Border Profiteers

The Austrian Institute of Technology, headquartered in Vienna, is the successor organisation to the Austrian Study Society for Atomic Energy. On Wikipedia, AIT is described as one of the largest non-university research institutions in Austria, giving the impression that it is a public institution. In its web presence, however, AIT presents itself as a company and in fact it is a limited liability company with several "subsidiaries", only 50.46% are owned by the state. The rest of the shares are held by the "Association for the Promotion of Research and Innovation" of the Federation of Austrian Industries.

Aselsan is one of the most important quasi-state owned Turkish arms companies and produces mainly electronic components for the core Turkish weapons systems. In the war over Nagorno-Karabakh in autumn 2020, which was fought mainly with combat drones, weapon systems from Aselsan were also used by Azerbaijan and are said to have contributed significantly to its victory.

Atos has a €11 billion revenue and more than 111,000 employees in 71 countries.

BAE Systems is the biggest British arms company and one of the major suppliers of weapon systems worldwide.

CEVISIO is a provider of "business software and services for German mid-sized companies" based in Torgau, Saxony. It emerged in 2003 as an independent company from the software department of an IT system house.

The company CLS began in the 1980s as a service provider for global communication and localisation services and has since specialised more and more in satellite-based Earth observation, especially of oceans and inland waters (among other things through strategic acquisitions worldwide). In a (as of May 2021) current image film entitled "For Earth From Space", "Mother Nature" herself puts a three-minute text to humanity into the mouth, according to which the services of CLS would not only protect nature and the environment, but also save people in wars and disasters. Among other things, it says, "They [CLS] stand by you …

Dassault Aviation is a French aircraft manufacturer and, among other things, producer of the "Rafale" fighter jet.

DJI is a company founded in 2006 and headquartered in Shenzhen, China, which produces numerous drones for public, industrial and also private use. Especially in the field of relatively light and inexpensive quatrocopters (small drones with four rotors), it is probably the world market leader. Drones from DJI are also used by European military and police forces. In addition to drones, DJI also offers the "educational robot" RoboMaster S1, which is intended to offer children an introduction to robotics, programming and AI - and has a small cannon with which "gel pellets" can be fired.

EASP Air is a global service provider for aerial maritime surveillance, Coast Guard- and ISR operations and Special Air Charter support.

Ericsson is a Swedish communications service provider with a long tradition. The company offers government agencies special networks for communication (government radio) and thus fundamentally benefits from the growing exchange of information and data volumes.

Everis is a global company dedicated to the "disruption" and "digital transformation" of government agencies and enterprises, i.e. helping them move their data and services to "the cloud". Everis has been part of the Japanese NTT DATA Corporation since 2013.

The "Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung" is organized as a private association, but its nearly 80 institutes receive their basic funding from the federal and federal state governments. A large proportion of its contract research is also financed by public funds, the vast majority of the rest by industry. The explicit goal is application-oriented research for industry. However, it is also established practice for scientists to apply for patents and found companies themselves based on their research at the Fraunhofer Institutes in order to commercialize new technologies.

The nearly 80 institutes work on a wide range of topics. However, …

GAF AG is a German company with "over 200 highly qualified" employees that sells satellite imagery - including to Frontex. Similar to COLLECTE LOCALISATION SATELLITES, it focuses on environmental and climate monitoring applications in its external presentation, but explicitly lists "security and defense" among the industries in which it is active, and also serves the extractivist industry - mining companies. Its headquarters are in Munich, but the company also has a site in Neustrelitz. This is a good kilometer away from the DLR site there, a central ground station for both civil and military satellite reconnaissance for Germany and …

In 2017, Airbus spun off its electronics division as Hensoldt. Since 2020, Hensoldt has been a stock corporation. The shares are held by Leonardo (25.1%), KKR & Co (17.9%), among others. The FRG holds a blocking minority of 25.1%, which is managed by the Ministry of Defense. In fact, however, the Airbus and Hensoldt companies remained partially inextricably linked, even geographically. Hensoldt is considered the world's leading supplier of military sensor and radar technology, which the company also offers for border protection. On its homepage (as of July 2022), the company writes: "Our security solutions are well suited to monitor …

Indra has its roots in the infrastructure and defense industries. Accordingly, Indra has also benefited extensively from several EU armaments research projects (including Ocean2020), positioning itself, by its own admission, as a "key player" in siphoning off EU armaments funds. Again, the company's focus is on information networks, cybersecurity, near-shore surveillance and unmanned systems.

