There are never ending stories and backlashes about the defense industry in general. Hundreds of millions of dollars spend every your by major countries, scary incidents from time to time, and a lot of secrecy. Sounds about right, huh?
Today I’ll try to give you a different angle, especially how I experienced being part of that industry for quite some time and even being asked to present one of my current solutions to a broader, mostly military audience. AFCEA is an industry event, where you get to see the big players such as Airbus Industries and the likes of Hensoldt, IBM & SAP, but also a select few startups that made it there with smart software and surveillance equipment.
The industry itself is very welcoming, everyone carries a certain amount of proudness for their own achievements. You can really feel the enthusiasm of most engineers that showcase their product and first experiences in the real world.
I presented a brand new tool for observability as well as the concept of Hyperautomation to the audience, and was pleasantly surprised by how many people were actually interested in this kind of topic. The “automation shift” is happening in every major player at this very moment, so its a really exciting time to be in IT.
I even had the chance to meet Spot for the first time in real life. Spot is a utility robot that can be used for various purposes, like exploration, defusing bombs and other critical tasks. With a basic loadout, one of these goes for about USD 240.000. That seems like a lot of money, but you can tell how much research went into this thing. I’ve been using it for a bit and it actually feels just like playing a video game on a Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck. Quite cool!
All in all, I get why people have mixed feelings about military suppliers in general. For me personally, I enjoy being in an environment that matters to the European security and that funds a lot of important cutting edge technology, that will impact the general public afterwards as well. You can see how those tools and robots developed for the military find their way into other industries – slowly but steady.
