Day: November 28, 2025

• A NATO drone maker said smaller, frontline NATO members have two key weaponry needs.
• They need autonomy because they have smaller populations, and cost-effective ways to stop attacks.
• Latvia’s Origin Robotics makes drones and drone interceptors, and has systems in Ukraine.

A drone maker that’s been arming Ukraine and designing systems to protect NATO says it’s learned what the alliance, especially allies sharing a border with Russia, will need to fight — and win — a war.

Drone maker Origin Robotics, which is based in Latvia, one of NATO’s smaller eastern edge allies bordering Russia and Belarus, is among those considered most at risk of a potential Russian attack. Facing a growing threat, countries along that frontier have played an outsized role in shaping NATO’s urgency toward Moscow.

CEO Agris Kipurs recently told Business Insider that these smaller front-line states need to invest in autonomy and lower-cost ways to take down enemy mass.

These are the kind of solutions that the technology company is working on. It has supplied some systems to Ukraine and has R&D contracts with Latvia’s defense ministry. And Belgium recently agreed to buy Origin’s interceptors.

Origin Robotics produces autonomous aerial and airborne systems, including an AI-enabled drone interceptor called BLAZE and a drone-launched precision-guided weapon known called BEAK. The latter is in use in Ukraine.

Kipurs said the company is using Ukrainian feedback to shape how it’s building its new systems with NATO in mind. “We take the learnings of Ukraine, but we adapt those weapons systems specifically to be used in a NATO country,” the market they are building for, he said.

Western militaries see real-world experience from Ukraine as key for industry. Luke Pollard, the UK’s armed forces minister, said earlier this year that any Western drone companies that don’t have their gear in Ukraine “might as well give up.”

A need for autonomy

Russia has one of the world’s largest armed forces. In Ukraine, Russia has shown a willingness to send waves of soldiers forward to relentless stress and overwhelm defenses — tactics often described as “meat waves.” It has roots in Soviet doctrine, though it’s not a 1:1 comparison to the fatal forward charges of the Second World War.

Smaller militaries with fewer troops can counter that mass with autonomy, Kipurs said. That kind of tech allows armies to be bigger than their numbers. Autonomy can give life to drone swarms, converting a single operator into an army of their own.

“For a NATO country, you need a scalable solution,” he said. Compared to Russia and Ukraine, “our armies, in terms of head count, are a lot smaller.” The alliance as a whole commands substantial forces, but force multipliers like autonomy can make alliance military might much greater.

“We have to build systems which can be deployed within a smaller army where one operator has to accomplish way more than an operator in Ukraine is accomplishing,” he said. “And pretty much the only answer to that is autonomy.”

Autonomy allows militaries to scale, Kipurs explained. “We don’t have the numbers in terms of infantry, in terms of any army operator. So they have to be able to accomplish more.”

Ukraine, one of Europe’s largest countries, is still struggling against Russia’s superior manpower and is increasingly turning to autonomy to offset that disadvantage. It also wants technology that protects operators by keeping them farther from the front lines, a crucial need as drone pilots have become top Russian targets.

Low-cost counters

Kipurs said finding cost-effective ways to stop large-scale attacks is also critical for nations with limited budgets, not just smaller militaries.

A key Russian tactic has been launching massive drone and missile barrages across Ukraine. This is something the West is increasingly worried about, with many officials acknowledging a gap in its defenses. There are not enough air defense systems, particularly affordable ones. It’s not sustainable to fire a $4 million Patriot missile at a Russian drone worth only thousands.

Kipurs said that “when you look at the current offering for precision strike technology or weapon systems that can deliver precision strikes at the lowest end, you are talking hundreds of thousands per one successful strike.” Some missile systems are worth millions, which is what higher-end interceptors are made for.

In Ukraine, both sides have recognized that exquisite precision strike capabilities are simply not sustainable in the long run, so they’ve been augmenting barrages with cheaper drones and loitering munitions.

It’s cheap mass, not the expensive weapons that top armies have prioritized for decades. Addressing this problem, Kipurs said, is an “opportunity” for European entrepreneurs.

Front-line perspectives

Latvia and its neighbors, countries at risk that have grappled with Russian hybrid attacks and airspace violations, warned early on that Russia posed a threat and are now among Ukraine’s strongest backers.

They’re also some of NATO’s most vocal members, warning that Moscow could strike elsewhere in Europe. These nations rank among the alliance’s top defense spenders relative to GDP and have built new border defenses to blunt any potential attack.

They’re protected by NATO’s mutual-defense clause — it essentially states an attack on one is an attack on all — meaning that despite their small size, they have the backing of major militaries like the US, UK, and Germany.

But officials in these countries remain concerned about how quickly NATO could respond, insisting that Russia must not be allowed to seize even an inch of territory. That urgency is driving them to build stronger deterrents and homegrown defenses, a focus shared by companies like Origin Robotics.

The uncertain state of the US commitment to NATO and European security has only heightened those concerns across the region.

• Tesla is stepping up its efforts to get self-driving cars on the road in Europe.
• The EV maker is offering Full Self-Driving ride-alongs in France, Germany, and Italy next month.
• Tesla aims to have FSD approved in Europe by February, but regulators have cast doubt on the timeline.

Tesla is going on the offensive in its campaign to roll out its self-driving tech in Europe.

The EV maker is offering Full Self-Driving (FSD) ride-alongs in Germany, Italy, and France next month, as it inches closer to introducing the self-driving software in Europe.

According to Tesla’s website, the ride-alongs will allow Europeans to experience FSD — which the company says can handle almost all driving scenarios autonomously but requires human supervision — during a test drive from the passenger seat.

