: requirement → implementation → test/verification → evidence. Give assessors what they need faster, with less ambiguity.

🤝 Deal Corner

Shield AI Tapped for LUCAS Autonomy

Tectonic reports that autonomy giant Shield AI has been been tapped by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW R&E) to build its Hivemind autonomy software onto LUCAS—the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System.

Peter Walker

Hivemind will play AI pilot for the Shahed-like attack drone, “enabling groups of drones to coordinate, maneuver, and adapt together to changing conditions in real time, based on warfighter input.”

The company has raised about $3.15B in funding—most recently, a $2B Series G at a $12.7B valuation.

Related:

Ottawa spending $5M on defence testing at Ontario Tech University
Earlybird and AVP Reportedly Raising €500M Defence Fund
The $50 Million Rocket Deal Fueled by Trump’s Hypersonic Dreams
- Mach Industries Snaps Up Rocket Motor-Maker Exquadrum
Is HawkEye 360 the road map for defence tech and tough tech start ups?
Helsing, on the cusp of a $1.2B raise, forms space JV with OHB to build AI-based targeting systems
Manufacturing Startup Amca Closes $300M Series B
Canadians want defence dollars spent on Canadian-owned firms, not U.S. companies or their subsidiaries
Historic Marconi name returns as Canadian investors launch defence tech firm
How defence spending will shrink global imbalances and weaken US
NAV CANADA sells foundational Aireon stake in US$166M sale to Iridium
$21M provincial investment takes U of A defence innovation to the next level
Japan to support growth of dual-use tech startups with early payments
“Demand for Ukrainian defence technologies is systemic and growing in both the US and Europe” — Oleksandr Soroka, Network VC
PE deal count in aerospace & defence more than doubles in Q1 2026 as defence budgets and geopolitics drive record activity

The Venturist

Dear friends…

4 months ago · 14 likes · 3 comments · Roko Karanusic

Venture capital opportunities in Canada’s defence sector
- Canada’s defence build-up and the new M&A playbook
Anduril Unveils Voyager 1 for Mobile Compute and Comms
Harvard has a defence-tech incubator. Pete Hegseth should visit it
Perennial Autonomy Scores $500M JIATF 401 IDIQ
SBQuantum announces two new contracts (totaling $3 million CAD), to deliver arrays of its quantum sensors alongside its magnetic intelligence platform
Strike drones startup Stark targeting blockbuster new funding round, sources say
Three ex-Bundeswehr officers are building Europe’s land prime
TKMS and Isar Aerospace have agreed on a landmark industrial cooperation project to build an independent Canadian space capability… Reaction Dynamics and Hanwha Ocean sign MOU to explore strategic investment in Reaction Dynamics as part of Hanwha Ocean’s broader commitment to supporting high-potential Canadian companies through a dedicated venture capital fund
Canada’s Future in Space: How We Got Here, and Where We’re Headed
Ondas Inc. Q1: $50.1M revenue. +1,000% YoY. EBITDA profitability at the product-company level — six months ahead of plan
Edge Computing Company Armada Raises $230M at $2B Valuation
A wave of maritime startups bet that the future of naval power looks nothing like the past
JPMorganChase Expands Security and Resiliency Initiative Across Europe
European deep tech has a recurring failure mode
CDR’s Top 100 Defence Companies list
Interested in becoming part of NATO DIANA’s 2027 cohort of innovators?
Updated list of Europe-domiciled VC funds investing in defence, security and resilience
Sitreps Salary Explorer and asked veterans to share their private sector comp anonymously

📢 Dual-Use & Defence 101 Day | June 15, 2026

The defence and dual-use sector is one of the most consequential and fastest-growing spaces in Canada, and one of the hardest to break into without the right context.

Sandbox Centre, in partnership with PerceptX, Invest Barrie, and supported by Simcoe County, is hosting a Dual-Use & Defence 101 Day, a free, full-day event in Barrie, Ontario designed for companies and individuals who want to understand how the sector actually works.

We are bringing together a rare group: senior leaders with deep defence experience, alongside individuals who are actively working in the defence space today.

Speakers include Troy Crosby (Former ADM Materiel, National Defence), Andre Filion (Former ADM Defence and Marine Procurement, PSPC), Darcy Byrtus (Former President, BMT Fleet Technology), Mike Petric (Managing Director, PerceptX), Darian Harris (Founder and CEO, Fuse Ventures), Albert Behr (President and CEO, Behr and Associates), Frank Taylor (Canadian Special Operations Forces JTF2 Operator), and Adam Varey (Ballistics Expert, Former Military Police).
Partners and speakers are flying in from Singapore, the United States, and from across the province. Additional speakers and panelists to be announced.

