When Vladimir Putin sent at least 19 drones into Poland last week, the Russian president was delivering a message: He’s not planning to end his war against the West anytime soon. The Russian incursion into NATO airspace follows weeks of aerial attacks in Ukraine that killed dozens of civilians, damaged buildings housing the EU and British delegations and struck for the first time a government building in central Kyiv.  Far from being ready to strike a peace deal with Ukraine under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, Putin has pegged his political survival to a simmering conflict with the United States and its allies. “Putin is the president of war,” said Nikolai Petrov, a senior analyst at the London-based New Eurasian Strategies Center. “He has no interest in ending it.” Having fashioned himself as a wartime leader, going back to being a peacetime president would be tantamount to a demotion. “No matter what the conditions are, he cannot give up that role,” Petrov said.  As Putin’s full-scale assault on Ukraine drags toward its fourth year, the Russian president arguably has the most cause for optimism since the early days of the war when the Kremlin hoped to capture the country in a matter of days. With Ukrainian forces hamstrung by a lack of weapons and manpower, Russia has been grinding deeper into the country.  But Moscow’s progress has been slow — and costly. The Kremlin’s armed forces have suffered an estimated one million casualties and the conflict has taken its toll on the Russian economy, which threatens to tip into recession. And yet, politically, ending the conflict comes with risks. The Kremlin’s tight control over the media and the internet would likely allow it to sell a peace deal to most Russians as a victory. But that’s not who the Russian president will be worrying about. With Russia’s liberal opposition decimated, a small but vocal group of nationalists now presents the biggest threat to his rule, said Petrov. And he has promised them a grandiose victory, not only over Ukraine but over what the Kremlin calls “the collective West.” “There’s a desire among the hawkish part of the military-political establishment to destroy NATO,” Alexander Baunov, a former Russian diplomat now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told DW’s Russian service. “To show NATO is worthless.” Since Putin met with Trump in Alaska last month in what the U.S. president had touted as a summit dedicated to striking a ceasefire, Moscow has ramped up its campaign of hybrid warfare against Europe, according to military analysts.  Before Wednesday’s incursion, Russian drones had repeatedly ventured into Polish airspace from neighboring Belarus, circling cities before turning back. In August, a Russian drone crashed some 100 kilometers southwest of Warsaw.  According to WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, five of the drones that crossed into Poland were on a direct flight path toward a NATO base before being intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. In an opinion piece published two days before the drones crossed into Poland, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, accused Helsinki of planning an attack, threatening that any assault “could lead to the collapse of Finnish statehood — once and for all.”  Analysts noted the article’s rhetoric resembled the Kremlin’s talking points ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has also begun to shift vital industries, including shipbuilding, to the east of the country, away from its border with NATO, Petrov pointed out. On Friday, Russia began carrying out large-scale military exercises with Belarus, including just across the Polish border. The exercises are expected to conclude on Tuesday. “Whatever Putin achieves in Ukraine, the confrontation with the West will not end there; it will continue in various forms,” said Petrov. “Including militarily.” With actions like the incursion into Poland, Putin is issuing a warning to Trump and European leaders discussing providing security guarantees for Kyiv after a potential peace deal, said Kirill Rogov, founder of the think tank Re:Russia. “Putin showed that he can attack NATO countries today and they have no defense systems in place,” he said. Trump’s mixed signaling on his commitment to NATO and his unwillingness to stick to his own deadlines when it comes to imposing sanctions on Moscow give Putin the confidence that he can get away with it. For the Russian president, “it’s now or never,” Baunov added. Incursions like the one in Poland are intended to chip away at the Western military alliance’s commitment to collective defense, with small offensives that test NATO’s willingness to respond. The hope, said Baunov, is to reveal the military alliance as a toothless tiger. So far, the reaction from Washington has fed into those fears.  On Thursday, Trump echoed Moscow’s talking points, telling reporters that “it could have been a mistake.”  The Kremlin has dismissed accusations that the drones were a deliberate provocation. The Russian defense ministry said there “had been no plans to target facilities” in Poland.  Belarus, which served as a launchpad for some of the drones according to Polish officials, said the incursion could have been the result of a mishap due to “electronic jamming.” “This is typical Putin-style trolling and probing,” said Rogov. “He likes things to be ambivalent so that they can be interpreted either as deliberate or accidental.”

