Speaking at a press roundtable on the sidelines of the Drone Summit in Riga, Jaakkola said many of the companies developing the most promising counter-drone and uncrewed systems solutions lack the manufacturing capacity to produce at the scale NATO requires.

To address this, NATO is negotiating what she described as an innovation scale-up package with member nations, designed to connect those companies with civilian manufacturers that have spare production facilities.

“We are working to facilitate and matchmake these companies that have the solutions but not necessarily manufacturing capacity with those civilian companies that have the manufacturing capacity and could potentially provide manufacturing services or lease their production facilities,” she said.

Financing forms a central part of the package alongside the matchmaking element. Jaakkola said the question of how smaller defence technology companies access capital, loans and guarantees is one of the key areas NATO is actively working on to help them grow and scale production.

Asked whether EU funding could play a role, Jaakkola said the complementarity between NATO and the EU is well established, with NATO setting capability targets and military standards while the EU brings financial and regulatory power. She pointed specifically to the EU’s defence omnibus initiative, which is examining how existing regulations can be simplified to remove barriers to ramping up industrial production. “When we are talking about ramping up industrial production, there can be regulations that delay and make that process more complicated,” she said.

On the broader question of whether industry can meet NATO’s demand, Jaakkola was measured. The scale-up package is still being negotiated at the policy framework level, and implementation has not yet begun. She said once the framework is agreed, NATO will work through member nations’ ministries of defence and national defence industry associations to identify civilian companies with relevant manufacturing capacity.