Well, in most cases, probably not. Apologies for the click bait-y headline, but the concept – even if more theoretical than practical – popped into my head last Friday at the Venture in the Capital event in Washington, DC.
Georgetown University, through the Georgetown Entrepreneurship / McDonough School of Business, hosted the first student-led conference diving into the intersection of tech, policy, and entrepreneurship. It brought together a who’s who of defense tech startup and scaleup executives – along with investors – including Archer, Second Front, Firestorm, Chariot Defense, Squadra Ventures, Anduril Industries, Washington Harbour Partners LP, Usul, I could go on and on.
So back to the headline. While I can’t dive too deep into who said what (Chatham House Rules), one of the consistent narratives to emerge was the importance of, for lack of a better description, living it. Walking the walk. If you are going to build, scale or enable technologies at the tactical edge, for example, and align with the mission, it helps to have been part of the mission at some point. To understand the pain points and needs of users and decision makers, become a user or decision maker.
The narrative extended to VCs and investors in defense tech. The point was made to, for example, seek to gain security clearance to “get in the room” with DoD and other agency decision makers rather than to rely on second hand insights.
Let’s dial it back to PR professionals supporting the growing defense tech ecosystem. No, it’s not always possible or even advisable as a career path to enlist or commission. The broader point is that between Gen AI and the rise of CliffsNotes PR through the digitization of most outreach, many PR professionals can do most of your job without being an expert on the space and competitive landscape.
But there is a big difference between doing the job and doing it well, and that difference is PR professionals who immerse themselves in the customer-side of client solutions. PR professionals flock to events, panels and webinars featuring defense tech journalists – which is extremely valuable – but skip similar events featuring DoD officials, PAEs and Procurement & Acquisition offices.
Ok, I went a little off target as Mr. Lecture Much. I viewed this narrative as more of a stop and think moment about whether we, as PR and marketing professionals, are immersing ourselves sufficiently in the worlds that our clients operate in.
What A Saturated Market Means For Defense Tech Comms
2025 was an unprecedented funding year for defense tech / dual-use startups. Venture capital and private equity flowed to AI, autonomous systems, drones and C-UAS, and robotics. Defense News reports on data from PitchBook that the value of VC deals in defense tech soared to more than $49 billion last year – up from $27.2 billion in 2024. VC growth was matched by another $17.9 billion in equity funding.
Venture in the Capital featured substantive, eye-opening conversations on national and global developments such as: tech enabling warfighters at the tactical edge, the rise of neoprimes, re-industrialization, and AI of course. I’m subjectively sharing what I thought were valuable takeaways for defense tech brands, as well as Defense Tech PR and marketing professionals.
Because one undeniable theme from the event is that there are a lot of defense tech startups and scaleups launching companies, products, and technologies. The ability to develop a message that clearly communicates what you do, why it matters, and how it is mission-aligned can be the difference between securing contracts and investment, or getting lost in the noise.
Communicate Your Place In The Portfolio Stack
As part of the Secretary of War’s mandate to overhaul the defense acquisition system, you have the evolution from “…a compliance-based process to a dynamic, warfighter-focused model that prioritizes the speed of delivery for credible, combat-effective capabilities.” It’s an approach shifting from Program Executive Officers (PEOs) to Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs).
The shift from an acquisition system managed as portfolios of capabilities more so than individual programs impacts how defense tech brands message to PAEs and decision makers in their orbit.
Are you a platform company in the vein of Anduril, Palantir, Shield AI accelerating AI, autonomy, drone tech, new energy and power distribution at the tactical edge, or other dual-use technologies that create scalable, software-defined platforms? Are you a maker of things? Are you focused on helping to scale production and capabilities?
For example, domestic manufacturing as well as the ability to manufacture at the tactical edge is a critical priority, and weaves into portfolio priorities for some PAEs. While not a speaker at the event, Ali Javaheri, senior analyst for emerging technology at PitchBook, was recently quoted as saying that manufacturing scale is “the next competitive battleground” in the defense-tech space, and that “we are going to see a concerted push to expand throughput through investments not just in new facilities, but in the production toolchain itself, including robotics and software-augmented manufacturing.”
Indeed, manufacturing-focused defense investment rose to $4.7 billion across 39 deals in 2025 from $2.6 billion across 24 deals in 2024. Drones are a big chunk of this, but more broadly, additional commentary by Jason Saltzman at CB Insights makes plain the bigger picture:
“The emphasis in 2026 is shifting towards the speed of getting systems fielded, and budgets this year will prioritize artificial-intelligence enabled systems, autonomous platforms and collaborative combat aircraft, according to Saltzman at CB Insights.” He added that, “Growth will depend on whether these startups can solve the harder problem: translating venture capital into large-scale manufacturing capacity and navigating supply-chain constraints that have kept most from reaching battlefield scale.”
For Javaheri, these comments dovetail into what has been a clear message over the past year: “…execution, not invention, will determine returns. Companies that convert facilities into repeatable output will disproportionately capture both capital and contract velocity.”
Don’t Pitch Into Outdated Priorities
For PR professionals seeking to inject their defense tech startup and scaleup clients and brands in conversations that matter, staying attuned to evolving priorities is critical. As well as the decision makers for those priority areas.
For example, the Pentagon CTO announced the six point people to lead priority tech areas, which run the gamut from the CDAO to former DARPA leaders to Navy and Air Force heavyweights in biotechnology and hypersonics. Then align with, in this case, the 6 tech priorities to unlock media relations and content opportunities that match the current and future news cycle:
- Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI)
- Biomanufacturing (BIO)
- Contested Logistics Technologies (LOG)
- Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID)
- Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE)
- Scaled Hypersonics (SHY)
Recognize That Ukraine Changed The Game
New lanes are opening up for emerging defense tech brands to pursue and secure contracts that, historically, were mostly designated to legacy primes and even neoprimes. But there is still a need to prove out products and technologies in real-world environments, which can be a challenge.
For drone, AI and autonomous system startups and scaleups, Ukraine has changed the game here when it comes to proving out how these products and systems can support the mission in real combat environments. Provability is not only critical for attracting DoD and government interest, but investor interest from VCs and PEs as well. For PR and marketing teams, building a strategy to communicate and validate the dual-use technologies can provide valuable air cover to reach and impact all of those stakeholder groups.
The biggest takeaway from the event, honestly, is that there are really smart people leading the next generation of defense tech and dual-use neoprimes, startups and scaleups. And while I’d love to tell you that the most important defense tech hire cited by multiple panelists was a marketer, but in the interests of full disclosure, no. They said…get a lobbyist.
