An excerpt from Michaela Fecko’s remarks at Athens Defence Conference 2026, Director of Industrial Co-operation at Saab, during the panel “Modernising Deterrence.” Earlier in the discussion, Fecko described Sweden’s “triple helix” model — a framework in which government, industry, and academia come together around a specific capability gap to jointly develop innovative solutions. Asked about the one decision needed to truly modernize a nation’s defense industry over the next five years, she returned to that model, pointing to coalitions, shared vision, and combining the scale of large defense companies with the speed of startups.
Coalitions are important. We need to enable industry, to enable forums where we can come together and share our knowledge and expertise, with the aim of furthering the whole of the defense industry and creating those partnerships. It’s when you share things together, when you are truly partners, that you also trust one another. And trust is key in this business.
Building upon those partnerships, what’s also important for the defense industry — and within the triple helix model — is to share a common vision: where do we want to go, and why. Focus upon that. What capabilities do we want? And not just keep it a straight capability, but also look at the surrounding systems of the capability. It’s a very fashionable word, “ecosystems,” but it is true — if you start with the core and then expand upon that, while still having that focus on capability build-up, national security aspects, and resilience, I think that is the key for the industry in the next five years.
And also to feed upon the knowledge, the experience, and the abilities of the large companies — and then we need those startups and tech innovations to come into the system, to give the larger companies that edge and ability to implement very quickly what the innovative edge of those companies is. I think that will be the key over the next five years — that rapid implementation.