At first look, the Mosphera scooter could look regular—simply comically outsized. It’s just like the monster truck of scooters, with a footplate seven inches off the bottom that’s broad sufficient to face on along with your ft barely aside—which you need to do to maintain your stability, as a result of while you flip the accelerator with a thumb, it takes off like a rocket. Whereas the model I attempted in a car parking zone in Riga’s warehouse district had a limiter on the motor, the manufacturing model of the supersized electrical scooter can hit 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour on the flat. The all-terrain car may also go 300 kilometers on a single cost and climb 45-degree inclines. 

Latvian startup World Wolf Motors launched in 2020 with a hope that the Mosphera would fill a distinct segment in micromobility. Like commuters who use scooters in city environments, farmers and vintners might use the Mosphera to zip round their properties; miners and utility employees might use it for upkeep and safety patrols; police and border guards might drive them on forest paths. And, they thought, perhaps the navy may need a couple of to traverse its bases and even the battlefield—although they knew that was one thing of an extended shot.

When co-founders Henrijs Bukavs and Klavs Asmanis first went to speak to Latvia’s armed forces, they have been certainly met with skepticism—a navy scooter, officers implied, didn’t make a lot sense—and a wall of paperwork. They discovered that regardless of how good your pitch or how shiny your promo video (and World Wolf’s promo is shiny: a slick montage of scooters leaping, climbing, and rushing in formation by means of woodlands and deserts), moving into navy provide chains meant navigating layer upon layer of officialdom.

Then Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and every thing modified. Within the determined early days of the conflict, Ukrainian fight models wished any tools they may get their arms on, and so they have been prepared to check out concepts—like a navy scooter—that may not have made the minimize in peacetime. Asmanis knew a Latvian journalist heading to Ukraine; by means of the reporter’s contacts, the startup organized to ship two Mospheras to the Ukrainian military. 

Inside weeks, the scooters have been on the entrance line—and even behind it, being utilized by Ukrainian particular forces scouts on daring reconnaissance missions. It was an sudden however momentous step for World Wolf, and an early indicator of a brand new demand that’s sweeping throughout tech firms alongside Ukraine’s borders: for civilian merchandise that may be tailored shortly for navy use.

World Wolf’s high-definition advertising supplies turned out to be nowhere close to as efficient as a couple of minutes of grainy telephone footage from the conflict. The corporate has since shipped out 9 extra scooters to the Ukrainian military, which has requested for one more 68. The place Latvian officers as soon as scoffed, the nation’s prime minister went to see Mosphera’s manufacturing unit in April 2024, and now dignitaries and protection officers from the nation are common guests. 

It might need been onerous a couple of years in the past to think about troopers heading to battle on outsized toys made by a tech startup with no navy heritage. However Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s assaults has been a miracle of social resilience and innovation—and the way in which the nation has mobilized is serving each a warning and an inspiration to its neighbors. They’ve watched as startups, main industrial gamers, and political leaders in Ukraine have labored en masse to show civilian know-how into weapons and civil protection programs. They’ve seen Ukrainian entrepreneurs assist bootstrap a military-industrial complicated that’s retrofitting civilian drones into artillery spotters and bombers, whereas software program engineers grow to be cyberwarriors and AI firms shift to battlefield intelligence. Engineers work straight with family and friends on the entrance line, iterating their merchandise with unbelievable velocity.

Their successes—usually at a fraction of the price of typical weapons programs—have in flip woke up European governments and militaries to the potential of startup-style innovation and startups to the potential twin makes use of of their merchandise, that means ones which have professional civilian purposes however might be modified at scale to show them into weapons. 

This heady mixture of market demand and existential menace is pulling tech firms in Latvia and the opposite Baltic states into a big pivot. Corporations that may discover navy makes use of for his or her merchandise are hardening them and discovering methods to get them in entrance of militaries which might be more and more prepared to entertain the concept of working with startups. It’s a flip which will solely grow to be extra pressing if the US beneath incoming President Donald Trump turns into much less prepared to underwrite the continent’s protection.

