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Four Days at the Airfield. Next Stop: Asia.
Fostering Defense Innovation for European Sovereignty
Fynn van Rießen & Benjamin Wolba
August 26, 2026
Last weekend, hundreds of builders, operators, investors, and industry representatives joined us at Airport Neuhardenberg for the first European Defense Tech Festival.
Over four days, teams flew fixed-wing UAVs, ran a full medical evacuation exercise, tested navigation without GNSS, and put counter-UAS systems in front of operators. Some demos worked. Others found their limits in the Brandenburg wind.
What’s next?
This weekend, our hackathon series returns to Hamburg.
On September 17, teams from our recent hackathons will present what they have built and where they are taking it next at our free, online Virtual Demo Day.
Starting September 25, EDTH will travel through Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea for five events over three weeks.
And from October 1–8, the EDTH Defense Tech Days are coming to London: eight days of events across the city, organized with our partners and alongside Deep Tech London.
Also below:
🚨 What the Field Taught Us
550+ participants joined our largest EDTH event to date, co-organized with DeepTech HANGAR Strausberg.
Teams brought working systems to the airfield. NORDYN Robotics flew its Nitro 800 zero-runway-takeoff UAV. Soron Systems demonstrated GNSS-independent navigation and cooperative mapping. Rattlesnake brought its autonomous counter-UAS system, while Synteza AI tested neural-network terminal guidance and target classification.
The AO, Thor’s Haven, and NIXXEN ran a live medical evacuation simulation with operators and medics. Dryad Networks tested its wildfire detection and suppression stack.
Photo Credit: William Veder
The talks kept returning to the same problem: a prototype has to survive the battlefield, survive the factory, and become part of the force. A system that works once but cannot be manufactured reliably, supported in the field, or integrated into procurement is not yet a capability.
Ukrainian soldiers from Azov joined us and shared what works on the battlefield. Vladyslav Berehovyi from Defence Builder spoke about continuous validation in Ukraine and why spare parts, not features, often decide whether a system stays deployed.
The airfield gave teams something a conference room cannot: honest answers.
Read the independent four-day field report from Swiss Aerospace Ventures
🇩🇪 Hamburg Is This Weekend
From August 28–30, more than 100 hackers will meet in Hamburg for the next European Defense Tech Hackathon.
Teams can work on the prepared challenges or bring an existing project. Frontline experts and operators will be there to test assumptions and help the strongest projects continue beyond Sunday. TKMS will also join us for this edition.
More Events From EDTH
💻 Virtual Demo Day — September 17
On September 17, teams from our recent hackathons will present how their prototypes have developed and what they are working on next.
Each startup gets four minutes to pitch, followed by a live Q&A. The event is free, online, and open to anyone who wants to meet the founders and ask questions directly.
EDTH Connect: Find Your Match — August 31
On August 31, EDTH Connect will bring members together for a focused online matchmaking session. Tell us what you are working on and who could help; we will make curated introductions to relevant people across the network.
The session is open to EDTH Community members.
🌏 Five Events Across Asia in Three Weeks
From September 25 to October 11, EDTH will run three hackathons, a startup showcase, and an industrial conference across Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
September 25–27 | Singapore Defense Tech Hackathon
Together with NUS Enterprise and TUM Venture Labs, we are bringing 120+ builders to Singapore to work on new air-defense systems.
The central mission is the “Little Red Dome”: connecting sensors, autonomous C2, and low-cost interceptors into systems capable of responding to drone swarms and other aerial threats. A select group is already working on a three-month-long challenge ahead of the main event.
Teams can compete for up to $30,000 in prizes. The strongest projects can continue through a nine-month incubation program at the NUS Defence Tech Venture Lab.
October 2–4 | Taiwan Defense Tech Hackathon
In Taipei, we are co-organizing our first Taiwan Defense Tech Hackathon with the Unmanned Vehicles R&D Center at National Taiwan University.
More than 100 builders from Taiwan, Europe, and beyond will work on unmanned systems and other challenges shaped by Taiwan’s security environment. These include grey-zone drone incursions, resilient communications under jamming, GNSS-denied navigation, maritime awareness, and autonomous interception.
Operators and military end users will work directly with the teams throughout the weekend.
October 6 | Europe–Japan Dual-Use Innovation Showcase
Together with Plug and Play Japan, we are bringing European and Japanese startups, corporates, investors, and government stakeholders together in Tokyo.
The approval-only event will include expert sessions and pitches from startups looking to enter the European or Japanese market.
October 7 | From Prototype to Arsenal – Japan
One day later, EDTH and Deloitte Japan will host a conference on Japan’s defense manufacturing capacity.
Japan has the robotics, semiconductor, automotive, and precision-manufacturing base needed for large-scale drone production. The discussions will focus on the components, suppliers, procurement changes, and production systems required to turn that industrial base into defense output.
October 9–11 | Korea Defense Tech Hackathon
The tour ends in South Korea with Deploy for Defense and 150+ builders working on UAS and counter-UAS technologies.
Teams will have access to outdoor drone testing and feedback from operators and military end users. The goal is to find teams willing to keep testing and developing after the hackathon, not just build a prototype for Sunday’s presentation.
🇬🇧 EDTH Defense Tech Days Are Coming to London
From October 1–8, the EDTH Defense Tech Days will run across London, ahead of and alongside the Resilience Conference and Deep Tech London. Together with our partners, we’re creating eight days of events across the city: enough density for the same people to keep meeting and working together.
October 2–4 — European Defense Tech Hackathon
Our London hackathon returns with challenges informed by UK and Ukrainian practitioners. The strongest teams will present their prototypes at Sunday’s Demo Day.
More Hackathons Across Europe and Beyond
We’re building out our hackathon community and networking platform, and will move all registration processes over there in the last quarter of the year.
More News From the Community
🛰️ Building Miniature Radars in Kyiv
Seven months ago, Marcin moved to Kyiv to build Valkyrie Dynamics, an EDTH alumni team developing miniature radars.
The team works in person in Kyiv and sends prototypes directly to the frontline. Engineering, purchasing, and production happen in parallel because soldiers do not need one working unit. If the technology works, they need thousands.
As Marcin puts it, the only marketing that matters is whether the product works on the battlefield.
🇺🇦 Ukraine Turns Drone Procurement Into a Mission-Specific Marketplace
BRAVE1 Market now lets Ukrainian units request custom drones by defining more than 17 parameters, from communications and payload to endurance, instead of choosing only from a fixed catalog.
The platform routes each request to suppliers, compares matching bids, and can run a price auction. The feature is already live for purchases made with units’ own funds, including those made through non-codified systems.
Units can define the mission first, and manufacturers can respond to an actual operational need, so there is now a much tighter link between battlefield requirements, product development, and procurement.