As part of the day, 10 companies will be selected for dedicated one-on-one sessions with our defence practitioners, a focused conversation to help you understand where your organization might fit within the defence market.

This is a curated event with limited capacity.

Submit a request to join our Dual-Use and Defence 101 Day and learn about the additional opportunities we will be offering throughout the year, including our upcoming demo days and future defence programming.

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

The United States is Betting Big on Affordable Missiles

Four American companies have been selected to potentially deliver over 10,000 mini cruise missiles between 2027 and 2029 under the Low-Cost Containerized Missile program. These are Anduril’s SLB-500M, CoAspire’s GHOST, and as yet unconfirmed systems from Leidos and Zone 5 Technologies. Production contracts will be awarded following an evaluation and assessment phase scheduled to begin in June 2026.

Jordan Yashari

The Solid Rocket Motor Problem

Russia builds Shahed drones for roughly $30,000 each and launches them at Ukrainian cities in waves. The interceptors America and its allies fire to shoot them down cost ten to twenty times that, take more than a year to manufacture, and run on a supply chain so consolidated that a single chemical from a single company sits at the bottom of the whole th…

4 months ago · 4 likes · Investing in Organized Chaos

Debating Canadian Defence

Related:

BlitzBox Packs 100 Weaponized Drones Into An Unassuming Container
The Pentagon wants more missiles. The supply chain has… two engine makers
- Why 3D Printing Is Becoming The Pentagon’s Most Vital Asset
IAI’s new Diamond naval offering envisions flexible drones, missiles for small vessels
The US Navy Needs Precise Mass and Here Is How to Get There
- How a former Navy officer’s will to serve is shaping the future of hardware development
Germany chooses EU analytics company over US-based Palantir
- NATO commander: Europe has no alternative to Palantir’s warfare tech
- L3Harris-Palantir combo nets night vision production gains
- Someone just open-sourced Palantir
- Palantir fights Pentagon over key intelligence contract
This GPS-guided mortar system is meant to automate the call for fire
Drones could mean the end of sprawling bases seen during Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
Europe’s secret Plan B to replace NATO
Inside Israel’s High-Tech Campaign to Kill or Capture Every Oct. 7 Attacker
Canadian bacon: Pentagon gave Canada classified paper detailing defence priorities… Pentagon doubles down on Canada rebuke with demand for NATO spending road map, F-35 decision… The Pentagon has posted notice that Canada has purchased a number of HIMARS systems for $1.1 billion. DND has said it plans to buy long-range missile capability. But it won’t confirm this purchase… Investing in the Canadian Armed Forces is an insurance policy… Ottawa nominates chief of defence staff for key NATO role… Will Canada get to 3.5%?… ‘Keeping an eye on Canada’: U.S. DEA plans to open new offices north of the border… Canada releases updated sanctions guidance for the aerospace and defence sectors… Canada’s Snowbirds jets grounded until 2030s as replacement aircraft identified… Canada’s $1-trillion defence commitment: whose future are we defending?… Adapt or Adopt? Canada, Sweden, and Whole-of-Society Defence… Military asks personnel in capital region to return field gear, citing ‘critical equipment shortages’
- With its pause on the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, the U.S. is attempting to constrain Canada
- Project Athena is a veteran-built web map where soldiers who served in Afghanistan can upload their photos, pin them to the exact location they were taken, and become part of a living record of the war

Putting the PJBD on hiatus

The Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD) has apparently been suspended by the United States. Elbridge Colby, the American Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, announced the decision on X. Created in 1940, the PJBD was the first institution of continental defence cooperation set up by the United States and Canada. Since then, the PJBD has become far…

4 months ago · 50 likes · 18 comments · Philippe Lagassé

Thought leadership: Canadian advanced manufacturing builds world-class IP – then gives it away… Transforming the Canadian Army for High-Intensity Warfare at the Divisional Level: A Digital and Structural Blueprint for Continuous Modernization… Procurement is no longer just an administrative function, it’s a crucial strategic capability… Reliable short-term capability will deliver long-term defence strength… Drones in the African Battlespaces… Alex MacDonald urges rapid Canadian pivot to lunar surface robotics… Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy: Structural Shift or Just Another Spending Surge?… Time to Bring Back the U.S. Maritime Service to Support America’s Maritime Revival and a Wartime Economy… Canadian armored vehicles defending Ukraine: key facts about the Roshel Senator MRAP
- 2025 State of the Canadian Space Sector Report
- State of Canada’s Defence Industry Report
- 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗼𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗼𝗳𝗳𝘀 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺
Drone wars: 48 companies have been invited to compete in the Phase 2 Drone Dominance Qualifier at Camp Grayling, MI, testing approximately 78 unique drones across Long Range Strike and Tactical Assault in Close Quarters mission areas — including Canada’s Volatus Aerospace… Hyfix raises $15 million to build a U.S. alternative to DJI’s drone dominance… US soldiers learn to identify drones by sound
- CAF seeking innovative solutions for cost-effective range finding and targeting capabilities to be used on small drones… U.S. firm builds a 360-degree rotating turret to kill drone swarms… U.S. Army evaluates secretive Disruptor kamikaze drone… Vietnamese army showing off armed USV made out of commercially available technologies [VIDEO]… Crashed mothership drone that is carrying 2 FPV drones [VIDEO]
- Ukraine reached interceptor drone production of roughly 1,500 units a day in January, per its defence ministry. Output in the first four months of 2026 already exceeded the whole of 2025

