Simmons Sitrep: October 2025

Strategic Direction & Policy Signals

1. The UK released its Defence Industrial Strategy 2025. The strategy outlines significant projects to develop UK-based defence companies, funding for research and investment in regional hubs and technical colleges to support the industry. The strategy not only focusses on the Defence industry as a strategic asset but as a means for economic growth through exports (link).

2. A £10bn agreement was signed for Norway to acquire 5 British-made Type 26 anti-submarine warships. This is the largest warship export deal in UK history, reinforcing the UK's defence export strategy (link).

3. The UK Space Command and the UK Space Agency is developing new sensor technology to spot lasers that adversaries may use to dazzle satellites and intercept communications. 20% of UK GDP is reliant on satellites and this technology will help protect satellites that are used for everything from bank transfers and weather forecasts to emergency services and intelligence operations (link).

4. The UK Government has announced a £1.5bn venture with Palantir to help the UK military develop digital tools, utilise AI and improve targeting systems. As part of the partnership, Palantir will designate its European headquarters in London, supporting the UK's position as a hub for defence technology innovation (link).

5. Italy has announced that it will be increasing its defence spending by 7.2%, to €31.3bn. With a re-categorisation of spending on pensions and paramilitary police, Italy will hit the NATO 2% target. Included in the budget is procurement funding of €25bn over the next 15 years, including projects for the acquisition of additional F-35s, the development of the new Rheinmetall Panther MBT and funding of the GCAP fighter program (link).

6. India has announced a £350m deal to buy UK-made Thales lightweight multirole missiles (Martlet), as used by the UK military and in the same variant as have been donated to the Ukraine armed forces. The deal was coincided with UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer's visit and joint exercises between the Royal Navy's Carrier Strike Group and the Indian Navy (link).

7. The German parliament has approved a series of defence procurements of over €7bn, including the procurement of additional Eurofighters at €3.75bn and Boxer armoured vehicles. This spending is part of the Bundeswehr's normal budget and not the special €100bn fund created after the invasion of Ukraine. This comes as part of Germany's report procurement plan of nearly €83 billion in contracts over the next year, made up of 154 major defence purchases between September 2025 and December 2026 (link) (link).

8. Ukraine and Denmark have signed a MoU on the establishment of Ukrainian production facilities in Denmark, including joint facilities and projects which can attract EU funding (link).

9. A Ukrainian delegation was sent to Washington D.C. to discuss the terms of a rumoured $50bn deal for Ukraine to sell drones to the U.S. to help meet the needs of the U.S. Armed Forces' Unleashing American Drone Dominance intent to integrate drones in 'every squad' by the end of 2026 (link).

Legal, Regulatory & Ethical Updates

1. The U.S. Senate has passed the National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA funds the U.S. military at $924.7bn for the 2026 fiscal year. The respective armed services committees of the House and Senate will now seek to agree a compromise between their respective versions of the NDAA (with the House having a lower $893bn budget). Some amendments to the bill included increased powers to protect military installations from drones and restrictions on U.S. investments that could bolster Chinese technology such as AI and semiconductors (link).

2. The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (the U.S.' defence requirements process) was replaced with a Requirements & Resourcing Alignment Board, and the establishment of Mission Engineering & Integration Activity. These moves are designed to streamline and speed up the defence innovation cycle in the U.S. (link).

3. Ukraine indicates that it is considering a partial lifting of a ban on the export of weapons, put in place at the start of the war, to allow Ukrainian expertise in areas such as drone technology to be exported to its allies and enable Ukrainian defence companies to expand production in foreign countries to assist the war effort. The exception to the export control law would apply to the JEF, the U.K.-led coalition of ten countries, including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway (link).

4. The G7 Cyber Expert Group has issued a statement on Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity. The group advises G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors on cybersecurity policy issues critical to the security and resilience of the financial system. The statement, encourage those in the financial sector to: Explore AI's potential for enhancing cyber defence capabilities; Update risk frameworks to reflect AI-specific cybersecurity vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies; Engage in collaborative research and policy development with technology firms and academia; and Promote public-private dialogue to promote secure and trustworthy AI in the financial sector (link).