Blockages in the technology innovation pipeline and digital skills shortages were just some of the topics discussed by industry stakeholders during a DSEI-hosted roundtable held in July. Chaired by the UK minister for defense procurement, Maria Eagle, attendees included the likes of KX, Forcys, Dell and Amazon Web Services, all of which are attending DSEI UK 2025. The theme of the roundtable was ‘developing defense technology at pace to meet modern battlefield requirements’, a key theme at this year’s DSEI UK. Under the banner of this overarching theme, four sub-themes were discussed by the group as company representatives directed questions and suggestions toward the minister. The minister opened the proceedings by outlining the priorities of the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), calling the current moment a “pivotal” one for UK defense as the country looks to return to warfighting readiness. Technology will be central to this move and the UK is set on becoming a leading “tech-enabled defense superpower by 2035,” she said, with priorities based on the lessons learned in Ukraine. Changes like these will require some changes in the government’s approach to technology, though. “We’ve got to innovate at the speed of technology … there’s no point taking six years to get to contract on a drone — you’d just be contracting to put it in the museum,” she added. > We’ve got to innovate at the speed of technology … there’s no point taking six > years to get to contract on a drone — you’d just be contracting to put it in > the museum. Changing the way the UK government acquires and utilizes innovative defense technology at speed and scale will require stronger collaboration between government and industry, however, and there is still some way to go to ensure this relationship works, according to industry stakeholders at the roundtable. Bolstering the innovation pipeline A major hurdle for defense firms is navigating the ‘valley of death’ — the time between developing an initial concept and the point at which the company starts to see returns on its investment. Businesses need considerable support to stay liquid and avoid bankruptcy in this period. “I think part of the challenge that we’ve identified is taking an operational concept demonstrator, which we’ve been involved with in defense, and bringing that into core [military programs],” a representative from KX, a software company based in Northern Ireland, said. “[It’s] the valley of death or the cup of opportunity, as I call it — and nobody seems to be drinking from that cup,” the representative said. “A lot of attention goes to the SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] and the concept demonstration, and the primes get a huge amount of attention at the other end of the scale, but dragging those concept demonstrators into a core program, that seems to be a key challenge, and it would be great to understand how that can be accelerated so that concepts don’t just wither on the vine.” Eagle recognized that concept demonstrators are sometimes shelved with “no follow up,” noting that the “valley of death has been a big problem.” To address this, the UK is “establishing UK innovation,” with the goal of getting “new ideas and concepts, and new ways of doing things to the warfighter.” Company representatives and moderator gathered at DSEI UK roundtable.  Is there enough support for SMEs? Another portion of the roundtable focused on how SMEs position in the defense ecosystem can be further supported, particularly by other key stakeholders such as the UK MoD and DSEI UK. Eagle noted the UK government’s plans to establish an SME hub in the “not too [distant] future” to provide smaller defense tech companies with assistance for working in the sector and with the MoD. A representative from Forcys welcomed plans to establish an SME hub but did push back against the minister, arguing that many of these initiatives designed to fund innovation do not come with “sufficient money.” “The average DASA [Defence and Security Accelerator] award is £50,000 to £100,000 — its buttons to what’s actually required to develop something at pace and really develop it properly, rather than just playing into it,” the representative argued. The representative also rallied against the problems faced by Forcys due to its size, given it is defined neither as an SME nor a prime. This means it doesn’t get the support infrastructure afforded to smaller firms or the advantages that come with having the scale of a prime.   The future of dual use and next-gen skills issues Looking ahead, stakeholders at the roundtable also discussed what the future might look like for the defense industry, given the changing nature of dual-use technology and the concerning digital skills gaps in the sector. > Stakeholders at the roundtable also discussed what the future might look like > for the defense industry, given the changing nature of dual-use technology and > the concerning digital skills gaps. Understanding the defense supply chain is crucial on the dual-use front, according to a representative from PQShield. They pointed to the untapped potential in dual-use, explaining that many companies don’t know how to sell to the defense industry. “We’re struggling to pitch it to defense right now because we don’t know the best place to go,” the representative said, speaking about PQShield’s cryptography products and solutions. Discussion also turned to the difficulties the defense industry faces in acquiring workers with the right skills or having access to graduates and those early in their careers. “We’re being outgunned by gaming, by fintech, by the finance industry — we’re not getting the best people. We say we do, we don’t because we just simply can’t pay for them,” said Rob Taylor, founder of training technology firm 4GD. Adding to this point, the representative from KX said that they would like to see schools doing more to incentivize students to seek out technology jobs. A good approach would be to start from year seven or even younger, they said. Eagle agreed that the skills issue is “tremendously important,” adding that the UK’s skills system has not worked as well as it could for some time and that many industries are suffering the same skills shortages. “As we’ve had the last few years, where you’ve got a war on our doorstep and things like that going on, there’s been a shift back towards understanding the value of defense. But there’s some ways still to go, so we’ve got more work to do on that,” Eagle said.