Noahpinion

All non-drone militaries are obsolete

Drone warfare has been a fascination of mine for a very long time. When I read Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” as a kid, I imagined what would happen if the attacking swarms were mechanical birds, controlled with AI. When I read about Japanese kamikazes in WW2, I reasoned that someday we’d have drones do the same. In 2013, I wrote…

4 months ago · 715 likes · 151 comments · Noah Smith and Latent.Space

Iran roundup: Rewriting The Air Defence Equation: The Lessons Of Epic Fury… Sweeping the strait: the companies gearing up to clear the Gulf of mines… Missiles Aren’t Strategy: Lessons From Iran for a Pacific Air War

Arctic shelf: Economic statecraft harmonization via the Arctic?… DND and ISED launch $5.5M in challenges for Arctic optical comms and quantum repeaters… The New Cold War: Capital, Conflict, and the Race for the Arctic… Canadian troops are steeling to fight Russia. Will Ottawa back them?… Canadian Coast Guard getting $816M to boost Arctic security, secure southern waters

From the Ukrainian front: New Ukrainian tactic: launch a Hornet from a balloon at 8 km, drop it 42 km downrange with 95% battery intact… A Ukrainian FP2 UAV is reportedly launching rockets toward targets in Crimea [VIDEO]… Drones are transforming warfare, but you won’t find a Ukrainian commander who wouldn’t ask for more artillery or more ammunition… How China quietly helps Russia in Ukraine… Russian sapphire giant that armed missiles now faces collapse… Small FPV drones, weighing only a few kilograms, are now striking Russian supply depots… China can produce four billion FPV drones per year. Ukraine, a country that has been at war for three years and is building faster than anyone in the West, manages four million

🔫 Hot Shots

AI war: Booz Allen’s mission software and cyber capabilities now run on Anduril Industries’ Menace compute and communications systems and are integrated with Anduril’s Lattice software… AI is moving ahead but Defence and Intelligence systems are still catching up… Lyzr AI raises from In-Q-Tel… Frontier AI deployments in the US military… AI eats the world, and moves the needle more than drones in warfare

@davidu on Google bailing out of Project Maven:\n\n\"Silicon Valley’s origin was in helping the government with the best technology.\"\n\n\"There was a big protest inside Google. People decided they didn't want to participate.\"\n\n\"Google was bailing out of supporting the government.\" ","username":"sourceryy","name":"sourcery","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1983214024767553537/IenNgEX1_normal.jpg","date":"2026-05-18T15:46:52.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_1028,c_limit,q_auto:best/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_88/c3kau9lbcz45lr3utf1l","link_url":"https://t.co/j2wxqftXgY"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":1,"retweet_count":5,"like_count":71,"impression_count":194678,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2056398895090118656/vid/avc1/1280x720/_b_v8k7BRADYQt4-.mp4","video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

Grey war: Quantum Systems and Helsing Europe’s Defence Paradox - Why Fragmentation, Not Funding, Is Holding Back Scale and Innovation… Regulatory Friendly Fire: How ITAR Undermines the Alliance It Was Built to Protect… From Innovation to Weaponisation: How China Exploits the Australian and New Zealand Open Scientific Systems… Xi Has $1.2 Trillion Rare Earths Leverage Ahead of Trump Visit… Treat critical minerals as a national security asset… Patents are “Chinese instruction manuals”

Canadian Cyber in Context

Microsoft and American Hyperscalers Refuse to Accept Reality About Canadian Digital Sovereignty

4 months ago · 9 likes · 1 comment · Alexander Rudolph

Odds & ends: Poland has spent fifty billion dollars on American weapons. Last week the Pentagon scrapped plans to deploy 4,200 troops to Poland… Cogs of War seeking defence finance writers… South Korea’s Hanwha showcases submarine as Ottawa mulls multibillion-dollar contract… Beyond Capability: The Strategic Calculus Behind Canada’s Submarine Procurement … You can’t surge a sub workforce overnight… CAF seeking innovative research and development (R&D) solutions to provide a secure and resilient information eco-system by leveraging optical links via a transportable Optical Ground Station (OGS) capable of establishing communication with low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites; multi-modal AI for advanced situational decisions; virtual and physical training system for semi-autonomous teleoperated manipulators; drone surge… SpaceX has produced 1300+ founders that raised over $5.2B in total funding… Operational Reform Must Accompany ITB Modernization… Canadian SMEs: How to fully benefit from the Industrial and Technological Benefits Policy… BridgeLine was built for that intersection: translating military experience into civilian capability so institutions can better identify, absorb, and deploy high-value talent
- SpaceX IPO: “...and (ii) the Company’s completion of non-Earth-based data centers capable of delivering 100 terawatts of compute per year”.