Industry Updates

1. Rheinmetall enters the defence shipbuilding industry (in addition to its existing capacity of providing maritime components and systems) through the acquisition of the €1bn shipbuilding operations of Lürssen Group. Lürssen is perhaps best known for manufacturing (in a JV with Thyssen-Krupp) the F-125 Baden-Württemberg class frigate (link).

2. Helsing acquires Blue Ocean, an Australian specialist autonomous AUV developer and manufacturer. Back in July 2025, Helsing conducted a €600m Series D funding round, bringing its total capital raises to €1.37bn and valuing the startup at €12bn, this has coincided with Helsing's unveiling of its unmanned fighter concept, CA-1 Europa, in June and its autonomous underwater glider, SG-1 Fathom, in July (link).

3. Anduril tests solid rocket motor (SRM) for air-to-air weapons with RTX. This follows a $14.3m U.S. Government investment in January to expand SRM production, and the opening of an SRM production line in Mississippi which is predicted to produce 6,000 SRMs a year by the end of 2026, in direct competition with the market leaders, L3Harris and Northrop Grumman (link).

4. Drone maker Stark releases its first line of maritime USVs. The Vanta-4 and Vanta -6are designed to assist traditional maritime assets with a range of missions from escort  to ISR. A key strategic need that Stark is targeting is the protection of undersea cables at risk of sabotage (link).

5. In another M&A move, Forterra, the ground autonomy company, acquired secure comms company goTenna in October, to enable it to integrate its technology into its platforms and equip its vehicles (link).

6. BAE Systems and Forterra announced in September, a joint venture to develop an autonomous version of BAE's U.S. Army Armoured Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV) and demonstrate it in 2026. The AMPV is to replace the M113 APC in U.S. Army service in a number of variants (link).

7. Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ) and BAE Systems have entered into a partnership to establish a new 155mm artillery ammunition manufacturing facility in Poland as part of an increase in European defence manufacturing and the capacity to produce the NATO standard 155mm munitions, which have been supplied in large numbers to Ukraine (link).

8. Directed energy c-UAS startup Epirus announced a joint venture with General Dynamics Land Systems in October 2025 to build a mobile, counter-drone robotic ground vehicle. The vehicle will be equipped with Epirus' Leonidas system, this follows the testing of the Leonidas system in August 2025 by the U.S. Army where it defeated a swarm of 49 drones (link).

Capital & Investment Watch

1. Auterion raises $130m Series B funding round for their AI-enabled software. Led by Bessemer Venture Partners, the funding is to go to the development of its drone-swarm and autonomous flight and mission execution technologies. Auterion's systems are not only designed for defence applications, it is also reported that it will be used by retailers for drone based delivery systems (link).

2. Firehawk raises $60m in Series C funding round. With investors including Presto Tech Horizons, a JV involving the Czech ammunition and equipment manufacture, Czechsolvak Group, Firehawk intends to use the funding in its further development of SRM propellant, designed to reduce production times and challenge the key players in the market (link).

3. Blue Water Autonomy raises $50m in Series A funding round. Blue Water Autonomy is a U.S. autonomous ship building and technology company. The funding will go towards the development and building of its first long-range autonomous ship in 2026 (link).

4. Swarmer, a Kyiv based UAV software company, raised $15m in a Series A funding round from US investors, which was reportedly the largest single investment in a Ukrainian defence tech company since the start of the war. One of Swarmer's products is Styx, a swarm management software, which coordinates drones and lets them coordinate amongst themselves (link).

5. Perseus Defense, a startup founded in 2025 and specialising in c-UAS missiles, raised $6m in a seed round from over 15 investors, including Alumni Ventures and Bow Capital. Perseus, in the midst of similar competition from Saab and L3Harris, plans to conduct a live test fire with the U.S. Army in January 2026 (link).

6. Tiberius raises $4.5m for Defence as a Service (DaaS) technology. Tiberius has developed GRAIL, an AI platform that is designed to bring transparency and competition to weapons procurement and manufacturing by breaking defence procurement down into objective, data-based 'scores' (link).