However whereas nationwide governments, the European Union, and NATO are all throwing billions of {dollars} of public cash into incubators and funding funds—adopted carefully by private-sector buyers—some entrepreneurs and coverage consultants who’ve labored carefully with Ukraine warn that Europe might need solely partially discovered the teachings from Ukraine’s resistance.

If Europe needs to be prepared to satisfy the specter of assault, it wants to search out new methods of working with the tech sector. That features studying how Ukraine’s authorities and civil society tailored to show civilian merchandise into dual-use instruments shortly and minimize by means of paperwork to get revolutionary options to the entrance. Ukraine’s resilience reveals that navy know-how isn’t nearly what militaries purchase however about how they purchase it, and about how politics, civil society, and the tech sector can work collectively in a disaster. 

“[Ukraine], sadly, is the most effective protection know-how experimentation floor on the planet proper now. If you’re not in Ukraine, then you aren’t within the protection enterprise.”

“I believe that numerous tech firms in Europe would do what is required to do. They might put their data and abilities the place they’re wanted,” says Ieva Ilves, a veteran Latvian diplomat and know-how coverage professional. However many governments throughout the continent are nonetheless too sluggish, too bureaucratic, and too anxious that they could seem like losing cash, that means, she says, that they don’t seem to be essentially “getting ready the soil for if [a] disaster comes.”

“The query is,” she says, “on a political degree, are we able to studying from Ukraine?”

Waking up the neighbors

Many Latvians and others throughout the Baltic nations really feel the specter of Russian aggression extra viscerally than their neighbors in Western Europe. Like Ukraine, Latvia has an extended border with Russia and Belarus, a big Russian-speaking minority, and a historical past of occupation. Additionally like Ukraine, it has been the goal of greater than a decade of so-called “hybrid conflict” ways—cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and different makes an attempt at destabilization—directed by Moscow. 

Since Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine two-plus years in the past, Latvia has stepped up its preparations for a bodily confrontation, investing greater than €300 million ($316 million) in fortifications alongside the Russian border and reinstating a restricted type of conscription to spice up its reserve forces. Because the begin of this 12 months, the Latvian fireplace service has been inspecting underground constructions across the nation, in search of cellars, parking garages, and metro stations that may very well be changed into bomb shelters.

And very like Ukraine, Latvia doesn’t have an enormous military-industrial complicated that may churn out artillery shells or tanks en masse. 

What it and different smaller European international locations can produce for themselves—and probably promote to their allies—are small-scale weapons programs, software program platforms, telecoms tools, and specialised autos. The nation is now making a big funding in instruments like Exonicus, a medical know-how platform based 11 years in the past by Latvian sculptor Sandis Kondrats. Customers of its augmented-reality battlefield-medicine coaching simulator placed on a digital actuality headset that presents them with casualties, which they must diagnose and determine how one can deal with. The all-digital coaching saves cash on mannequins, Kondrats says, and on crucial area sources.

“In case you use all of the medical provides on coaching, then you definately don’t have any medical provides,” he says. Exonicus has just lately damaged into the navy provide chain, putting offers with the Latvian, Estonian, US, and German militaries, and it has been coaching Ukrainian fight medics.

GATIS ORLICKIS/BALTIC PICTURES

There’s additionally VR Vehicles, an organization based by two Latvian former rally drivers, that signed a contract in 2022 to develop off-road autos for the military’s particular forces. And there’s Entangle, a quantum encryption firm that sells widgets that flip cell phones into safe communications units, and has just lately obtained an innovation grant from the Latvian Ministry of Protection.

Unsurprisingly, numerous the main target in Latvia has been on unmanned aerial autos (UAVs), or drones, which have grow to be ubiquitous on each side preventing in Ukraine, usually outperforming weapons programs that price an order of magnitude extra. Within the early days of the conflict, Ukraine discovered itself largely counting on machines purchased from overseas, such because the Turkish-made Bayraktar strike plane and jury-rigged DJI quadcopters from China. It took some time, however inside a 12 months the nation was capable of produce home-grown programs.

