Defence Tech, Innovation and Institutional Inertia

What happens when the speed of modern warfare outpaces the systems designed to manage it?

In this episode of Facing Coming Storms, we are joined by Eva Sula, Estonian defence advisor and mentor at NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator (DIANA), and Robert Fetters, former U.S. Army paratrooper and special operations officer now working in defence technology. Together, we explore how defence innovation is colliding with institutional barriers and what that means for NATO, Europe, and the future battlefield.

What We Explore

- Why Ukraine Changed Everything: We reflect on how the war in Ukraine has redefined innovation cycles, battlefield learning, and the brutal reality of contested environments and why lessons from even last year are already outdated.

- Estonia’s Frontline Perspective: Eva shares how Estonia’s history, geography and digital-first mindset have shaped its defence posture, innovation culture, and sense of urgency and why small countries often adapt faster than large alliances.

- Drones, AI and the Pace of War: We examine why drones dominate modern conflict, why counter-drone systems struggle to keep up, and how AI is being applied unevenly across defence - often more in PowerPoint than in practice.

- Procurement vs Reality: Robert explains the gap between what operators need and what procurement systems deliver, including how budgets, incentives and bureaucracy lead to duplicated effort, wasted money, and capabilities that never reach the field.

- Training for the Wrong War: We question whether conventional forces are still being trained for a battlefield that no longer exists and why a special operations mindset is becoming essential for all units.

- Collaboration as Deterrence: We return again and again to the same conclusion: real deterrence comes not from isolated innovation, but from genuine collaboration - across borders, services, industries and institutional barriers And it’s never easy 

Facing Coming Storms is brought to you by the British Army’s Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research, in partnership with the Project for the Study of the 21st Century, and produced by Urban Podcasts.