Special Forces Advance Tech and Ops

Welcome to the latest edition of Defense Tech and Acquisition…

4 months ago · 15 likes · 10 comments · Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor

Drones Are Eating Defence Budgets

Tue, 19 May 2026 10:02:51 GMT

Editor’s note: The Icebreaker will join a panel on AI & Warfare: When Machines Make Decisions on May 25th at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, hosted by the NATO Association of Canada and Canadian International Council (CIC).

Thanks to CIBC Capital Markets for hosting The Icebreaker on its podcast, discussing opportunities available to tech entrepreneurs in the defence sector. Thanks also to Dentons and the TSX for featuring The Icebreaker at its Defence Capital Forum last week.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

VC fund Tech Horizons has become the first European investor in North Vector Dynamics (NVD), a Canadian defence technology company developing advanced autonomous air defence systems, precision-guided missiles and hypersonics.

NVD’s counter-UAS solution, the development of which has been financed in part by the Canadian government, is designed to provide an effective and cost-efficient response to mass-deployed drones and loitering munitions. The technology is also built for compatibility with NATO command-and-control systems.

“North Vector Dynamics stood out to us because of the depth of its founding team. Scientists who have spent years operating at the frontier of hard engineering, from nuclear reactors to hypersonic technologies.
We see NVD as a strong potential partner for Europe: the technologies they are developing alongside the Canadian government are directly relevant to European security and to the wider alliance. Cost-effective, layered air defence against Shahed-class threats and hypersonic weapons remains an unsolved problem, and we are proud to be joining NVD as they help solve it.” — Matej Luhový, Partner at Tech Horizons

How (I hope) They Designed Deal Team Six

Security Compass helps you maintain end-to-end security traceability across your control framework: requirement → implementation → test/verification → evidence. Give assessors what they need faster, with less ambiguity.

🤝 Deal Corner

Anduril’s $5 billion raise turns defence AI into venture’s new prize

Anduril has raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation, giving Palmer Luckey’s defence technology company one of the most striking private-market price tags in the AI economy. The Series H round, led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, roughly doubles the company’s value from its last major raise near $30.5 billion in June 2025.

Operation Epic Fury made the cost-exchange problem impossible to ignore. The math of expensive interceptors against cheap drones doesn’t hold at scale. Expect mounting pressure on primes and procurement to field software-defined systems tied to cheaper hardware and shorter production cycles.

The United States Department of War has reached new framework agreements with a slate of disruptive new entrants to aggressively expand the United States military’s lethal cruise missile and hypersonic missile strike capabilities:

“Once Castelion achieves testing and validation, the Department will award a multi-year contract for a minimum of 500 Blackbeard missiles annually.”

Related:

Zelenskyy says Ukraine has a ‘drone deal’ with Canada in the works
RBC advising Ontario on $500-million ‘resilience bond’ to fund defence projects
Dominion Dynamics included in Black Flag’s Top 100 for 2026
Moment Energy raises $40M to meet ‘infinite demand for power’ with EV batteries
How a former Air Force weapons officer turned the U.S. military’s space playbook into $1.03 billion in private capital, and what could unmake the trade
30 European dual-use startups that raised $10M+ (last 12 months)
- 🔥 Defence tech is the fastest growing sector in Europe (+150% YoY)
BVVC is hunting tier-one defence investor talent
Canada’s Future Drone Innovators and Founders Take Flight at Area X.O
- CAF seeking innovative solutions for cost-effective range finding and targeting capabilities to be used on small drones. The goal is to increase battlefield awareness and support indirect fire missions through aerial surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance
A five-year-old Munich AI-defence startup is closing a $1.2B round at an $18B valuation, led by Dragoneer and co-led by Lightspeed
NordSpace unveils Chronos, its own imaging payload developed in-house for edge-AI real-time intelligence in low earth orbit (LEO), initially trained for wildfire and arctic monitoring, and to practice wide-field-of-view space domain awareness
German drone maker Quantum Systems is acquiring the Estonian intelligence management platform scaleup, SensusQ
Photonic raises $200-million, becoming latest Canadian quantum developer to reach multibillion-dollar valuation
Germany’s pushback against Palantir is becoming much bigger than a single procurement disagreement
CMC Microsystems picks 11 winners for $10.7-million edge computing challenge

Mind of Things

When I was younger, I had a commander who said, “doctrine is for those who can’t.” This is a pithy way of saying that he expected people to problem-solve and defend rationales for why we should do something, not just fall back on “because the book said so.” In some ways, this seems anathema to…

4 months ago · 4 likes · Justin Mc

📢 Dual-Use & Defence 101 Day | June 15, 2026

The defence and dual-use sector is one of the most consequential and fastest-growing spaces in Canada, and one of the hardest to break into without the right context.