In consequence, numerous the emphasis in protection packages throughout Europe is on UAVs that may be constructed in-country. “The most important factor while you discuss to [European ministries of defense] now could be that they are saying, ‘We would like an enormous quantity of drones, however we additionally need our personal home manufacturing,’” says Ivan Tolchinsky, CEO of Atlas Dynamics, a drone firm headquartered in Riga. Atlas Dynamics builds drones for industrial makes use of and has now made hardened variations of its surveillance UAVs that may resist digital warfare and function in battlefield situations.

Agris Kipurs based AirDog in 2014 to make drones that would observe a topic autonomously; they have been designed for individuals doing outside sports activities who wished to movie themselves with no need to fiddle with a controller. He and his co-founders bought the corporate to a US dwelling safety firm, Alarm.com, in 2020. “For some time, we didn’t know precisely what we might construct subsequent,” Kipurs says. “However then, with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it turned fairly apparent.”

His new firm, Origin Robotics, has just lately “come out of stealth mode,” he says, after two years of analysis and improvement. Origin has constructed on the workforce’s expertise in shopper drones and its experience in autonomous flight to start to construct what Kipurs calls “an airborne precision-guided weapon system”—a guided bomb {that a} soldier can carry in a backpack. 

The Latvian authorities has invested in encouraging startups like these, in addition to small producers, to develop military-capable UAVs by establishing a €600,000 prize fund for home drone startups and a €10 million finances to create a brand new drone program, working with native and worldwide producers. 

Latvia can also be the architect and co-leader, with the UK, of the Drone Coalition, a multicountry initiative that’s directing greater than €500 million towards constructing a drone provide chain within the West. Underneath the initiative, militaries run competitions for drone makers, rewarding excessive performers with contracts and sending their merchandise to Ukraine. Its grantees are sometimes not allowed to publicize their contracts, for safety causes. “However the firms that are delivering merchandise by means of that initiative are new to the market,” Kipurs says. “They aren’t the businesses that have been there 5 years in the past.”

Even nationwide telecommunications firm LMT, which is partly authorities owned, is engaged on drones and different military-grade {hardware}, together with sensor tools and surveillance balloons. It’s growing a battlefield “web of issues” system—basically, a system that may observe in actual time all of the property and personnel in a theater of conflict. “In Latvia, kind of, we’re preparing for conflict,” says former naval officer Kaspars Pollaks, who heads an LMT division that focuses on protection innovation. “We’re simply taking the menace actually severely. As a result of we might be operationally alone [if Russia invades].”

The Latvian authorities’s investments are being mirrored throughout Europe: NATO has expanded its Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) program, which runs startup incubators for dual-use applied sciences throughout the continent and the US, and launched a separate €1 billion startup fund in 2022. Including to this, the European Funding Fund, a publicly owned funding firm, launched a €175 million fund-of-funds this 12 months to help protection applied sciences with dual-use potential. And the European Fee has earmarked greater than €7 billion for protection analysis and improvement between now and 2027. 

Personal buyers are additionally circling, in search of alternatives to revenue from the increase. Figures from the European consultancy Dealroom present that fundraising by dual-use and military-tech firms on the continent was simply shy of $1 billion in 2023—up almost a 3rd over 2022, regardless of an total slowdown in enterprise capital exercise. 

ATLAS AERO

When Atlas Dynamics began in 2015, funding was onerous to come back by, Tolchinsky says: “It’s all the time onerous to make it as a {hardware} firm, as a result of VCs are extra concerned about software program. And for those who begin speaking concerning the protection market, individuals say, ‘Okay, it’s an extended play for 10 or 20 years, it’s not fascinating.’” That’s modified since 2022. “Now, what we see due to this conflict is an increasing number of enterprise capital that desires to spend money on protection firms,” Tolchinsky says.

