A note from Viktor Eliasson, CEO · ahead of Gothenburg Tech Week · Orbit · 14 October 2026
We can build it in months. Being allowed to deliver it takes years.
A specialist company can take a capability from idea to working software in a season, and then wait longer than that for permission to put it into a defence programme.
01 The problem
Rearming at speed, procuring at the old pace.
Sweden and Europe are rearming at speed.
Much of the depth sits with specialist suppliers. Small companies that have spent decades on one hard thing.
For them, the lead times in procurement, export control and qualification now exceed the time it takes to develop the technology itself.
The technology is ready before the first approval is in.
02 The consequence
It exists. It does not arrive.
Capability that exists today does not reach the programmes that need it.
Requirements move while the process runs. What is finally approved is no longer quite what was asked for.
Smaller suppliers run out of runway before they run out of ideas.
None of this is bad intent. The process was built for a slower world, and the world has changed pace.
03 What we see from the other side
Twenty years of software, in products already in the customer's hands.
Diadrom comes from automotive.
There, software has to keep working for twenty years in products that were delivered long ago and are still on the road.
Every change has to be proven safe before it ships, and traced afterwards.
That is the work we do. It is a discipline, not a phase.
Defence faces the same lifecycle problem with less margin for error. A platform serves for decades. The tool chain it was delivered with does not.
The discipline transfers. The speed transfers. What does not transfer is the permission.
What should change is simple to say. Run permission alongside development, not after it.
04 The panel
The argument, made in public.
On 14 October I will make this argument on stage.
- Date
- 14 October 2026
- Event
- Gothenburg Tech Week, Orbit track (defence and dual use)
- On stage
- BAE Systems, GKN, SOFF, ISP and Diadrom
05 In closing
Tell me where this is wrong.
If you think the argument does not hold, I would like to hear why. If you think it holds, I would like to hear where it bites in your programme. Either way, the conversation is thirty minutes.
CEO, Diadrom