We are bringing together a rare group: senior leaders with deep defence experience, alongside individuals who are actively working in the defence space today.

Speakers include Troy Crosby (Former ADM Materiel, National Defence), Andre Filion (Former ADM Defence and Marine Procurement, PSPC), Darcy Byrtus (Former President, BMT Fleet Technology), Mike Petric (Managing Director, PerceptX), Darian Harris (Founder and CEO, Fuse Ventures), Albert Behr (President and CEO, Behr and Associates), Frank Taylor (Canadian Special Operations Forces JTF2 Operator), and Adam Varey (Ballistics Expert, Former Military Police).
Partners and speakers are flying in from Singapore, the United States, and from across the province. Additional speakers and panelists to be announced.

This is a curated event with limited capacity.

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

This Arkansas Town Is Humming With the Sound of Missile Making

When the Pentagon put out an urgent call for rocket launchers and ammunition to send to Ukraine and replenish supplies at home in 2022, an answer came from an unlikely place: this remote southern pine-belt town, population around 10,000.

The town faced a basic challenge: where to find enough workers to meet a surge in demand for weapons?

Related:

The future of America’s military industrial complex
Anduril UK Selected to Build Autonomous Wingmen for Apaches
Enter the Killer Robots: The Ukrainian Forging the Future of Warfare
Pentagon strikes agreements with defence firms on containerized missiles
The US Army has awarded Anduril a contract to deliver the Battle Management solution for missile defence in the region
Introducing “𝐓𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫” - a modular robotic unit built around a centralized control hub, integrating multiple lethal unmanned platforms into a single operational system
Canadian bacon: NATO wants to build a state-of-the-art satellite ground station in Canada… Angus Topshee, outspoken head of Canada’s navy, promoted to vice chief of defence staff… Export Development Canada is hiring a Global Trade Director, Defence & Security… Pentagon walks away from Canada-U.S. defence board… Harjit Sajjan reports for duty

Tank Talks with Matt Cohen

Inside Canada’s Most Ambitious Space Infrastructure Company with Mina Mitry of Kepler Communications

In this episode of Tank Talks, host Matt Cohen sits down with Mina Mitry, CEO and Co-Founder of Kepler Communications, one of the world’s most ambitious space infrastructure companies. With a journey that spans from winning $75,000 in university pitch competitions to building the world’s first commercial optical data relay network, Mina’s experience off…

4 months ago · 1 like · Ripple Ventures

Thought leadership: “We need to stop buying THINGS—by way of rigid requirements, contracts, and timelines—and instead start figuring out how to develop and deliver CAPABILITIES—by way of continuous evolution, experimentation, failure acceptance, and relational contracting.”
- Potential reforms to Canada’s ITB Policy
- The Iran War May Be the Best Argument Against Buying US Weapons
- Dear Canada, Don’t Buy a Submarine… buy a seat at the table
- The Soldier’s Handbook on the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) – Applicable to Land Warfare
- On Ottawa’s semiconductor strategy
- Sovereignty-Enabling Exemptions in the DIAA?
- Thousands of small manufacturers underpin the U.S. defence industrial base. With limited succession planning, critical industrial capabilities will soon deteriorate — or disappear altogether
- Navigating Canada’s Crowded Defence Industrial Frontier
- The seven distinct archetypes of Canada’s defence industrial base
Drone wars: Ground zero: NATO’s drone war comes down to earth in Latvia… Telekom and Rheinmetall are developing a nationwide counter-drone defence network for German cities… Modeling the Lethality of Small Attack Drones and Loitering Munitions

Iran roundup: “In less than 40 days of major combat operations, USCENTCOM forces systematically dismantled what Iran spent four decades and tens of billions of dollars building”… UAE Building Massive ‘Cope Cages’ To Protect Energy Facilities From Iranian Drone Attacks

Arctic shelf: The Other Border Problem: How Russia and China’s Lawfare Threaten the Arctic… How Canada plans to defend the Arctic, according to a reporter who travelled with military Rangers

From the Ukrainian front: Ukraine no longer needs the US?… The great Starlink sting: how Ukrainian hackers are duping Russian troops… At Crystal Arrow war games in Latvia, Canada and NATO allies test out tactics from Ukraine… Palantir’s role in Ukraine… In Latvia, military robots roll across a new communication challenge: woodlands… Ukrainian drone pilots turn a military exercise in Sweden into a critical warning for NATO… In the night of 13-14 May, Russians destroyed the Kyiv office of the Ukrainian defence tech company Skyeton

🔫 Hot Shots

AI war: SpaceX, Google, and Anthropic are racing to put compute infrastructure in orbit… Do you actually own SpaceX shares?