However whereas cash helps startups get off the bottom, to essentially show the worth of their merchandise they should get their instruments within the arms of people who find themselves going to make use of them. Once I requested Kipurs if his merchandise are at present being utilized in Ukraine, he solely stated: “I’m not allowed to reply that query straight. However our programs are with finish customers.”

Battle examined

Ukraine has moved on from the early days of the battle, when it was prepared to take nearly something that may very well be thrown on the invaders. However that have has been crucial in pushing the federal government to streamline its procurement processes dramatically to permit its troopers to check out new defense-tech improvements. 

ORIGIN ROBOTICS

ORIGIN ROBOTICS

Origin Robotics has constructed on a historical past of manufacturing shopper drones to create a guided bomb {that a} soldier can carry in a backpack. 

This method has, at occasions, been chaotic and fraught with danger. Faux crowdfunding campaigns have been set as much as rip-off donors and steal cash. Hackers have used open-source drone manuals and pretend procurement contracts in phishing assaults in Ukraine. Some merchandise have merely not labored as properly on the entrance as their designers hoped, with studies of US-made drones falling sufferer to Russian jamming—and even failing to take off in any respect. 

Know-how that doesn’t work on the entrance places troopers in danger, so in lots of instances they’ve taken issues into their very own arms. Two Ukrainian drone makers inform me that navy procurement within the nation has been successfully flipped on its head: If you wish to promote your gear to the armed forces, you don’t go to the overall employees—you go on to the troopers and put it of their arms. As soon as troopers begin asking their senior officers in your instrument, you’ll be able to return to the bureaucrats and make a deal.

Many overseas firms have merely donated their merchandise to Ukraine—partly out of a want to assist, and partly as a result of they’ve recognized a (probably worthwhile) alternative to reveal them to the shortened innovation cycles of battle and to get reside suggestions from these preventing. This may be surprisingly simple as some volunteer models deal with their very own parallel provide chains by means of crowdfunding and donations, and they’re desperate to check out new instruments if somebody is prepared to provide them freely. One logistics specialist supplying a entrance line unit, talking anonymously as he’s not licensed to speak to the media, tells me that this spring, they turned to donated gear from startups in Europe and the US to fill gaps left by delayed US navy help, together with untested prototypes of UAVs and communications tools. 

All of this has allowed many firms to bypass the historically sluggish means of testing and demonstrating their merchandise, for higher and worse.

Tech firms’ rush into the battle zone has unnerved some observers, who’re anxious that by going to conflict, firms have sidestepped moral and security considerations over their instruments. Clearview AI gave Ukraine entry to its controversial facial recognition instruments to assist establish Russia’s conflict lifeless, for instance, sparking ethical and sensible questions over accuracy, privateness, and human rights—publishing pictures of these killed in conflict is arguably a violation of the Geneva Conference. Some high-profile tech executives, together with Palantir CEO Alex Karp and former Google CEO-turned-military-tech-investor Eric Schmidt, have used the battle to attempt to shift the worldwide norms for utilizing synthetic intelligence in conflict, constructing programs that permit machines choose targets for assaults—which some consultants fear is a gateway into autonomous “killer robots.”

LMT’s Pollaks says he has visited Ukraine usually for the reason that conflict started. Although he declines to provide extra particulars, he euphemistically describes Ukraine’s wartime paperwork as “nonstandardized.” If you wish to blow one thing up in entrance of an viewers within the EU, he says, you need to undergo a complete lot of approvals, and the paperwork can take months, even years. In Ukraine, loads of individuals are prepared to check out your instruments.

“[Ukraine], sadly, is the most effective protection know-how experimentation floor on the planet proper now,” Pollaks says. “If you’re not in Ukraine, then you aren’t within the protection enterprise.”

