Behind the Guns: Why We’re Putting Boots on the Ground at Eurosatory
By Markos
Europe is committing over a trillion to defense this decade. We’re going to Paris to see where it actually goes, not from a desk, but from the floor.
A couple of months back, @citrini] sent Analyst #3 behind the lines into the Strait of Hormuz. Cuban cigar in the water, Shahed drones overhead, IRGC patrol boats running circles eighteen miles off the Iranian coast. It was one of the best pieces anyone published all year.
We agree with the ethos completely. We just took the part about staying alive a little more seriously.
So our AAIG HR department (which we don’t have) decided it would be slightly smarter to send @SimeonResearch_ behind the guns instead of in front of them.
The badge is in hand. We’re going to Eurosatory, Paris, June 15–19!
Why this event, and why now
Eurosatory isn’t a trade show we picked off a calendar. It’s the largest land and air-land defense exhibition on earth, held once every two years at Paris-Nord Villepinte. The last edition drew over 2,000 exhibitors from 61 countries, more than 300 official delegations, and upwards of 75,000 professional visitors. Every major prime is there. So is a full hall of disruptors and start-ups that won’t be private much longer.
That cadence matters. Eurosatory only happens in even years, which means each edition is a two-year snapshot of where the entire sector has moved to, what’s matured from concept to contract, what has been quietly abandoned, and what is suddenly the center of gravity. You cannot reconstruct that from press releases and earnings calls. You have to walk the floor.
And the timing of this edition is the whole point.
The Trillion-Euro Question
Here’s the backdrop we’re flying into. Global military spending hit a record $2.89 trillion in 2025, the eleventh consecutive year of increases, and Europe was the single largest driver where spending climbed with 14% to $864 billion, with Germany alone ordering roughly €85 billion of equipment in one year. On top of that, the EU’s “ReArm Europe” framework is built to mobilize up to €800 billion in defense investment by 2030, layering new fiscal headroom for member states on top of a joint-procurement loan instrument.
That is a structural, decade-long capital reallocation, not a headline that fades next quarter. The market has already noticed: Rheinmetall, Thales, BAE, Leonardo, and a wave of Asian primes have re-rated hard.
But re-rating on a theme and understanding where the money actually lands are two very different things. A trillion euros of announced intent does not flow evenly. It concentrates into specific capability gaps, specific program lines, specific suppliers two and three tiers down the chain who never make the front page. That gap, between the narrative and the actual order book, is exactly where the asymmetric opportunities and the overhyped traps both live. And it’s the reason why we’re going to Paris.
What we’re actually going to look at
We start where the fight is hottest right now: counter-drone defence
If you watched the swarm clip, and no, that wasn’t AI, that’s a real autonomous swarm by @swarm_defense_ you understand the problem instantly. The entire counter UAS stack is the most contested real estate on the floor: the radars, the jammers, the high-energy lasers, and the interceptors built to put swarms exactly like that back on the ground.
That’s where we begin, with @aussie_eos Electrical Optical Systems remote weapon systems, High Energy Laser Weapons (HELW), and more. From there we follow the kill chain and the value chain across the whole hall:
Loitering munitions and autonomous strike; the offensive side of the same drone story.
AI-enabled command and control; the software layer turning sensors into decisions.
Space-based ISR and secure comms; the connective tissue of modern multi-domain warfare.
Soldier-level protection and optics; where a surprising amount of recurring revenue actually sits.
We’re going to look at all of it. But we’re not going as tourists with a press badge.
The added value: why this matters for subscribers
Here’s what separates floor research from feed-scrolling, and what you get out of it.
Primary-source intelligence, not recycled narrative. We’re sitting down with industry experts and management teams across the sector. The questions we ask are about backlog conversion, delivery timelines, capacity constraints, and who’s actually winning the orders. Those are the ones that move the needle, and the answers don’t show up in a 10-K for another two quarters. You’ll hear them first.
The supply chain made legible. Primes are easy to name and mostly priced. The edge is in the tiers below: the subsystem makers, the optics and sensor specialists, the small caps with a single sole-source contract that the market hasn’t connected to the trillion-euro story yet. Walking the floor is how you map those relationships in person rather than guessing from filings.
Signal versus hype, separated on-site. Defense is full of impressive demos that never reach production. Standing in front of the hardware, talking to the engineers, and seeing which booths have generals lined up and which have tumbleweeds is the fastest way to tell a real program from a slide deck. We’ll tell you which is which.
A structured thesis, not a stream of takes. This trip is the open of a proper, sustained deep dive into the defense sector and the start of a body of work, not a one-off dispatch. Counter-drone, loitering munitions, ISR, C2, soldier systems: each gets the same treatment we’ve brought to every theme we cover, building toward a coherent view of where European defense capital flows next and which names sit in its path.
Follow along
This is the part most research never does. It doesn’t get on a plane. It reads the same releases everyone else reads and reformats them.
We’re doing the opposite. From June 15 to 19, we’ll be on the floor in Paris, documenting what’s actually being ordered and where the money flows next in real time, as we see it.
Follow along through our Substack. The first dispatches land from the floor.
Next level 👀