FSD has been available in the US since 2022, but Tesla has struggled to roll it out internationally.

The automaker said in a Saturday X post that after pushing hard to ship FSD in Europe for over a year, it expected to get approval from the Dutch regulator RDW in February 2026.

However, the regulator quickly fired back, saying that although the agency had drawn up a schedule to grant approval by February, it “remains to be seen” whether that timeline will be met.

The RDW also asked Tesla fans to stop contacting them after the company called on European owners to get in touch with the regulator and “express your excitement.”

Tesla has been testing Full Self-Driving for months on European roads, posting videos of cars driving through the streets of Rome and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Business Insider previously reported that Tesla employees working on FSD approval have expressed impatience with the extensive testing required by Dutch regulators, with one employee telling officials that FSD approval was “mission critical” to Tesla’s leadership.

CEO Elon Musk has regularly complained that European bureaucracy is holding up Tesla’s attempts to roll out its self-driving tech.

In a July earnings call, he said the company was navigating a “Kafkaesque” labyrinth of regulations, and predicted that Tesla’s sales in Europe would surge once the company got the regulatory green light.

Tesla could use the boost. The company’s sales in Europe have plummeted this year amid backlash over Musk’s support for the far-right German party AFD and fierce competition from the Chinese EV giant BYD.

In October, Tesla’s European sales were down nearly 50% from the previous year, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, while BYD’s sales surged by over 200%.

• Miles Wu, 14, won a $25,000 award for his research project combining origami and physics.
• He measured the weight that Miura-ori origami patterns can hold across various benchmarks.
• Wu said the pattern could help improve deployable structures used in emergencies.

While most 14-year-olds are folding paper airplanes, Miles Wu is folding origami patterns that he believes could one day improve disaster relief.

The New York City teen just won $25,000 for a research project based on an origami fold called Miura-ori, which is known for collapsing and expanding with precision.

“I’ve been folding origami as a hobby for more than six years, mostly of animals or insects,” Wu told Business Insider. “Recently I’ve been designing my own origami, too.”

For his project, which won the top prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge in October, Wu spent months determining whether the strength-to-weight ratio of the Miura fold can be leveraged to improve deployable structures used in emergency situations.

Essentially, Wu tested how much weight the Miura fold could handle across different types of paper, parallelogram heights, parallelogram widths, and parallelogram angles.

Wu got the idea while learning about natural disasters, like January’s wildfires in Southern California and Hurricane Helene, which hit the Southeast US in 2024. He also studied how people use origami in STEM disciplines, including the medical field.

“A problem with current deployable structures and emergency structures is, for example, tents are sometimes strong, sometimes they can compact really small, and sometimes they’re easily deployable, but almost never are they all three, but Miura-ori could potentially solve that problem,” Wu said.

“I found that Miura-ori was really strong, light, and folds down really compactly.”

Wu tested 54 variations and underwent 108 trials

When using the Miura-ori, a sheet of paper is folded into a smaller area with repeating parallelograms.

To figure out the winning combination, Wu tested three different parallelogram widths, three different parallelogram angles, and two different parallelogram heights. He also tested three different types of paper.

That means Wu tested 54 hand-folded variations and oversaw 108 trials.

“After folding them with the help of a cutting machine for accuracy, I placed them between guardrails to keep my experimentation the same throughout my trials,” Wu said. “Then, I placed a lot of heavy weights on top.”

Wu would gradually place more weight atop each test variation until they collapsed. To his surprise, the origami variations were quite strong. He used every book in his home as a weight before having to ask his parents to purchase exercise weights for his research.

Wu believed “smaller, less acutely angled panels made of heavier material would yield a greater strength-to-weight ratio.”

By the end of his trials, his hypothesis was partially correct. While small and less acutely angled panels showed a better strength-to-weight ratio, Wu found that copy paper — not heavier materials —had the strongest strength-to-weight ratio.

“The final statistic I got about the strongest Miura-ori that I tested was that it could hold over 10,000 times its own weight,” Wu said. “I calculated that to be the equivalent of a New York City taxi cab holding over 4,000 elephants.”

Wu took the top prize at the competition in Washington, D.C.

Taking top prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge is no small feat. To apply, middle schoolers must compete at local science or engineering fairs, where judges nominate the top 10% of projects.

Of the 2,000 or so applicants, judges select 300 before narrowing it down to just 30. Those 30 kids then travel to Washington, D.C., where they present their work and participate in challenges.

Those challenges play a role in how judges decide who will take home an award.

Maya Ajmera, the president and CEO of the Society for Science, which collaborates with Thermo Fisher Scientific to host the competition, told Business Insider that Wu excelled in those challenges.

“We’re not only looking at their project. We’re looking at do they deal with creative problem solving, how they deal with setbacks, how they bring everyone in a collaborative mode,” Ajmera said. “Not only did Miles have an extraordinary project, but he shined as a leader in these challenges.”

To Ajmera, introducing STEM education to young people is imperative.

“We’re looking for the next generation of innovators,” Ajmera said.

Ajmera said that many of the kids participating in the competition are considering careers in STEM fields.

“That is really important for global competitiveness as the United States, being the global leader of innovation and also solving the world’s most intractable problems,” Ajmera said. “I think we have a duty to really nurture the curiosity.”

Wu said he and his parents decided to put the $25,000 award toward higher education. Although it’s been nearly a month since Wu won, he’s already thinking ahead about how to bring his vision to life.

“One thing I really want to look into is prototyping one of these Muira-ori to create a real emergency shelter that could be used in real-life situations and actually help people,” Wu said. “But overall, I would love to keep working on origami-related research. Not only Miura-ori folds, but origami as a whole, and in other fields, too.”