Opinion
Reil: The era of military tanks is probably over
“And so I think the area of tanks is probably over.”
Disclosure
Torsten Reil: Helsing will never sell the company
“We try really to keep the foot on the gas really aggressively, because we want to build a company that really matters, and we will never sell the company.”
Assertion Supported
Helsing: AI took full control of Gripen fighter jet in dogfight test
“Last year we flew a real fighter jet and we flew the Saab Gripen over the Baltic Sea. And when I say we, our AI did and took full control of the plane in air combat against and another Gripen, which was human controlled. And so we flew three air combat scenari…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Reil: Manned fighter jets will struggle against superhuman autonomous swarms
“Crude manned, you know, fighter jets were going to be very difficult to deploy in the future because you'll, you'll end up Facing these swarms of autonomous fighter jets with superhuman capabilities, and it's not science fiction.”
Opinion
Reil: 100,000 strike drones would destroy 3,000 invading tanks within hours
“The deterrence that you get out of having a very large number of strike drones at your border, I think is, is pretty is pretty strong, and the reason is that if you turn up with tanks on the other side, let's say you turn up with 3000 tanks, 100,000 strike dro…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Reil: Future warfare will be autonomous machine battles where humans cannot survive
“I think it's going to be a battle of materiel. It's machines versus machines. The reason for this is that the autonomous mass, as we call it, so the number of drones that can fly in a coordinated way is getting better and better, and it's going to be very hard…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Reil: Sending humans into battle will become unethical, forcing ground robot adoption
“And at the same time, if you want to have humans on the battlefield, I think it's going to be very difficult. And I think the trend is going to be, and I think people are realizing this, is that it's going to be unethical to send humans on a battlefield where …”
Assertion Supported
Reil: Banks grouped defense in the same bucket as porn and gambling
“Back then the defense of a country or of a democratic society was grouped for banks in the same bucket as pornography and gambling and smoking.”
Opinion
Reil: Europe lacks breakout companies because founders lack aggression
“And then we sadly have a continent where we don't have breakout companies because people just lack the aggression.”
Opinion
Reil: Social media commentary is entirely worthless and net negative
“I think commentary is entirely worthless and it has almost, it has no positive contribution. The only thing that it does is It I think it drags some people down so it has a net negative benefit, and it obviously is, is encouraged through you know, the way the …”
Insight
Reil: Scaling military drone usage requires autonomous AI flight over manual operators
“If you really want scale drone usage, they have to fly autonomously. You want to have a human surveying them, looking at what they're doing, and being on or in the loop, but the drones themselves need to be AI controlled and autonomous. It's the only way to ge…”
Assertion Supported
Reil: AI algorithms already enable robust GPS-free drone navigation on frontlines
“Pretty much the whole frontline is GPS jammed, so you can't use your GPS receiver, so you need to find a different way to navigate and know where you are. You either do that with a human trying to recognize where they are, just almost like a pilot of a plane d…”
Insight
Reil: 95% of company success comes from aggression and ambition
“I think it's 95% of a company's success is that. Everything else, like I said, is excuses. So regulation doesn't matter.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Reil: Helsing won a program of record 28 months after founding
“And this happened after two years and four months of founding the company. I think we became the fastest to go from founding to program off record.”
Disclosure
Helsing acquired Munich aircraft manufacturer to build autonomous fighter jet
“So, so we decided to acquire an aircraft manufacturer outside Munich, our outside Munich with its own runway hangars and full aircraft manufacturing capabilities and build our own fighter jet, which is now called the CA-I and then put Centaur on it. As the cor…”
Disclosure
Reil: Helsing Systems Are Currently Deployed at Scale in Ukraine
“We never set it up, honestly, to have the systems deployed at scale in Ukraine, which is what we have right now.”
Disclosure
Reil: Helsing's CA-1 fighter jet can launch from public highways
“If you look at something like the like the CA-I our autonomous fighter jets, it's designed in such a way that it can take off from any kind of makeshift airstrip, which would be a road, an autobahn, a motorway, a highway, et cetera.”
Disclosure
Reil: Helsing closed a 1 billion framework contract in Germany
“We just closed a one billion framework contract in, in Germany”
Insight
Reil: The desire for conflict is partly hardwired and genetic
“I do think it's in human nature to have at least parts of the population that want to have conflict, that enjoy conflict, that want to you know, increase their sphere of influence sometimes You know, that is political. Sometimes it's geographical. Sometimes yo…”
Opinion
Reil: Building Helsing Would Be Harder with Legacy Defense Backgrounds
“It would be much harder for us to build Helsing if the founder backgrounds had already been in defense companies. Just much harder. It's easier to be an outsider.”
Assertion Supported
Reil: Drones can find and strike artillery 40-50 km away
“And for artillery systems as well, if artillery systems try to hide 40 to 50 kilometers away from the front, ah, to shoot, you can still find them with drones and you can attack them with drones.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Reil: Europe had no defense tech champions like Anduril or Palantir in 2021
“The US had companies like Andrew and Palantir that were very forward looking defense companies with a big focus on, AI, cheaper hardware, and abundant hardware and the idea of mass manufacturing, but Europe had nothing, and so we felt we have to do this”
Assertion Supported
Reil: Daniel Ek invested €100M of personal money into Helsing
“Very difficult to raise money in 21 for defense, like no VC wanted to talk to us, and we didn't even try in the end, so we just raised money from individuals, family offices, and then we were lucky that Daniel you know, put in a hundred million euros of his ow…”
Assertion Supported
Reil: Helsing and Saab won German Eurofighter electronic warfare contract using AI
“We came in with an AI-based approach, deep learning-based approach that kind of recover that ability to interpret those radars, and it was a big technology jump, and we managed to win that program of record together with our partner Saab against, you know, a l…”
