21 hours Ago
Ukraine's Top Drone Maker Walks Away
Fire Point director Denis Shtilerman runs a company that churns out 200 drones and three Flamingo cruise missiles every single day. When his team looked at establishing a production line in the Netherlands, the experience felt, in his own words, like "running with a leaden backpack." Back in Ukraine, setting up a new production line takes just two days. In the Netherlands, the same process could take a year and a half or more. For a company operating in an active war zone, that timeline is simply not an option.
Shtilerman made clear that his frustration isn't with the Dutch people or their support for Ukraine — the Netherlands has been a genuine partner, and his company does source rocket components there. The problem is the tangle of complicated regulations that make it nearly impossible to put down roots and build. Until those rules change, Fire Point's production stays elsewhere.
A Dutch Startup Caught in Its Own Country's Red Tape
The frustration isn't limited to foreign firms. Rotterdam-based Noorder Dynamics built a mobile anti-drone system fitted inside a standard delivery van, and did it in just seven months, fast enough to file a patent application. But now the company is stuck. Three back-to-back government approval processes are holding up even the testing phase of their system.
Such a delay is a serious problem when the technology exists, the threat is real, and the market is ready. The company's experience highlights a wider tension in the Netherlands: the government wants to be a serious player in European defense, but its own administrative machinery keeps getting in the way.
