Future Forces

As we wait until our event film to be produced and we kick-start our white paper with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, we would like to recognise our Mission Partners who made Future Forces Demo Day possible. All these companies believed so much in the importance of pulling the tech of emergent start-ups into the UK defence ecosystem that they applied their capital and people to start making it happen. Thanks for your belief in our mission. BAE Systems L3Harris Technologies BT Group Anduril Industries General Dynamics UK Limited Amazon Web Services (AWS) Helsing Rowden Babcock International Group JOIN CAPITAL Northrop Grumman UK Oracle

We were at the Embassy of Ukraine in the UK this morning in London as part of a group of VCs and relevant organizations focused on enabling investment in Ukrainian start-ups. For Future Forces this was about understanding from the Minister for Digital Transformation, Oleksandr Borniakov, what Ukrainian start-ups need from the wider UK defence ecosystem (e.g. Primes and MoD) to enable more investment.

It's great to see one of our Mission Partners L3Harris Technologies combining their hardware expertise with the software/AI of a newer breed of defence player. Although Palantir is clearly not a start-up, this augmentation based approach is exactly the blue-print we are trying to encourage through Future Forces Demo Day - disruptive start-ups integrated with Primes in major programmes of record is the way to regain our technological advantage. Fred Hargreaves OBE MA FIET CMgr FCMI Pete Hoddinott

We are at the European Defense Tech Summit in Madrid to stay connected with the exciting developments in the broader European ecosystem. Kudos to Eric Slesinger for pulling together such an impressive group of change makers 🚀🇪🇺 If you're here, be sure to say hi.

Recap of Day 2 of Future Forces Demo Day 2024: Over the course of a day, 20 cutting edge start-ups from 7 countries demonstrated their products in front of more than 200 leaders from defence Primes, the UK Ministry of Defence, British Army, Royal Air Force (RAF), Royal Navy, Strategic Command, as well as NATO and the venture capital community. The emphasis was on physical demonstrations. The day started off by Future Forces co-founders Richard Pass and Nick Cowley articulating the actions that each key stakeholder group could take during the course of the day to increase the chances of partnerships between start-ups and Primes emerging (alongside the strategic rationale). This was based off the breakout sessions conducted during Indirect Adoption Workshop co-curated with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change the night before. Piers Flay then expertly shepherded attendees between outside and inside demo areas whilst coordinating questions, so that military end users and Primes could gauge the technological fit of start-ups to current and future equipment programmes. During the course of the day, attendees were encouraged to visit the 35 stands that each Prime and start-up demonstrators had at the event to build relationships that could result in future partnerships. The start-ups that demonstrated at Future Forces Demo Day 2024 were: 🇬🇧 Advai 🇬🇧 Arondite 🇱🇹 Astrolight 🇬🇧 Flowcopter 🇬🇧 Greenjets 🇬🇧 Hirundo 🇬🇧 iCOMAT 🇬🇧 Little Place Labs 🇬🇧 Living Optics 🇳🇱 Lobster Robotics 🇬🇧 Opteran 🇬🇧 Oxford Dynamics 🇬🇧 Oxford Space Systems 🇩🇪 PLENO (Techstars'24) 🇩🇰 Quadsat 🇬🇧 Stanhope AI 🇬🇧 Vizgard 🇬🇧 VOLANDER 🇵🇱 REVOBEAM 🇺🇦 Farsight Vision With thanks to our mission partners who made this event possible and have so actively supported start-up tech adoption from the outset of this initiative: BAE Systems General Dynamics UK Limited L3Harris Technologies Northrop Grumman Oracle BT Group Rowden Amazon Web Services (AWS) Anduril Industries Babcock International Group Helsing JOIN CAPITAL

Recap of Day 1 of Future Forces Demo Day 2024: The evening Networking Dinner and Indirect Adoption Workshop co-curated by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and Future Forces. During the course of the evening, 200 attendees from Primes, the MoD/military, start-ups and VCs collectively turned a vision for more start-up/Prime partnerships into pragmatic actions for each stakeholder group. This was achieved through introductory briefs by Nick Cowley, Richard Pass and Melanie G. to set the vision, before all attendees were split into 5 breakout sessions (with equal representation of stakeholders). There were also three special talks by the Head of Commercial X Dina Kakaras (myth-busting what is commercially possible by the MoD), Commandant of the Air and Space Warfare Centre, Air Commodore Blythe Crawford CBE (myth-busting what military personal can share with industry) and Saab Chief Innovation Officer Rob Murray MBA (on the importance of trust). Together these talks aimed to dispel myths and encourage greater cooperation. This workshop set the right conditions for the 20 start-up demonstrations that took place the next day. The next stage of this work is a working paper that will be jointly published by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and Future Forces on the practical steps that can be taken by all stakeholder groups to increase start-up tech adoption via partnerships with Primes. A recap of Day 2 - the start-up demonstrations - will be released tomorrow. With thanks to our mission partners who made this event possible (and our breakout leads James Gayner MBE, Piers Flay and Stephen Anning, PhD): BAE Systems General Dynamics UK Limited L3Harris Technologies Northrop Grumman Oracle BT Group Rowden Amazon Web Services (AWS) Anduril Industries Babcock International Group JOIN CAPITAL Helsing With thanks to Florian Poama-Neagra for the photos, and Sam White Johannes T. Jansen, Oscar Raimes, Thomas Graham and Doireann (Dee) McMahon for keeping the event on the road.

The robot of one of our cohort start-ups, Oxford Dynamics pulling into place the hydraulics-powered UAV of another, Flowcopter at Future Forces Demo Day 2024. Exciting things to come for both these start-ups!

Thanks to everyone that attended and supported Future Forces Demo Day 2024! Much more content will be shared over the days ahead to capture the energy, focus and seriousness with which our Prime, start-up, military and VC partners brought to the event. The message tonight from Nick Cowley and I, is just one of appreciation 🙏🏻

Preparations are underway for Future Forces Demo Day 2024. We are just 60mins from the start of our adoption workshop with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change before 20 start-ups from 7 countries demonstrate in front of 240 leaders from industry, the military and venture capital communities tomorrow. We are excited to welcome our partners, demonstrators and delegates! BAE Systems General Dynamics UK Limited Anduril Industries L3 Technologies Oracle Amazon Web Services (AWS) Rowden Northrop Grumman UK Babcock International Group Helsing BT Group

Welcome to our 2024 cohort of 20 start-ups who will be descending on the MTC - Manufacturing Technology Centre this Thursday and Friday to demonstrate their solutions at Future Forces Demo Day. Together, they span the Sense, Decide and Effect technology areas and come from 7 countries. 🇬🇧 Advai 🇬🇧 Arondite 🇱🇹 Astrolight 🇬🇧 Flowcopter 🇬🇧 Greenjets 🇬🇧 Hirundo 🇬🇧 iCOMAT 🇬🇧 Little Place Labs 🇬🇧 Living Optics 🇳🇱 Lobster Robotics 🇬🇧 Opteran 🇬🇧 Oxford Dynamics 🇬🇧 Oxford Space Systems 🇩🇪 PLENO (Techstars'24) 🇩🇰 Quadsat 🇬🇧 Stanhope AI 🇬🇧 Vizgard 🇬🇧 VOLANDER 🇵🇱 REVOBEAM 🇺🇦 Farsight Vision Thanks to these start-ups and their teams for the time they taken to apply, prepare their demonstrations and travel to the MTC. We can't wait to meet you in person and hopefully build new partnerships that lead to tech adoption!