How Germany’s innovation agency wants to set up a military offshoot

Sprind, Germany’s innovation agency, is hoping to set up a sister organisation focused on military technology, after the country’s new government said it would be allowed to move explicitly into defence. 

Up until now, the five-year-old agency has focused on civilian technologies, such as new cures for Alzheimer’s disease and energy storage, although it does have some dual-use projects, for instance involving autonomous drones. 

But with the US military commitment to Europe wavering, and Germany changing its debt rules to allow for a huge expansion of military and infrastructure spending, Sprind hopes to incubate a similar, separate agency focusing directly on defence. 

“The dependence on others, including the United States, has just been going on too long, and so it is about time,” said Patrick Rose, Sprind’s innovation manager, who would likely lead any new military offshoot. 

A dual US-German citizen, Rose describes himself as a “product of the Cold War.” His father was a US soldier stationed in Germany, his mother German. So far, he’s moved 14 times between Europe and the US, previously working for the US’s Office of Naval Research. Currently, he works for Sprind from London. 

Sprind wants €1 billion over five years to get started on a military agency. Given the hundreds of billions of euros set to flow to Germany’s military, this is “budget dust,” said Rose. 

Last week, Germany’s conservative Union parties and the centre-left Social Democratic Party struck a coalition agreement, which promises to “strengthen” Sprind and “enable it to also become active in the field of defence,” although it stopped short of explicitly calling for a new military agency. 

“Should it have been more specific? Absolutely,” Rose said of the agreement. But he’s hopeful of support for a new military agency from the new government when it’s finally formed. “We developed this position by request,” he said. “There were people in the government, in politics, who were keen on understanding what role we could play.” 

European dimension

Like the existing Sprind, a military sister agency would have the power to give funding not just to German applicants by those from across the EU, the European Free Trade Association (which includes Norway and Switzerland), the UK and Israel, stressed Rose. 

“It will be important for the military version of Sprind to not only support the German military, but also the European military,” he said. 

For example, it might support a French start-up that develops a new technology that is then tested by both Dutch and German forces. 

“It creates a sense of interoperability and complementarity to capabilities, and that's really what you want in European security,” he said. 

Rose argues a new organisation is necessary, rather than simply giving the existing Sprind the mandate to fund military projects. This is because military work requires a whole new system of security clearances, IT infrastructure, and for some projects to remain secret.

“The nature of some military applications should and will always be secured and not public,” he said. “That's why you need a separate organisation.” 

Related stories: 

• Germany’s Sprind innovation agency: what works, what does not
• Viewpoint: competition between innovators beats picking winners
• Inside Germany’s Sprind innovation agency

However, the new military Sprind would be “born out of the essence of what Sprind is,” he said, using similar investment vehicles, processes and tools. It would likely be set up initially by five seconded Sprind employees, led by Rose. It’s unclear where it would be based yet. “I think I the beginning, location doesn’t really matter,” he said. 

Rival agencies?

Sprind’s bid for a military sister agency has already ruffled some feathers, with the head of the country’s Cyberagentur, which focuses on cyber security, questioning the need for another defence-focused body. Germany’s military also has its own Cyber Innovation Hub, meaning the landscape is already quite crowded. 

Rose argues that a military Sprind would sit “right in the middle” of these two agencies. The Cyberagentur conducts more basic research, he said, while the Cyber Innovation Hub is highly applied. 

Sprind “brings something completely different to the table,” he said, by virtue of a law that came into effect at the beginning of last year, which, for example, frees it up to get money to applicants in a matter of weeks. If the military Sprind was set up initially as a subsidiary, it would inherit these legal freedoms, he said. 

The Cyberagentur is already the “military version of Sprind,” said Thomas Jarzombek, parliamentary spokesman on R&D for the Christian Democratic Union, one of the parties set to form the next government. But he added that “competition is king,” and this is “also true for these agencies.”

Capture the flag

One focus of a military Sprind could be testing German military preparedness, Rose suggested. It could ask: “what should I be prepared for, and what might be coming down the pipeline in terms of military technology?”

A real-life “capture the flag” challenge could pit drone manufactures against counter-drone systems, for example.

“There's just been a lot of reports recently of unknown drones” at airports and ports, he said. “But [. . .] there are no real counter measures.” 

As with the existing Sprind, a military sister agency would also develop technologies to a fairly high readiness level, so that parts of the German military – special forces, for example – could “play around” with them in training, he said. 

German military procurement, however, is notoriously slow, making it unclear whether it could drive the rapid scale-up of new defence technologies. “The military Sprind is not going to solve the acquisition process,” said Rose. “It's really about raising awareness and maturing, incubating technology that otherwise won't happen.” 

And finally, the new agency must be independent of the military, Rose said, as military officials don’t always know what technologies they will ultimately need.

Radar, for example, had been invented long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. It was “sitting on the shelf”, Rose said, but had not been developed by the US military. “The military didn't see any need for it because they were betting on other technologies,” he said.