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jelizondo [soylentnews.org] writes:

TechCrunch has an interesting article [techcrunch.com] about an engineer who is challenging the Defense Behemoths.

In the summer of 2021, Dimitrious Kottas made a move that would be unfathomable to most Silicon Valley engineers: after leaving his coveted position at Apple’s Special Projects Group, he packed up his life in California and moved back to Athens to start a defense company.

Three and a half years later, his startup, Delian Alliance Industries [delian.ai], has set up solar-powered surveillance towers that monitor some of Greece’s borders around the clock and detect wildfires on remote islands, along with a pipeline of other products, including concealed sea drones designed to keep enemies at bay.

But Kottas’ most ambitious bet isn’t on any particular technology — it’s really that a small Greek startup can break through Europe’s notoriously splintered defense market.

After earning recognition for his academic work at the University of Minnesota on GPS-denied navigation [dimitrioskottas.com] – research that he says has been cited over 1,400 times – he joined Apple in 2016, where he spent six years working on autonomous systems featuring cameras, lidars, and radars.

“At the heart of autonomy is perception,” Kottas explained, describing how machines must understand not just where objects are but what they’re doing and what they intend to do. “This lies at the heart of autonomy, and given autonomy is going to be at the heart of all future weapon systems, that’s the core technology that’s going to drive change in the defense industry over the next decade.”

Rather than attempting to build the next-generation fighter jet, Kottas began with something pragmatic that he could sell more immediately: surveillance towers. The move was seemingly ripped from the playbook of eight-year-old weapons maker Anduril, which started off with software-augmented surveillance towers that it sold to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

he most striking example is a two-meter suicide vessel that comes packed in a cylinder and is deployable months in advance on the seabed at depths where satellites and drones can’t detect it. When remotely activated, it appears “out of nowhere to the enemy,” Kottas told TechCrunch, adding that Delian has patented this approach, which uses commercial materials to manufacture the weapons at “large scale and really at extremely low cost.”

Here’s where Kottas’ story gets more complicated. Despite Delian’s technological achievements and operational success in Greece, the broader European market remains a formidable challenge. U.S. officials have reportedly been pressuring [reuters.com] European countries to continue buying weapons from U.S. outfits. Further, European countries have long favored their homegrown defense companies

Naturally, the question is what Kottas thinks of Anduril, and the founder is respectful, though not intimidated. “It’s definitely a generational company that is going to inspire many founders and military officers all across the planet,” he said.

But he cautioned against assuming early winners. “Where we stand right now, it’s like 2015 for self-driving cars […] Imagine trying to predict the winner back then.”

Still, the question remains whether a Greek startup — no matter how innovative — can convince French, German or British defense establishments to bet their national security on foreign technology. Kottas recently submitted a bid for a German tender, a test case for his thesis that a decentralized Europe can be overcome through superior technology and competitive pricing.

Either way, Kottas’ unconventional journey from Athens to Minneapolis to Apple and back to Athens suggests he’s comfortable with long odds.

There’s a “benefit of building a company” in a smaller market on a continent known for its balkanization. “It forces you to be more resilient, more efficient, and to focus ruthlessly on building great technology at a really low price point, which matters in this business.”

In the past we have seen start-ups defying and winning against established behemoths, is this even possible in the lucrative defense market?

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