The War in Ukraine and NATO Defence Innovation

The scale of innovation on the battlefield has been insane. If Ukraine had not embraced its numerous defence innovators, but instead imposed additional bureaucratic burdens and worked only with selected industry representatives, it would likely have ceased to exist.

In peacetime, defence accelerators often help identify innovation long before national armed forces or procurement authorities begin paying attention.

NATO has its own accelerator—NATO DIANA—which selects 150 companies from thousands of applicants and provides them with funding, mentorship, and entry into the defence ecosystem. It became operational in 2023 and, as I see it, has been influenced by the war in Ukraine in many ways.

I recently returned from the launch of a new cohort of the NATO DIANA, hosted at one of its sites, COVE in the Canadian city of Dartmouth, where I spent a week with 12 startups selected for the 2026 cohort.

Here is my overview of the NATO DIANA program, including a list of companies I had the chance to network with. If you are in the defence tech world, consider them for your current or future partnerships.

Initially, I was invited by COVE to deliver a presentation on defence procurement sector reforms across different countries (based on my recently published long-read article). I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t conclude by discussing how Ukraine’s procurement experience is shaping policies in Western countries.

One key lesson: defence procurement systems worldwide have much to learn from Ukraine’s agile approach and its focus on end users who actually have purchasing power.

Since the Russia-Ukraine war remains the only high-intensity interstate conventional war in the world today, it shapes not only procurement processes but also technologies. Ukraine, together with its Western allies, is fighting not only Russia but an entire bloc of anti-democratic states and their combined technological capacities. This makes uniting efforts in collective defence critical.

NATO DIANA aims to identify the most promising innovator companies across the Alliance and help them scale and deliver effective solutions for the armed forces.

I spoke with several parties involved in this accelerator to better understand how the program continues to evolve.

What is NATO DIANA?

DIANA (Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic) is a competitive initiative to help innovators connect with experts, investors, and industry partners to advance and commercialize technologies that address defence and security challenges for NATO members.

It helps dual-use innovation bridge the civilian and defence sectors, as many startups lack defence experience, requiring them to adapt their technologies and models to military requirements.

The program accepts applications from any incorporated company headquartered in a NATO member nation and seeks technology solutions at TRL 4-7.

The selected innovator companies get the following:

• learn how to prepare their businesses for the defence and security environment and understand how the defence sector actually works;

• gain early exposure to potential customers;

• safeguard their solutions and manage a wide range of security risks;

• access a network of more than 200 specialized test centres across the Alliance, each offering specific technology testing capabilities;

• connect with a trusted, transatlantic pool of investors to support company growth and learn how to combine public and private funding.

In addition, innovators receive €100,000 in contractual funding and may apply for additional resources for testing, evaluation, validation, and verification activities.

At the end of Phase 1, a limited number of DIANA Innovators move on to Phase 2 of the Accelerator Programme and receive up to €300,000 in additional contractual funding to support a further six months of iteration of their solution.

Participants get access to DIANA’s network of 17 sites and over 200 test centres in NATO’s 32 member countries.

The Challenges

The process at DIANA starts with aggregating demand signals from across the Alliance. As a NATO entity, DIANA is not tied to any single nation, which allows it to look at defence planning processes at the NATO level and identify critical capability gaps and the solutions that could be real game-changers. “Based on a clear understanding of where the most critical gaps are, we evaluate proposals and build a cohort of around 150 companies best positioned to address them,” explained Tom McSorley, General Counsel for the NATO DIANA, in a podcast by the Emerging Technologies Institute.

The key with each challenge is articulating the problem NATO is trying to solve and the outcomes needed, while allowing industry to propose how best to solve it. For instance, here is a description of the Autonomy and Unmanned Systems Challenge for the 2026 cohort.

DIANA asks for short, low-cost proposals that outline the technology, business approach, and intended application. The aim is to identify technologies that offer the strongest solutions while also demonstrating a credible pathway to sustainability — including a path to revenue and eligibility for private investment.

In 2023, DIANA initiated its pilot challenge programs, choosing 44 startups (out of 1300) from 19 countries operating in three key areas: energy resilience, undersea sensing and surveillance, and secure information sharing.

For 2026, the program expanded to 10 challenges, including:

1. Energy & Power

2. Advanced Communication Technologies

3. Contested Electromagnetic Environments

4. Human Resilience & Biotechnology

5. Operations in Extreme Environments

6. Maritime Operations

7. Resilient Space Operations

8. Critical Infrastructure & Logistics

9. Autonomy & Unmanned Systems

10. Data Assisted Decision Making

NATO DIANA and Procurement

“NATO DIANA does not hold direct procurement authority; instead, it has the authority to issue prototyping arrangements with companies selected through its challenge programmes,” shared Mr. McSorley in a podcast.

Through these challenges, DIANA brings innovative companies into the ecosystem and, via its Rapid Adoption Service, works with interested Allies to develop more specific technical requirements – what they would like to see from a prototype. This enables Allies to issue targeted contracts for prototype development and to validate those prototypes.

Also, DIANA operates within a broader NATO procurement architecture. Its partner agencies — the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) and the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) — both have procurement authority and provide procurement support to Allies on a multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral basis. These agencies can take prototypes that have been validated through DIANA’s competitive process and move them directly into production through single-source procurement mechanisms.

At the national level, there is also ongoing dialogue on how Allies can leverage the competitive processes already completed within DIANA, avoiding the need to run additional national competitions that are costly and time-consuming.

At the same time, DIANA seeks to reduce risk for investors. A core objective of the programme is to encourage private capital to support early-stage defence and dual-use technologies.

2026 Cohort

For its 2026 programme, DIANA selected 150 companies from 24 NATO countries, chosen from a record 3,680 submissions. You can check the full list of the 2026 cohort here.

During my trip to Dartmouth, I met in person with 12 European and North American companies. Many of them focus on maritime operations, which aligns with the capabilities of their hosting site, COVE, an innovation hub for maritime technologies. Additionally, a range of other areas was also represented.

Below is a list of these companies, along with brief descriptions of their solutions. All of them are looking to scale their technologies and explore partnership opportunities globally, and many of their solutions are already highly relevant to the challenges emerging from the battlefield in Ukraine and beyond.

If you identify a potential area of overlap or cooperation, feel free to reach out to them directly—or to me, and I’d be happy to make an introduction.