Defence Finance Monitor #125
Defence Finance Monitor applies a top–down method that traces how NATO, EU and allied strategic priorities are translated into regulations, funding lines and procurement programmes, and then into demand for specific capabilities, technologies and companies. We use official doctrine as the organising frame to identify where strategic relevance is being institutionally defined and where it is materialising in concrete budgets, acquisition pathways and industrial capacity.
Our working assumption is that what becomes structurally relevant in NATO/EU strategy tends, over time, to become relevant also from a financial and industrial point of view. On this basis, DFM operates as a decision-support tool: it benchmarks investment and industrial choices against institutional demand, clarifies which capabilities are rising on the spending agenda, and maps the funding instruments, eligibility constraints and supply-chain factors that shape real-world feasibility across investors, industry, public authorities and research organisations.
The Baltic Hegemony: The Strategic Transition to a Unified NATO Maritime Lake
The Baltic is no longer a peripheral maritime theatre. It is a NATO-controlled operational system where Nordic accession, integrated ISR, and long-range fires have materially reshaped the balance between deterrence and coercion. This analysis reconstructs how Sweden and Finland close the remaining discontinuities of the Northern Flank, how Kaliningrad’s A2/AD posture shifts from leverage to liability under a 360-degree Allied geometry, and why the decisive line of effort is increasingly subsea: cables, pipelines, and the surveillance-response architectures that protect them. The result is a technical map of how sea control, domain awareness, and infrastructure resilience converge into a single deterrence framework—one that directly conditions reinforcement options, escalation dynamics, and industrial-security risk in Northern Europe.
Total Defence: The Scandinavian Model of Systemic Civil Resilience
Scandinavian Total Defence matters because it treats resilience as an engineered capability rather than a political aspiration. The report shows how Sweden and Finland build deterrence from the inside out: continuity of government, protected energy and telecom networks, pre-planned industrial mobilisation, disciplined stockpiling, and rapid civil–military coordination that closes the grey-zone window an adversary depends on. It then links this architecture to the variables that matter for DFM readers—force availability, reinforcement tempo, infrastructure survivability, and supply-chain exposure. Crucially, it explains why civil infrastructures are no longer peripheral, but have become priority nodes for defence-related capital mobilisation, shaping where public and private investment is now being directed across Europe’s security landscape.
IRIS² and the Shaping of Europe’s Defence Space Market
The IRIS² secure connectivity programme, launched by the European Union as part of its broader strategic autonomy agenda, represents more than a technological response to resilient communications needs. It operates as a mechanism through which access to the defence–space interface is regulated, structured, and selectively expanded. Central to this process are two clusters within the European Defence Fund (EDF) framework—Space-Quantum and Space-Hypersonics—each embedding operational requirements into industrial eligibility conditions. This report examines how these clusters function as formal instruments translating EU strategic priorities into concrete market filters.
Defence Finance Monitor continues to expand its proprietary database of over 900 company profiles, focusing on enterprises that actively contribute to the defence and technological priorities of European, NATO, and allied countries. Each profile is developed using the DFM Strategic-Technological Analysis Framework, assessing how companies align with key objectives—strategic autonomy, technological sovereignty, and cross-border interoperability.
The database highlights firms that reduce dependencies on non-allied suppliers, reinforce industrial resilience, and support interoperable capabilities essential to credible deterrence, force modernisation, and long-term defence planning. It provides a decision-oriented resource for tracking how industrial actors position themselves within the evolving defence ecosystem of liberal democracies.
Recent additions include: Mara Solutions, Orcrist Technologies GmbH, CX2, TERN (US), Testnor, Connect Robotics, Copsys Technologies, CSMC (CA), e-peas, Ethicronics (UK), Fieldmade, Hydro Road (UK), INCAS – National Institute for Aerospace Research “Elie Carafoli” (Romania), Incendia Canada, and Knitronix (Italy).
Access to the full Company Profiles is reserved for DFM subscribers.
Without a structured map that connects doctrine, budgets and industrial capacity, strategy remains abstract, capital is misallocated, and industrial readiness drifts into reactivity rather than deliberate design.