ELT Group: Innovation and Artificial Intelligence Shaping the Future of Defence

ELT Group, which has been engaged in electronic warfare and defence for over 70 years across the land, sea, air, space, cyber and bio-defence domains, embraces new scenarios—such as the convergence of the Defence and Cyber worlds—and the complex challenges of the present, turning them into tangible opportunities to build a safer, more stable and sustainable world, also through strategic partnerships with highly qualified organisations. At Seafuture, your company will focus particularly on these issues in relation to artificial intelligence, with speakers of great significance. What are the concrete scenarios for the future applications and strategies of artificial intelligence, and what will be the key points under discussion?

For over seventy years, ELT Group has been a leading player in the field of Electronic Warfare (EW), operating across all strategic domains: land, sea, air, cyber, more recently, space and bio-defence. Today we face an increasingly complex international context, where the boundaries between conventional and cyber threats are becoming ever more blurred. It is therefore essential to be able to turn these challenges into opportunities in order to gain a competitive advantage.

It is precisely with this mindset that ELT Group embraces the convergence between electronic defence and cyber security, investing in advanced, sustainable and integrated solutions, including applications for so-called unmanned systems. Our strength lies in our ability to provide multi-domain solutions, enabled by electromagnetic spectrum management, which the company has now enhanced with cyber expertise.

In a world undergoing rapid transformation, marked by the growing complexity of threats, only a multidisciplinary, integrated and cooperative approach can ensure security and stability. Military operations are increasingly shifting towards the System of Systems, a super-system enabled by the interconnectivity, integration and cooperation of all available assets in the operational theatre. This requires the dynamic management of enormous volumes of data, the processing and constant updating of situation awareness in real time, and the coordination of rapid, integrated responses between complex systems and sensors distributed across both manned and unmanned platforms.

For ELT Group, this transformation is not limited to the introduction of cutting-edge technologies; it also opens up complex and stimulating scenarios involving strategy, interdisciplinary collaboration and forward-looking vision. We regard artificial intelligence (AI) as an indispensable resource. At a time when information superiority, real-time decision-making and data security are increasingly critical factors, AI is emerging as a key enabler in supporting new operational paradigms.

From strategic considerations to practical case studies, the conference organised by ELT Group within the framework of SEAFUTURE aims to examine how AI is reshaping the Defence Industry–Public Administration ecosystem with a holistic vision, bringing together experts from the industrial, institutional and academic sectors to explore its enabling role in the digital transformation process and to foster a concrete dialogue on the opportunities and challenges of adopting AI in the Defence & Security domain.

For your company, the essence of innovation lies in shaping technologies and global protection. Innovation is at the core of our daily work. Each year, the company invests around €50 million in R&D, through both funded projects and self-financing. Our goal is to ensure that ELT Group’s engineering expertise can anticipate emerging threats and continue to generate increasingly innovative and sustainable solutions for the protection of people, assets and data. Shaping Technologies, Global Protection is our corporate claim, encapsulating this ambition.

Our commitment to innovation has enabled us to evolve beyond being solely a company specialised in Electronic Defence, becoming instead a global player that integrates diversified expertise and operates worldwide through commercial networks and foreign subsidiaries. It has allowed us not only to constantly enhance traditional technological solutions in the field of Electronic Warfare, but also to extend them into other domains such as cyber, underwater and space. It has also enabled us to look towards new markets, such as bio-defence.

For your company, “To evolve means to embrace challenges”. Which challenges are we referring to, and what role can ELT Group play in the near future for people and nations in terms of security and defence?

The ability to evolve, to innovate and to keep pace with the times is embedded in our company’s DNA. For a high-technology enterprise, the capacity to understand new developments in the field of security and to adapt to them—or even anticipate them—is of vital importance, as it ensures competitiveness in a rapidly changing market. Without innovation, a company risks becoming obsolete and missing opportunities for growth and success, whereas investment in this area creates the conditions for cutting-edge solutions. Ultimately, it is a key factor for success, fostering innovation across all fields: technology, management and generational renewal.

ELT Group has distinguished itself among major companies thanks to its specialisation in niche areas combined with continuous technological innovation. Today, in a context dominated by the multi-domain approach, our seventy years of experience in managing the electromagnetic spectrum allow us to remain highly competitive. Over the years, we have operated across all the traditional defence domains—air, naval and land—to which we later added cyber and space. Today, particularly in the new scenarios of conflict, we have seen how cyber and space defence have become central to gaining operational advantage. The centrality of these emerging domains has, in turn, brought back into focus the strategic role of the electromagnetic spectrum, which more broadly acts as a unifying element, enabling synergy across military operations in all domains: air, land, naval, space, cyber and underwater.

For you, being a sustainable company means “taking part in the collective effort to grow through innovation”. How so?

ELT Group’s capacity for innovation is founded on the knowledge and expertise it has acquired in managing the electromagnetic spectrum, enabling the development of non-conventional technological solutions for the Defence and Security of people, assets and data.

ELT Group’s innovation and systems are conceived and developed to address current challenges while being ready to manage future scenarios, not only in operational security contexts but also in the protection of critical infrastructure and, today, in the field of bio-defence.

This intensive activity has led to the creation of sovereign strategic technologies, which are more relevant than ever. Within the company, the process of idea development and maturation follows the Design Thinking model, a multidisciplinary approach that makes it possible to identify and design solutions and suggest practices that foster innovation, improving products, the quality of processes, their efficiency and their impacts.

This strong orientation towards innovation is driven by the company’s internal research and development activities, while at the same time being a broader, shared process extended to national and international partners, thereby creating an innovation ecosystem from which the company can benefit.