EDA Conference 2022 Key Takeaways

TD Shepherd attended the 2022 annual EDA conference (EDA as in European Defence Agency), which took place on December 8th in Brussels. The conference featured several panel discussions as well as regular keynote speeches. The most important takeaways from the conference were:

— the €70B increase in defence related investments until 2025;
— the recognition of the importance of dual-use technology and its missing support in the current innovation landscape;
— the need for easing procurement rules for the (European) Defence departments;
— and last but not least, the need to be able to rapidly scale production when circumstances require this (industrialization of the supply chain);
— The latter includes the drive to secure (synonymous with “localization”) that same supply chain.