^{Published on 8.4.2026}

The EUDIS Defense Hackathon, funded by the European Defense Fund, continues to grow asone of Europe’s key platforms for emerging defense innovation. This year’s event gathered students, engineers, and professionals early in their career towork on three concrete challenge areas: cost-effective drone interceptors, next-generation drone detection systems, and concepts that enable more effective multidomain operations. Innokas was invited to work as an experienced mentor to guide the hackers towards working solutions.

Cost-effective drones for modern defense needs

The motivation behind these topics is easy to see. Modern conflicts have shifted decisively toward drone driven tactics. Frontline activity is shaped by unmanned systems, and the dmand for deployable capability that is reliable, scalable, and cost‑efficient has never been greater. With high consumption rates and short life cycles, the ability to manufacture drones quickly and repeatedly has become as important as any single technical feature.

Productization challenges in early-stage concepts

Innokas participated in the hackathon as an invited mentor, represented by Solution Architect Antti Virtanen. His contribution centered on productization; the process of turning initial concepts into solutions that can be manufactured at scale. Rather than offering direct answers, Antti challenged teams through targeted questions: What is the real use case? Does the design survive operational constraints? If demand increases tenfold, is the product manufacturable? These conversations helped teams pressure test their ideas and align innovations with real-world constraints. Päivi Jacksen was also present to connect with and further strengthen our extensive network within the Nordic defense community

Scaling design, manufacturing and supply chains

Productization plays a decisive role in drone development. Promising proof of concept can fail if it isn’t designed with manufacturing in mind from the beginning. Material choices, component availability, manufacturability of the design, and overall system architecture determine whether a solution can be produced rapidly and affordably, which are both critical requirements for defense applications.

Nordic defense excellence beyond the hackathon

By contributing expertise at this early stage, Innokas aims to support the broader objective of strengthening Nordic defense excellence and technological sovereignty. As a member of NordSec, Innokas sees value in helping Europe growits capabilities not only through advanced engineering, but also throughpractical pathways that move innovations from labs to production lines.

Events like the EUDIS Hackathon demonstrate the importance of bringing innovators, industry, and domain experts into the same room. The problems are complex, the operational demands are real, and the technological environment is evolving quickly. Supporting the next wave of talent and helping them think through the full lifecycle of their ideas is a meaningful step toward a more resilient European defense ecosystem.

What comes next?

Take a look at the winners on EUDIS website. They will go out to complete two-month EUDIS mentorship programme, where they will further develop their solution and compete against the seven other national winners from Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, France, Poland, Romania and Netherlands.

If productization or manufacturing scalability is a challenge your team is navigating, describe it in detail in a contact form and send it to us. We will map out what the next steps could be.