Funding, Politics and Counter-Drones: Day One at the European Defense Tech Festival

Neuhardenberg, 20 August 2026

The European Defense Tech Festival opened this week in a former military hangar at Neuhardenberg airfield, east of Berlin, with the Deeptech Hangar Strausberg incubator among the partners on site. Organised by the European Defense Tech Hub and STIC, the four-day event (20-23 August) brings together founders, investors, public-sector funders and a growing cluster of drone and autonomy startups. Swiss Aerospace Ventures was on site for the first day. Here is what stood out.

The money is there, but only if you know where to look

The most practically useful session of the day came from PwC's funding advisory team, Raik Uhlmann and Andy Stirnal, who walked the audience through the increasingly crowded map of EU and German defence funding.

The headline instrument is the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), with €1.5 billion allocated for 2025-2027, of which €440 million sits in the Industrial Reinforcement Action for expanding and retrofitting production lines. The first calls opened in spring 2026 and cover energy components, key electronic components (including C4ISR, electronic warfare, power electronics and batteries), platforms and end-products, missiles and ammunition, and unmanned systems and counter-UAV. Funding rates are 35% of project costs with a bonus for SMEs, rising to 100% for critical capabilities under the Ukraine Support Instrument. A second call is expected in 2027.

Two conditions matter for non-EU companies: a maximum of 35% of components may be of non-European origin, and ownership structures must prevent control by third countries. For Swiss firms, that makes EU subsidiaries or consortium participation the realistic route in.

Alongside EDIP, the team highlighted Germany's Research Allowance, 25% of eligible R&D costs (35% for SMEs), up to €4.2 million per year from 2026, claimable retroactively for four years and with no thematic restriction, and GRW regional grants of up to 45% for small enterprises in border regions such as Brandenburg. Looking further ahead, a European Competitiveness Fund of €70-90 billion is expected from 2028.

Political readiness is a stage gate, not a soft skill

The keynote from Concilius AG's public-affairs team introduced a "Political Readiness Level", a deliberately unofficial counterpart to Technology Readiness Levels. The five stages run from Problem & Narrative, through Stakeholder & Champion and Planning, to Budget and finally Procurement.

The message for founders was blunt. "Everyone likes the product, and still nothing happens," read one slide, followed by the diagnosis: often it is not a communication gap but a planning gap. Political readiness, the speaker argued, belongs in the project plan alongside product development. And on funding: "'The money is there' is not an answer." A company needs to know the budget line, the year and the approval path, and its own financing timeline has to match the political budget calendar.

The Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub reinforced the theme with its own promise of "innovation, made part of the system, in twelve months or less," its fast-track route for getting startup technology into the German armed forces.

Protect the IP before you pitch it

A session on intellectual property laid out a "disclosure spectrum" from published patent at one end to trade secret at the other, with product appearance, marketing materials and undistributed source code in between. The advice was concrete: file a provisional application before any public event, sign NDAs before any technical discussion, put IP clauses into consortium agreements, keep dated invention records, and, in Germany, follow the ArbNErfG employee-invention procedure. The most common mistake cited was assuming that government funding means the company owns the resulting IP.

Denise Feldner, lawyer and former private-equity deal-team member, covered business law for defence and deep-tech founders, while the Berlin-Brandenburg Aerospace Alliance pitched the Lausitz region as an emerging UAV and aerospace location looking for technology partners.

Counter-UAS everywhere

On the exhibition floor and in the evening pitch session, the dominant technical theme was countering drones, and doing so without relying on GNSS or active emissions.

Bellare, part of Poland's Prodron Group, showed its PIK interceptor: a micro-class fixed-wing UAS that launches from a hand-held tube (11 × 75 cm), ships in a 36-unit vehicle container, or mounts on helicopters as an air-launched effect. The company also offers counter-UAS audits and training.

Phinorm, winner of Chicago Booth's Global New Venture Challenge 2026, presented a software layer that claims to extend the detection range of existing sensors by 55% while cutting false positives in cluttered environments.

Kuhaken pitched THEIA, a pure-software approach that turns two synchronised commercial cameras into a 3D measurement instrument, producing deterministic position, distance and velocity for every airborne object, every frame, no radar, no emissions, no neural network.

Soron Systems tackled the other side of the problem: cooperative navigation for drone swarms and ground vehicles in GNSS-denied environments, with use cases in low-altitude UAV flight and UGV logistics.

Arqus Aerospace presented under the tagline "We secure airspace, together," showing a wheeled ground vehicle with a laser-style effector photographed at Berlin's former Tegel airport.

Omokai is building what it calls a sovereign operating loop for autonomous missions, from voice command through payload configuration, deployment and simulation, as a software layer for the UGVs and UAVs its customers build.

Supporting infrastructure was also on display: SWH's Solar-Iglu field energy platform for autonomous systems, Vektir's portable satcom terminal, MeshUltra's mesh networking, and a supply-chain bench of KDAB (embedded Qt/C++ software), parts-to-go (rapid component sourcing), Maucher (precision manufacturing) and Aumovio, the automotive-electronics spin-off from Continental.

What it means for Swiss aerospace

Three takeaways for the Swiss ecosystem. First, EU defence money is flowing at scale, but the origin and control rules mean Swiss companies need an EU footprint or EU partners to access it. Second, the German market rewards companies that treat political and budgetary readiness as seriously as technical readiness. Third, the counter-UAS segment is crowded with capable software players; the differentiation is increasingly in passive sensing, GNSS-independent navigation and integration onto ground platforms.

Day two moves from talks to live demonstrations, with most of the startups on the flight line. We will report back.

Swiss Aerospace Ventures attended the European Defense Tech Festival as an observer. Company descriptions are based on public presentations and exhibition materials.