In the 2021 financial year, Indra achieved revenue of € 3.390 million, had 52,000 employees, a local presence in 46 countries and business operations in over 140 countries.

King ICT is one of the most important Croatian system houses. For a while, it belonged to the Croatian "MAN S" group, which has a total of around 1,500 employees (as of November 2020). King's portfolio is broad and ranges from digital classrooms to cloud and (HR) management services for companies, to traffic monitoring in cities ? for example in Zagreb, where the company is based. King ICT has other branches in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Kosovo, Serbia and North Macedonia and is trying to establish itself as a leading service provider for authorities in the entire region. It also …

Leonardo (formerly Finmeccanica) is Italy's largest company specialized on defense, security and aerospace. It belongs to the ten globally dominating defense contractors.

The NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO), with its headquarter in Brussels, is NATO's central institution for technology monitoring and development. It states that it employs 6,000 scientists and is part of a “network” of 200,000 experts in the member and partner countries. It has separate working groups for vehicle technology, information systems and sensors, among others. The STO has a strong focus on maritime armaments and underwater systems, and related activities are coordinated from its "Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation" in La Spezia, Italy.

The Naval Group is a defense company largely owned by the French state. The remaining shares are held (up to 2.5%) by the armaments company Thales. While Thales focusses on the aerospace industry, the Naval Group specializes primarily on equipping naval forces and coastguards. Besides the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, the Naval Group produces various frigates, i.e. for the French and Italian navies, as well as nuclear-capable submarines and torpedoes. Besides armament in the narrower sense, the Naval Group is also involved in the planning and construction of power plants, including nuclear power plants.

Science for Humanity (S4H) is a company founded in 2004 in Bruges, Belgium. It seems that it offers only one family of products: The Human presence, Movement & heartbeat Detection System (MDS), which uses seismic sensors to detect the heartbeat and thus the presence of people in vehicles and e.g. containers. S4H offers the MDS in portable, mobile and stationary versions.

Safran is one of the largest manufacturers in Europe in the aerospace sector. The company is a supplier to Airbus and is involved in many of the major armaments projects, especially in Germany and France, including the Tiger combat helicopter, the A400M military transporter and the French multirole combat aircraft Rafale (together with Thales and Dassault).

Schönhofer Sales & Engineering is a medium-sized company that was founded in 1983 by a former lieutenant colonel in the Bundeswehr and initially specialized on the maintenance of the communication systems of the Bundeswehr.

Selex evolved after an attempt to merge the electronics divisions of defense groups BAE Systems (UK) and Leonardo/Finmeccanica (IT). Following the exit of BAE Systems, Selex was eventually established as a subsidiary of Finmeccanica. Selex was one of those companies that lobbied most intensively for the technological upgrade of the borders in the first decade of the century, thus opening up a new foothold for the European defense industry.

The Israeli company was founded in 1993 by members of the Israeli army and specializes in so-called "(M)UGI "s ((Mini-) Unattended Ground Imaging Sensors), i.e. sensors that can monitor areas over a longer period of time without operators and maintenance. Radar and thermal sensors are used, which can independently identify and report suspicious behavior. Particular emphasis is placed on the possibilities of covert or camouflaged deployment.

Tekever was founded in 2000 by computer scientists and engineers from the Instituto Superior Técnico. It quickly became one of the most important suppliers of drones for maritime surveillance. It also offers drones for military applications.

Thales is one of the ten largest defence companies in the world, supplying everything from satellite communication modules and ground radars to autonomous weapon systems on ships, mainly to armed forces.