Grey war: Electronic warfare is still massively underestimated across Europe… Zighra takes a different path… How Bill C-22 Went Off the Rails… Bill C-22 Surveils Ordinary Canadians While Leaving Cartel Networks Untouched… I Ran the N.S.A. This Is How to Defeat China’s Hacker Army

Odds & ends: Ottawa asks defence industry for options on replacements for aging tank fleet… Canada eyes Turkey as a fellow mid-power ally in weapons development… The US shipbuilding crisis… UBC Sauder Launches New Scale Up Program during Web Summit Vancouver to Accelerate Canadian Defence and Dual-Use Innovation… Booz Allen Ventures on how to build in defence tech… Sourcing suppliers and manufacturing partners in Taiwan

Joanna

The Autonomous Machine in Rock Creek Park

A 197-year-old gristmill illuminates the architecture of autonomy, the elemental core we still rely on today, and perspective about how to scale Drone Dominance…

4 months ago · 3 likes · Joanna

Low Cost Munitions, Higher Quantity Ships

In the latest edition of Defense Tech and Acquisition we cover…

4 months ago · 19 likes · 2 comments · Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor

Debating Canadian Defence

Procurement Reform, With Teeth

Tue, 12 May 2026 10:03:43 GMT

Editor’s note: This week The Icebreaker will moderate a panel on building Canada’s defence innovation ecosystem at the Dentons x TMX Defence Capital Forum in Toronto.

Thanks to RBC Thought Leadership for quoting The Icebreaker’s research in its recent executive briefing on how to advance defence finance in Canada. Reach out to thomas.ashcroft@rbc.com to request a copy.

🎯 Three-Shot Burst

Murray Brewster reports the federal government will give the newly created Defence Investment Agency (DIA) broad powers to ditch the routine process for the procurement of military equipment, and new authority that will extend into other areas of the economy.

Analyzing the Defence Investment Agency Act

The Defence Investment Agency Act has been tabled, tucked into Division 16 of the government’s recent ways and means motion. This Act provides a statutory framework for the Defence Investment Agency (DIA) and makes significant changes to the Defence Production Act…

4 months ago · 32 likes · 13 comments · Philippe Lagassé

Ottawa keeps announcing funding for defence tech and Canadian innovation — but the way government actually buys technology still rewards paperwork over performance, according to defence tech entrepreneurs and at least one Senator. The current “waterfall” procurement model asks vendors to respond to massive, highly specific RFPs, which big incumbents can handle and startups often can’t. The result: Canadian innovators get screened out before they can prove their tech works.

Why it matters: This is not just bureaucratic friction. It is industrial policy working backwards. If Canadian startups cannot win early reference customers at home, they go abroad for revenue, credibility, capital, and eventually scale. That means Canada funds innovation, then watches the IP and commercial upside migrate elsewhere.

A better way: Move from giant upfront RFPs to agile procurement: small trials, rapid pilots, measurable performance gates, and the ability to stop funding what does not work. Instead of asking companies to write novels, ask them to solve the problem — then test the results.

Bottom line: Canada does not have an innovation problem. It has a buyer problem. Until procurement rewards demonstrated performance over compliance theatre, Ottawa will keep paying to create startups that other countries scale. The DIA appears to be a promising step in the right direction.

Related:

Why Canada and Ukraine Must Team Up on Defence Innovation [N.B. The Icebreaker is quoted in Ukraine’s largest English language newspaper]
- “We have also begun preparations for the Drone Deal with Canada”, says President Zelenskyy:

Europe’s defence startups face even bigger hurdles than America’s
- European defence procurement practices must evolve to embrace innovative startups and small firms, in order to meet modern battlefield needs

FABrIC’s Quantum Computing Sandbox is stimulating the development of industrially relevant applications of quantum in areas of strategic importance, and driving adoption by end-use sectors.