Jack Wang, principal at UK-based enterprise capital fund Mission A, which invests in military-tech startups, agrees that the Ukraine “observe” might be extremely fruitful. “In case you promote to Ukraine, you get sooner product and tech iteration, and reside area testing,” he says. “The {dollars} may differ. Generally zero, typically fairly a bit. However you get your product within the area sooner.” 

The suggestions that comes from the entrance is invaluable. Atlas Dynamics has opened an workplace in Ukraine, and its representatives there work with troopers and particular forces to refine and modify their merchandise. When Russian forces began jamming a large band of radio frequencies to disrupt communication with the drones, Atlas designed a sensible frequency-hopping system, which scans for unjammed frequencies and switches management of the drone over to them, placing troopers a step forward of the enemy.

At World Wolf, battlefield testing for the Mosphera has led to small however important iterations of the product, which have come naturally as troopers use it. One scooter-related downside on the entrance turned out to be resupplying troopers in entrenched positions with ammunition. Simply as city scooters have grow to be last-mile supply options in cities, troops discovered that the Mosphera was properly suited to shuttling small portions of ammo at excessive speeds throughout tough floor or by means of forests. To make this job simpler, World Wolf tweaked the design of the car’s optionally available further trailer in order that it completely matches eight NATO standard-sized bullet containers.

GLOBAL WOLF

Some snipers favor the electrical Mosphera to noisy motorbikes or quads, utilizing the autos to weave between timber to get into place. However in addition they prefer to shoot from the saddle—one thing they couldn’t do from the scooter’s footplate. So World Wolf designed a steady seat that lets shooters fireplace with out having to dismount. Some models wished infrared lights, and the corporate has made these, too. These kind of requests give the workforce concepts for brand spanking new upgrades: “It’s like shopping for a automobile,” Asmanis says. “You’ll be able to have it with air-con, with out air-con, with heated seats.”

Being battle-tested is already proving to be a strong advertising instrument. Bukavs advised me he thinks protection ministers are getting nearer to transferring from guarantees towards “motion.” The Latvian police have purchased a handful of Mospheras, and the nation’s navy has acquired some, too, for particular forces models. (“We don’t have any info on how they’re utilizing them,” Asmanis says. “It’s higher we don’t ask,” Bukavs interjects.) Army distributors from a number of different international locations have additionally approached them to market their models regionally. 

Though they are saying their donations have been motivated at the beginning by a want to assist Ukraine resist the Russian invasion, Bukavs and Asmanis admit that they’ve been paid again for his or her philanthropy many occasions over. 

In fact, all this might change quickly, and the Ukraine “observe” might very properly be disrupted when Trump returns to workplace in January. The US has offered greater than $64 billion value of navy help to Ukraine for the reason that begin of the full-scale invasion. A major quantity of that has been spent in Europe, in what Wang calls a sort of “drop-shipping”—Ukraine asks for drones, as an example, and the US buys them from an organization in Europe, which ships them on to the conflict effort. 

Wang confirmed me a current pitch deck from one European military-tech startup. In assessing the potential budgets accessible for its merchandise, it compares the Ukrainian finances, which was within the tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, and the “donated from all people else” finances, which was a billion {dollars}. A considerable amount of that “all people else” cash comes from the US.

If, as many analysts anticipate, the Trump administration dramatically reduces or totally stops US navy help to Ukraine, these younger firms targeted on navy tech and dual-use tech will seemingly take a success. “Ideally, the European facet will step up their spending on European firms, however there might be a short-term hole,” Wang says.

An enduring change? 

Russia’s full-scale invasion uncovered how considerably the military-industrial complicated in Europe has withered for the reason that Chilly Battle. Throughout the continent, governments have in the reduction of investments in {hardware} like ships, tanks, and shells, partly due to a perception that wars could be fought on smaller scales, and partly to trim their nationwide budgets. 

“After a long time of Europe lowering its fight functionality,” Pollaks says, “now we’re within the scenario we’re in. [It] might be an actual problem to ramp it up. And the way in which to try this, at the least from our perspective, is actual shut integration between business and the armed forces.”

