North Defence’s founder and CEO Oliver North shared the stage with some defence industry giants yesterday, when he attended the inaugural Benelux Defence Industry Day.
The event – held at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels – welcomed more than 300 guests from throughout the defence and security ecosystem. Designed to encourage even closer industrial cooperation, it delivered a packed programme of keynotes, panel discussions and fireside chats, kicked off by NATO’s chief of staff Geoffrey van Leeuwen.
With sessions delivered in five rooms at once, there was a busy agenda covering everything from procurement and investment, to sovereign capabilities and next-generation technologies – with UAVs a particularly popular discussion point as the talks unfolded.
Oliver was among esteemed company on the land defence stage, representing Luxembourg in the morning’s high-profile line-up. He joined Pieter Zomers (Thales NL), Michaël Dardenne (Thales BE), Pierre Gérard (John Cockerill) and Fabrice Jeanfils (FN Herstal), to deliberate the role of industrial participation and strategic partnerships for land forces.
“We spoke a lot about agility and agreed that size matters,” he explained. “Within the NATO ecosystem you have absolute giants that are critical to the delivery of large, complex projects. But to develop, adapt and continually refine the most intuitive technology for modern soldiers in ever-changing volatile environments, you need nimble SMEs that are ready for anything – always.
“I think that’s why North Defence was such an important voice on the stage yesterday.”
Dialogue surrounding the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ also struck a chord with Oliver.
“This is not a new term within the military and political landscape, in fact its roots date back to the 1970s, I believe,” Oliver said. “But as was said yesterday, our outlook has to be about more than ‘willing’ now. When it comes to industrial partnerships and international resilience, we stressed that we have to be a ‘Coalition of the Doing’ – not just in Benelux but across NATO’s member states.
“I applaud the event organisers for creating this forum and encouraging deeper knowledge transfer as we march on together.”
North Defence’s engineering centre of excellence is headquartered in the beautiful Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. This innovation hub compliments the firm’s ‘best of British’ manufacturing facilities in the heart of Yorkshire, the manufacturing capital of the UK.