🤝 Deal Corner

First Canada, then the world: nation’s rocket builders see a bigger opening in space

Canadian rocket builders want Canada to stop hitching rides to space at the discretion of foreign providers, and the federal government has put a significant sum towards changing that:

The Age Of Space Maneuver Warfare Is Imminent
SpaceX didn’t become a trillion-dollar company by building rockets
As one of the earliest investors in startups building satellites and rockets, IQT helped launch the private space industry

Related:

Canada has to build new industries while solidifying the old ones
Drone start-up Helsing set for $18bn valuation as investors pile into defence
Europe races to build the low-cost weapons of future
- Start-ups complain they are helping British military modernise on the cheap… If Britain is nimble and responsive to this global crisis, there are reasons to be cheerful… CSG: Why the Largest Military IPO in European History Is Combusting
Ontario firm’s extended-range hydrogen drone prototype lands RCMP contract
Why you don’t need a PhD to invest in deep tech
Darkhive Secures $30M in Series B Funding
🛡️ Who supplies the chips for Canada’s defence systems?
Top 10 Armored Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (AUUV) Companies – Market Share Analysis
DIA seeking industry input to support the Department of National Defence’s Worldwide Satellite Communications – Protected Military Satellite Communications Tactical (WSC PMT) project
Swedish TNT Startup SWEBAL Raises €30M
Q-CTRL Showcases Quantum Navigation System at Singapore Airshow
Denmark has billions in defence offsets. It doesn’t know where to spend it
Anello Photonics Raises $25M to Scale
Heaviside Emerges from Stealth with $28M Series A
M&A lawyers on how regulatory changes driven by geopolitical instability are affecting deals
T Rowe Price release its investment thesis for Hadrian
If you’re a Canadian start-up in a sensitive sector — AI, quantum, advanced robotics, biotech, space tech — and you’re raising from a US venture capital fund, amendments to the Investment Canada Act are about to change your deal timeline in a way that almost no one is talking about

📢 Dual-Use & Defence 101 Day | June 15, 2026

The defence and dual-use sector is one of the most consequential and fastest-growing spaces in Canada, and one of the hardest to break into without the right context.

We are bringing together a rare group: senior leaders with deep defence experience, alongside individuals who are actively working in the defence space today.

Speakers include Troy Crosby (Former ADM Materiel, National Defence), Andre Filion (Former ADM Defence and Marine Procurement, PSPC), Darcy Byrtus (Former President, BMT Fleet Technology), Mike Petric (Managing Director, PerceptX), Darian Harris (Founder and CEO, Fuse Ventures), Albert Behr (President and CEO, Behr and Associates), Frank Taylor (Canadian Special Operations Forces JTF2 Operator), and Adam Varey (Ballistics Expert, Former Military Police).
Partners and speakers are flying in from Singapore, the United States, and from across the province. Additional speakers and panelists to be announced.

This is a curated event with limited capacity.

Security Compass helps you maintain end-to-end security traceability across your control framework: requirement → implementation → test/verification → evidence. Give assessors what they need faster, with less ambiguity.

2026 Red Team Hackathon Series continues in Ottawa May 30, 2026

A national defence-tech innovation challenge for Canada’s brightest entrepreneurs, startups, and future leaders.

The 2026 Red Team Defence Tech Hackathon Series continues in Ottawa at Bayview Yards. This national series brings together entrepreneurial teams and early-stage startups from across Canada to compete for $200,000 in total prize money, potential grants, and exclusive internship opportunities — all while solving critical dual-use challenges that matter to Canada’s defence and security ecosystem.

Modern Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) operations increasingly rely on drones, ground robots, maritime vessels, sensors, and networked platforms operating in complex and contested environments. As system density increases, cognitive load on operators rises — creating operational friction, delays, and potential mission risk.

The Ottawa Event

May 30, 2026 Bayview Yards, Ottawa, ON
Ten selected teams will compete for a $20,000 prize pool and the opportunity to advance to the Grand Final in Ottawa November 21.

Verified Canadian Supply Chain: Cryptographic Provenance for Buy Canadian Procurement

The Challenge: With the rollout of Canada’s Buy Canadian Policy, verifying whether products are truly Canadian has become increasingly complex. Global supply chains involve multiple tiers of suppliers, making it difficult to confirm origin claims like Product of Canada or Made in Canada. Today, these claims rely heavily on self-reporting, which is difficult to validate and vulnerable to misrepresentation.

What’s at Stake: Teams will design and prototype a system that creates a trusted, tamper-evident record of product origin. Using cryptographic attestations from verified suppliers, the system should track materials, labour, and production across the entire supply chain—ensuring transparency and integrity from source to final product. The Canadian drone sector will serve as the primary use case.

Barrack Hill: Navigating Canada’s defence and procurement landscape with precision.

⚔️ Combat Readiness

The drone war comes home: Canada scrambles to shield military bases in legal grey zone

The Canadian military has quietly started deploying counter-drone systems around its major ports and air bases as it grapples with both the technology and the legalities of shooting down uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), CBC News has learned.

