Digest 21: Defence tech needs a new playbook — collaboration is defence

Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media

We were at the UK-Ukraine Defence Tech Forum on Friday, Brave1 celebrated their second anniversary over the weekend, and DarkStar ran a Defence Tech Hackathon in Finland.

Weekly Digest: Four Years – Slava Ukraini

Weekly Digest: Hypersonic weapons race accelerates as NATO eyes Russian and Chinese missile threats

Europe recommits to itself as US uncertainty looms over Munich Security Conference

The events were all great examples of collaboration to support our security. DarkStar Hackathon brought together over 200 people from 21 nations, all focussed on supporting Ukraine. We were excited to meet a 17 year old Ukrainian who had travelled from Kyiv to develop a solution that has already been used in combat to stop bomber drones. More on him and on the event here.

In Kyiv, despite keeping it low profile, Brave1’s second anniversary event had long queues to get in. Speakers from the Ukrainian government and military shared essential insights into the direction of defence tech innovation. Read what they were discussing here.

The last week has left us thinking about collaboration. In past iterations of the tech sector, when profit alone was the goal, the gloves were off when it came to competition. In this iteration, we are innovating to address an existential threat and we need new norms. We need to remember that our adversaries want us divided. Russia in particular has spent years sowing and amplifying that division.

The defence and security tech sector needs to create a new paradigm for competition that preserves its value for innovation but avoids the cut and thrust of the purely commercial tech sector, because that just divides us as our adversaries want.

The best thing we can do is collaborate and avoid attacks on competitors just for market gain. The highlights of our last week were attending these excellent events, and just sitting around a table with our friends from DarkStar and EDTH over the weekend discussing how we can support each other’s work. EDTH will run a hackathon in London during London Defence Tech Week, and the DarkStar team will be at Resilience Conference, where they will be sharing the best practice and lessons they have learned building out one of Europe’s most dynamic defence tech ecosystems.

We hope people will continue to lean in to forming a collaborative ecosystem that supports resilience and national security.

With that in mind, here’s the startup and investing news we covered on Resilience Media this week:

See you back in your inboxes on Tuesday.

-Leslie, co-founder, Resilience Media

After nearly two years operating quietly, the our friends at defence tech fund D3 is stepping into the open. Launched in July 2023 with a focused mission — help Ukraine win and build the future of NATO defence — D3 has now revealed its first set of investments and a clear thesis: no dual-use distractions, no commercial pivots. Just military tech, built for war.

With 16 investments across 10 verticals in five countries, D3 has quickly become one of Europe’s most active defence-focused investors. The company is co-founded with a number of major players in the defence tech world, including Eveline Buchatskiy of TA Ventures and airSlate. The companies span autonomous drones, counter-drone systems, secure battlefield networks, and robotic ground systems — all under what the fund calls the “New Defence” category. These are not spinouts from general-purpose tech startups.

They’re built for the front, by founders who understand what’s at stake. Read our full piece here and enormous congratulations to the D3 team.

The 26^th of April marked Brave1’s second anniversary. Established in 2023, it is a coordinating platform for the Ukrainian Defence Tech ecosystem that has grown significantly over the two years. The queue for Brave1’s anniversary event, Defence Tech Era, was so long that it could barely fit into the hall of the venue. Artem Moroz, Brave1’s Head of Investor Relations, who usually represents the platform abroad, felt obliged to coordinate the queue. As one Western military attaché told me, the event had not been widely advertised outside of Ukraine. Nevertheless, about one hundred foreigners out of up to 1,000 participants attended. Read more from Oleksandr Ihnatenko here.

Over a weekend in Finland, DarkStar ran their second hackathon. This is part of a wider defence tech ecosystem they have built that includes meetups, bootcamps in Ukraine, angel investing, and a fund. Their aim is to get technology to Ukraine as fast as possible and to defend their own countries. The event brought together 21 nationalities, 200+ people, including Ukrainian soldiers from the Khartiia Brigade, and saw teams develop 34 ideas over the weekend. This was not weekend hacking – the teams were building often advanced technology with clear use cases in Ukraine, a d many already have customers or have been tested in battle. You can read more about the event here.

London Defence Tech Hackathon May 2025

10 May 2025, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Our friends at Future Forces, Isembard and EDTH are hosting the 2nd London Defence Tech Hackathon to connect the UK’s brightest young engineering minds with cutting-edge startups, venture capitalists, and U.K. defence and national security leadership and users. Apply here.

Latitude59

May 21-23, 2025, Tallinn, Estonia. Latitude59 is the flagship startup and tech event from Estonia, running since 2012. In recent years, it has grown into a global platform, connecting ecosystems, communities and innovators who change the world and make it a better place. Resilience Media is proud to be a media partner for this year’s event, and we’re pleased to see more focus on defence and security at the conference. Register to attend here.