"Battle Management System capabilities used to be a real differentiator. Now they’ve become table stakes for modern armies," said Bill Guyan, Senior Vice President, Business Development and President, International Business at Leonardo DRS.
Why European defense budgets are rising and where the money is going
Guyan told Breaking Defense that European defense investment has long hovered "just at or below the two percent NATO spending requirement for many years." That metric, he said, has been highlighted by the administration and — combined with a changing threat environment — has driven "dramatic spending increases and modernization of forces across Europe." He singled out growth in land-focused areas: "air and missile defense, counter‑UAS, and next‑generation command and control."
Guyan also warned of capacity limits inside Europe: many nations lack sufficient industrial capacity to absorb enlarged budgets quickly, and are wrestling with not only quantity shortfalls but "systems that maybe haven’t been appropriately modernized."
Battle management: a common operating picture for robot‑rich battlefields
The arrival of widespread GPS and improved communications, Guyan said, transformed force tracking into messaging, then into richer information exchange — "higher‑end and more inclusive messages, graphics, graphic overlays, orders." That evolution underpins modern Battle Management Systems (BMS), which now perform the essential role of assembling and sharing a common operational picture (COP).
Guyan emphasized that the spread of robotic and unmanned systems makes that COP "even more imperative." Because Class 1 unmanned aerial systems are numerous and can threaten every soldier and vehicle, BMS functions that pass sensor detections and threat data through commanders and shooters have become mandatory rather than optional.
Counter‑UAS: layered detection, defeat, and resilience
"Everybody’s come to the conclusion that there’s no one‑size‑fits‑all or single solution," Guyan said, noting the range of UAS threats — from speed and altitude to carried weapons — prevents a single detection or defeat mechanism from covering all cases. His prescription is explicit: multiple, overlapping detection and defeat mechanisms integrated to reinforce, hand off targets, and prevent gaps.
That layered approach must include high‑end wide‑view sensors and lower‑cost mobile systems mounted on vehicles and transportable platforms. Together they form "a mosaic of different slices of what’s happening in the battlefield all assembled together into a common operating picture," Guyan said, improving resilience and reducing the chance that an adversary can defeat a single high‑value sensor.
Why a mesh of lower‑cost radars matters alongside exquisite systems
Guyan pointed to recent conflicts as the proof point: "We’ve seen how our fixed billion‑dollar air‑and‑missile‑defense radars were destroyed by Iran using cheap drones." Exquisite, fixed‑site systems have value, but they are visible and prioritize targets for adversaries. The remedy, he argued, is quantity and mobility.
Networked constellations of lower‑cost, small, mobile, transportable radars can act as gap fillers where fixed systems are removed or do not provide coverage. Guyan said Leonardo DRS has "played important roles in providing those mobile, transportable counter‑UAS radar systems," operating in networked constellations in Israel and in Ukraine and, in his words, "saving lives."
AI at the edge: SAGEcore™, offline survival, and tactical speed
Guyan described active experimentation by the US Army in bringing AI to battlefield command and control, citing Next Generation C2 exercises at the 4th ID and the 25th ID as demonstrations that AI can give commanders an advantage. But he warned of a central weakness: many AI approaches "depend upon networks which are not interrupted" and on transferring large data volumes to a cloud for processing — a process vulnerable to adversary disruption.
The fix, according to Guyan, is pushing AI to the edge: "putting it inside of the tanks, the infantry fighting vehicles, the unmanned platforms." Embedded AI processors can fuse onboard sensors — night vision, radar for active protection systems, GPS — and synthesize alerts, identify and prioritize targets, and even assist fire control to preserve ammunition and reduce duplicate engagements. Leonardo DRS's open‑architecture software, SAGEcore™, is presented as a tool to integrate platform sensor data and enable that AI functionality at the edge.
What this means for European militaries, commanders, and platform integrators
- European militaries: Expect procurement to favor layered architectures — mixes of high‑end sensors and large numbers of mobile, lower‑cost radars — to provide resiliency and fill coverage gaps.
- Commanders and units at the tactical edge: AI‑enabled edge computing promises faster target prioritization and reduced cognitive burden, and enables continued operations when wide networks are disrupted.
- Platform integrators and defense suppliers: There will be demand for open‑architecture software and embedded AI processors that can fuse multi‑sensor inputs and selectively forward data to cloud networks when connectivity permits.
Guyan’s prescription is practical: modernize battle management, build layered counter‑UAS mosaics, and push AI into platforms so forces can keep fighting when networks fail. For those watching Europe’s rearmament, the central question is not whether new missiles will arrive, but whether investments will prioritize data, dispersed sensors, and edge AI — and whether industry can scale those capabilities fast enough to match expanding budgets. To see Leonardo DRS’s public presentation of these ideas, the company invites attendees to visit Hall 5A, Stand B320 at Eurosatory.
