Programme Manager - Land

Electronic warfare is driving the move to autonomy. October 9, 2026 The spread of localised electronic warfare across the front in Ukraine is what is pushing drones towards autonomy, the head of UK land at Helsing told the Apex Europe conference in London on Wednesday. Mike Wilmot said: "We see the action of denial of GPS leads to the reaction of flying by FPV, so you don't need GPS. That sees the counteraction of localised EW that denies comms, and with that exponential increase of EW, we see a corresponding move towards greater autonomy." Full autonomy is not there yet, he said, agreeing with the Ukrainian officer who spoke before him, and most Western militaries are watching the same sequence and working out how to respond to it. The British Army's answer is its 20-40-40 construct, which moves the balance away from exquisite survivable platforms and towards the attritable and the consumable. What that means for suppliers is more software-defined systems and lower unit prices. "It also means what the army calls affordable mass, and what most economists call value, much cheaper systems, where the expectation isn't necessarily that it will return," he said, describing the question Helsing is working on as how to deliver more platforms at a lower price per unit that still do what is asked of them in a heavily contested electronic warfare environment. "One of the points that is not actually often discussed there is the ethical element of being able to send a platform forward without a human operator, as well as the efficiency element," he said. "There isn't just a financial expense of sending an F-35 across the forward line of enemy troops. There is also a potential human expense, and if we have that safety confidence in a platform to be able to deliver its task, then there does become an ethical consideration of why send a human pilot or a collection of human pilots when you could first send autonomous platforms," he said. Safety works the same way in his account, since there are tasks where an automated process earns more confidence than a person, air defence engagement being the obvious case. Helsing has about fifty people in an office in Ukraine, set up in response to feedback from the Ukrainian armed forces, and runs a monthly software update to the hardware platforms it has fielded. "The hardware isn't necessarily changing very much over a protracted period of time, but the software is, and it's only through that proximity to the end users," he said. "They're not going to be pushing much feedback for us. We need to be pulling it from them." Western militaries will have to get comfortable with contractors working closer to the fighting than they have in recent conflicts, he suggested, which is a commercial problem as much as a military one and an area where Ukraine offers a working example. Asked what he would tell a national armaments director, he reached for a high street. "If people buy sweets, sweet shops will open on a high street. If they buy enough sweets, a sweet factory will open nearby. And if they buy even more, then someone will open a sugar refinery, and even dentists will start popping up," he said, citing the phrase capital follows contracts from reflections on the writing of the strategic defence review.

Baltic states seek to calm panic on Russia, in role reversal. This story is a part of the weekly newsletter about security, defence, and tech in the eastern flank of Nato, How we cee it. Over the past few weeks, a new wave of fear has engulfed Europe. A number of intelligence and government officials have spoken out, saying Russia could possibly attack a Nato country within months, not years. On 18 September, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk warned that Russia is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on European countries that support Ukraine, such as Poland. Two days later, Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka told the Guardian that, as well as increased drone activity, a small-scale invasion of Nato territory bordering Russia could be part of the Kremlin's plans. Then, last Thursday, Denmark's defence intelligence service said that Russia is likely to intensify its hybrid war against the West in the coming months, with more frequent attacks against Nato countries. On the same day, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Poland's foreign minister Radosław Sikorski said, according to TVP World: "We are receiving information... that Russia is preparing something big this year." [ Ready for a smarter inbox? Get EUobserver's free daily update - delivered every morning at 7:30 sharp...] This is not the first time a wave of comments like this has appeared. A similar situation arose last year, when various officials in Europe took turns escalating their rhetoric about the Russian threat. It is possible that they are speaking out again because new information has surfaced within the intelligence community. The communication goal could be letting Russia know that they know. Much like CIA director John Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow last month, this could be an effort to make sure Russia doesn't miscalculate. The warnings also come in a different context from last year, when the Baltic countries were sounding the alarm. Russia has noticeably been turning up the temperature of its activity around Europe. Back in July, a cruise missile crashed in Poland. According to experts, it was not a misguided missile, but one deliberately aimed at Poland. Then, in early August, a drone carrying an explosive device was discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany, close to Ukrainian cargo planes. Germany's interior minister Alexander Dobrindt said the Leipzig airport attack followed the "well-established pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe," the BBC reported. According to German investigators, who spoke to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the incident was also connected to other events, such as an attempted arson attack on a drone manufacturer in eastern Slovakia, and an arson attack in Munich on September 3, when several incendiary devices were thrown from a passing car onto a construction site near the headquarters of defence firms Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing. In fact, there have been so many different incidents recently that the semi-regular drone incursions into Romania and the Baltics have become almost normalised and struggle to make headlines anymore. Hypothetical scenarios abound. Scenarios of where Russia could take its hybrid attacks next are as abundant as onlookers' creativity allows. They range from small attacks on factories, through the seizure of a small piece of land by an elite drone unit, all the way to the capture of the Suwałki corridor - a strategic piece of land between the Baltic states and mainland Europe. Most recently, the CIA warned that while all eyes had so far been on the Baltics, Russia may be preparing a drone strike against Spain, France, and Italy. According to Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian parliament's foreign affairs committee, the snowball of speculation about an imminent Russian attack on Europe is gathering pace. But as he sees it, isolated facts are being mixed with wishful thinking, worst-case scenarios and, at times, little more than the need to grab attention. As he wrote in an opinion piece for the Estonian news agency ERR: "Russia understands that it can confuse and paralyse us through information operations alone. Constant speculation about the Baltic states and Poland risks creating the impression that this is primarily a problem for two or three countries on Russia's doorstep, while the rest of Europe can somehow remain untouched." According to Mihkelson, Russia's campaign against the West would not necessarily begin with a conventional attack. It could start by undermining Nato from within: interfering in elections, amplifying polarising narratives, exploiting political divisions, and spreading fear. It could seek to isolate Ukraine by limiting Western support, and then test Nato's willingness to stand together. As for worries that Russia will attempt to grab land from the Baltics or Poland, there are no significant material or military changes to note along the borders. Belarus did hold a four-day military exercise near its border with the Suwałki corridor in mid-September, but that is nothing close to the signals we were getting from Russia just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Back then, physical military infrastructure was being constructed ahead of the attack. There are also no significant changes in the Russian military's posture to launch a land attack against the Baltics. Estonian government officials confirm this. According to Estonia's minister of defence, Martin Herem, its assessment of the Russian threat remains unchanged. That means Russia's main effort remains focused on its war in Ukraine, and neither Estonia, Denmark, nor other Nato allies currently see a threat requiring raised military readiness. Military experts in Lithuania also see no signs of new escalation. This doesn't mean Russia won't continue to be dangerous. It means that Russia has been engaged in provocations against Nato countries for years already, and similar behaviour will continue. "No one is currently planning to conquer us - not at this moment, nor this year. In this case, specific, very precise attacks or provocations are more likely, designed not so much to cause physical damage as to sow serious panic in people's minds," Deividas Šlekys, a professor at Vilnius University's Institute of Political Science and International Relations, told the Lithuanian wire LRT on Monday (28 September). And so, while last autumn it was the Baltic states sounding the alarm about a potential Russian attack, now their officials are looking to calm the panic about their aggressive neighbour. Latest from defence. Latest from Nato.