A jammed radio link can kill a battlefield drone, and European defense startups now treat that weakness as their core engineering challenge. Monopulse, based in Lithuania, bets on hardware that keeps flying once the signal drops.
Trading as Monopulse and registered as MNP Technologijos, the company has drawn more than €2M from backers at home and overseas. Three firms signed on: Coinvest Capital, Plug and Play and NGL Ventures. The biggest single slice came from NGL’s angel syndicate, whose 68 investors together supplied €560,000, a record for that group.
Reconnaissance drones for NATO militaries are the focus of the 2021-founded business, spanning surveillance from the air and on water. Aircraft from the company already fly for the armed forces of Lithuania and Denmark. Production capacity, quicker research and development, and entry into further NATO markets will take the new money. Two flagship products anchor the range: the Falcon MK3S, offered in variants tuned for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance work and other specialist roles, and the Hydrohex system.
Resilience is the whole pitch. To keep its drones dependable amid electronic warfare, the firm blends aerospace engineering, electronics, sensor fusion, computer vision and AI, so an aircraft can hold its communications or fly autonomously when signals vanish. That requirement climbed the priority list as jamming reshaped both the war in Ukraine and procurement planning across the alliance.
Government budgets loosened and acquisition cycles shortened over the past two years, and venture money followed into European defense tech. That suits small manufacturers such as Monopulse, which sell straight to militaries instead of waiting on prime contractors. Its combined aerial and maritime range also suits coastal monitoring, a niche NATO members have elevated since strikes on undersea infrastructure exposed gaps in maritime awareness.