This may hardly be controversial within the US, the place the navy and the protection business usually work carefully collectively to develop new programs. However in Europe, this type of collaboration could be “a bit wild,” Pollaks says. Militaries are usually extra closed off, working primarily with giant protection contractors, and European buyers have tended to be extra squeamish about backing firms whose merchandise might find yourself going to conflict.

In consequence, regardless of the numerous optimistic indicators for the builders of navy tech, progress in overhauling the broader provide chain has been slower than many individuals within the sector would really like.

A number of founders of dual-use and military-tech firms in Latvia and the opposite Baltic states inform me they’re usually invited to occasions the place they pitch to enthusiastic audiences of policymakers, however they by no means see any main orders afterward. “I don’t assume any quantity of VC running a blog or podcasting will change how the navy truly procures know-how,” says Mission A’s Wang. Regardless of what’s taking place subsequent door, Ukraine’s neighbors are nonetheless in the end working in peacetime. Authorities budgets stay tight, and even when the paperwork has grow to be extra versatile, layers upon layers of crimson tape stay.  

GATIS INDRēVICS/ LATVIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE

Even World Wolf’s Bukavs laments {that a} caravan of political figures has visited their manufacturing unit however has not rewarded the corporate with large contracts. Regardless of Ukraine’s requests for the Mosphera scooters, as an example, they in the end weren’t included in Latvia’s 2024 bundle of navy help on account of budgetary constraints. 

What this implies is that European governments have discovered a partial lesson from Ukraine—that startups may give you an edge in battle. However consultants fear that the continent’s politics means it could nonetheless battle to innovate at velocity. Many Western European international locations have constructed up substantial bureaucracies to guard their democracies from corruption or exterior influences. Authoritarian states aren’t so hamstrung, and so they, too, have been watching the conflict in Ukraine carefully. Russian forces are reportedly testing Chinese language and Iranian drones on the entrance line. Even North Korea has its personal drone program. 

The answer isn’t essentially to throw out the mechanisms for accountability which might be a part of democratic society. However the programs which were constructed up for good governance have led to fragility, typically main governments to fret extra concerning the politics of procurement than getting ready for crises, based on Ilves and different coverage consultants I spoke to. 

“Procurement issues develop larger and greater when democratic societies lose belief in management,” says Ilves, who now advises Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation on cybersecurity coverage and worldwide cooperation. “If a Twitter [troll] begins to go after a protection procurement finances, he can begin to form coverage.”

That makes it onerous to provide monetary help to a tech firm whose merchandise you don’t want now, for instance, however whose capabilities is likely to be helpful to have in an emergency—a sort of service provider marine for know-how, on fixed reserve in case it’s wanted. “We will’t push European tech to maintain innovating imaginative disaster options,” Ilves says. “Enterprise is enterprise. It really works for cash, not for concepts.” 

Even in Riga the conflict can really feel distant, regardless of the Ukrainian flags flying from home windows and above authorities buildings. Conversations about ordnance supply and digital warfare held in ethereal warehouse conversions can really feel educational, even faintly absurd. In a single incubator hub I visited in April, an organization constructing a heavy-duty tracked ATV labored subsequent door to an accounting software program startup. On the highest ground, bean bag chairs have been laid out and a karaoke machine had been arrange for a celebration that night. 

A way of disaster is required to jolt politicians, firms, and societies into understanding that the entrance line can come to them, Ilves says: “That’s my tackle why I believe the Baltics are forward. Sadly not as a result of we’re so good, however as a result of we now have this sense of necessity.” 

Nonetheless, she says her expertise over the previous few years suggests there’s trigger for hope if, or when, hazard breaks by means of a rustic’s borders. Earlier than the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s authorities wasn’t precisely fashionable among the many home enterprise and tech communities. “And but, they got here collectively and put their brains and sources behind [the war effort],” she says. “I’ve a sense that our societies are typically higher than we expect.” 

Peter Visitor is a journalist primarily based in London.