Related:

Cheap Missiles, Not Drones, Will Win the Next Air War
- Missile startups are ‘the new wave’ in European defence
Inside Anduril: Meet the quiet engineer-CEO building America’s $31 billion weapons startup
Alex Karp on why America’s decisive advantage is technology
In-Q-Tel pivots strategy for “forward-deployed” warfare and espionage
- Solving contested logistics is critical, urgent, and non-negotiable.
Data to decision making: TerraSense Analytics
Sapper Labs: if it’s not sovereign, it’s not secure
- Fusion on paper or in practice? Making the cloud work for ISR and NATO
- Shaping the understanding and implementation of the UK’s landmark integrated targeting initiative

@PalmerLuckey tells @demarest_colin on The Axios Show what weapons he would (and wouldn’t) build.\n\n“I think that nuclear weapons have been one of the most stabilizing forces in history ever.” ","username":"axios","name":"Axios","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1641458976049995776/GtO-0zYe_normal.jpg","date":"2026-03-16T18:30:06.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_1028,c_limit,q_auto:best/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_88/t8hojpfahfxg9jpyfgia","link_url":"https://t.co/meff4xaesE"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":203,"retweet_count":168,"like_count":3434,"impression_count":35828352,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2033611166799245312/vid/avc1/1280x720/X3f_z_2Oy8STTMqj.mp4","video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

Canadian bacon: Canada breaks ground on national monument to Afghanistan Mission… Why Canada is seeing its biggest military recruitment surge in 30 years… The CAF recruitment system is failing everyone… Ottawa plans to spin off federal semiconductor facility into “commercial entity”… The Next Challenge in Defence Procurement Reform: Catching up to the Future… ResolveHD is featured in Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) Spring 2026 AI Startups Pitchbook, alongside 35 other promising AI startups in Amii’s network
- Procurement readiness: Achieving CPCSC Level 1 Readiness… Canadian and U.S. defence contractors are facing a new compliance reality: CMMC in the United States and CPCSC in Canada… CPCSC enforcement starts in July… Level 1 is harmonized with US rules

Thought leadership: Aligning Canada’s Policy Architecture with the Defence Industrial Strategy… Buy Canadian must mean building Canadian capability… How the Pentagon Should Define Affordable Mass… Canada’s universities: Safeguarding our democracy and sovereignty… BCG on US Navy targets vs. projected output… The New Lessons of the Battle of the Atlantic
Drone wars: Airlogix COO: we plan 10x growth in Ukraine, six joint ventures and four new products by year-end… Drone Swarms Packed Into Unassuming Containers Sought By DARPA… The tiny network reshaping defence tech… Ornadyne (YC P26) is building autonomous bird-like drones for military reconnaissance. Drones that look, fly, and sound like real birds… The Rise of Drone Interceptors During the War in Ukraine… Firestorm’s $82 Million Bet: How A San Diego Startup Is Reimagining Where Drones Come From… Firestorm Snags $30M APFIT Contract… Japan’s ultra-cheap cardboard drone swarms… A new man-portable drone interceptor in Ukraine [VIDEO]… Adversarial Use of Humanoid Robotics - a snippet from the Global Drone Threat Report 2026… American Innovation: a German design, copied by Israel, mass-produced by Iran, used and improved by Russia and then handed off by Ukraine?
- When a drone ‘goes dark’
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Arctic shelf: Dominion Dynamics tests technology during Operation ‘Nanook’… On patrol in the Arctic… TKMS pitches undersea research centre focused on Arctic… Arctic ports and the shipping boom they aren’t ready for… Ottawa to pull plug on Arctic naval facility… The U.S. Army’s ‘Big Experiment’ in the Arctic Cold… Canadian Rangers quietly, confidently assert Arctic sovereignty

From the Ukrainian front: Fibre-optic drones become significantly more expensive on Brave1 Market: manufacturers explain why… Ukraine’s rapid rise as an anti-drone powerhouse

Notes from Kyiv: One Year Later

4 months ago · 9 likes · Louise Boucher

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Grey war: ‘We are not at war, but we’re not at peace either,’ warns German cyber chief… FCC pushes ban on security updates for foreign-made routers, drones to 2029… A DOD contractor’s API flaw exposed military course data and service member records… Banned drones and routers in the US will still get critical updates until 2029… A major Chinese antenna manufacturer is supplying Russia with critical anti-jamming satellite antennas for its Geran (Shahed) kamikaze drones

Odds & ends: Congrats to BOREALIS’ Mark D. Robbins for joining the Royal Canadian Air Force Reserves… Why a World Leading AI Investor is Moving into Power… Peter Thiel backs $1bn ocean data centre start-up powered by waves… US military looks underground to protect wounded troops as drones force changes to wartime medicine… Turning Defence Demand Into Growth
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