This Week in Dual-Use

NEWS

In undersea news, the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) has launched Nordic Warden, a UK-led reaction system designed to monitor threats to undersea infrastructure and track Russia’s shadow fleet.

Russia’s shadow fleet is largely comprised of oil tankers which it uses to evade Western sanctions. There has been much coverage over the last two weeks of Eagle S, the oil tanker registered in the Cook Islands but loaded with Russian spying equipment. It is suspected of damaging an undersea power cable.

This is bread and butter grey zone activity for Russia, but this time it was caught after Finnish coast guard cleverly coaxed the ship into its territorial waters and then boarded it.

I think JEF’s Nordic Warden initiative is an interesting move. It reflects a growing trend of regional coalitions dealing with threats that might once have been the purview of NATO.

Actually, this probably wouldn’t have met the threshold for NATO. Which is precisely why Russia and China have been developing this capability. And why we haven’t done much about it until now.

It will be interesting to see how regional alliances like JEF take the place of NATO for these shadowy conflicts. Is this a portent of security/peacekeeping forces which could be deployed in Ukraine after a Trump-negotiated ceasefire?

In fighter jet news, China appears to have tested novel sixth generation stealth military aircraft. Videos of the warplanes went viral on social media. 

The aircraft were seen flying over Chengdu city in southwest Sichuan province. Both jets are tailless, meaning they do not have vertical stabilisers to help maintain control. Such aircraft are typically kept stable by computers that interpret the pilot's control inputs.

It’s not clear to me yet how these aircraft might be deployed, although their tailless designs suggest a focus on stealth and aerodynamic efficiency. What is clear is that China is pushing aggressively into next-gen defence technology.

What’s striking here isn’t just the aircraft but the speed at which China’s defence sector iterates and scales.

I find myself wondering how their fighter jets compared to the West’s ten years ago.

This development puts pressure on Western military planners, who are already grappling with stretched timelines and ballooning costs for their own next-gen projects.

What does this mean for the world order in air supremacy? And how might it affect a conflict over Taiwan?

In AI news, Palantir and Anduril, two of the largest US defence technology companies, are in talks with about a dozen competitors to form a consortium which will jointly bid for US government work.

This is an effort to disrupt the country’s oligopoly of prime contractors. They are apparently in talks with companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Saronic and Scale AI.

This is an update to a piece of news in my last newsletter. The Anduril press release depicts this as a partnership to better deliver technological infrastructure to the government. And that is what I commented on.

But actually this is about finding a way of beating out the defence primes.

I like it.

Anduril has always been vocal about how the US defence procurement systems are set up to favour the incumbents - it has an openly stated mission to disrupt that.

It seems clear that if the West is to create and adopt technology at the speed required to keep pace with geopolitical rivals, the system will need to change.

The question is whether disrupting procurement can balance speed with accountability and scale.

FUNDRAISING

• SandboxAQ, a California-based developer of AI and quantum technologies, raised more than $300m in funding at a valuation of $5.3bn.

• ICEYE, a Finland-based developer of synthetic aperture radar, raised$65m in an extension to its 2024 growth funding.

• Refute, a UK-based disinformation analysis company, raised a £2.3m Pre-seed round, led by Playfair and Episode1.

• Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, a China-based developer of satellite megaconstellations, has raised over 1bn yuan ($136m USD) in Series A funding.

• BlueQubit, a San-Francisco based developer of quantum computing software, raised a $10m round.

• T-robotics, a San Francisco-based developer of programming for any robot using natural language, raised a $5.4m Seed round.

• Qolab, a Wisconsin-based developer of superconduting quantum computers, raised over $16m in Series A funding.

• Daterrence, a defence technology company automating the production of energetics, raised $10.1m.