Policy Framework

Core Principles

Winsemius Group works at the intersection of defence technology, industrial policy, and capital markets. The principles below represent our working position on how European defence capability should be structured, contracted, and financed.

The structural assumptions underlying most European defence policy are badly out of date. Closing the gap between stated ambition and operational reality requires more than increased budgets. It requires a different way of thinking about what defence capability actually is, how it should be contracted, and who should be financing it.

Principle 01

Effects Over Platforms

The wrong question has been driving European defence investment for decades.

Governments and ministries have organised their thinking around platforms — how many aircraft, ships, or drones they own — and have treated that count as a proxy for capability. What matters is not what a force possesses but what it can achieve. Winsemius measures capability in operational outcomes:

  • Area denial coverage (km²)
  • ISR coverage, resolution, and refresh rate
  • Communications uptime and redundancy
  • Logistics throughput (tonnes/day)

Asset inventories are an input, not an output. Policy, procurement, and budget allocations must be reoriented around effects accordingly.

Principle 02

Surge Capacity as the True Measure of Readiness

If effects are the right measure of capability, then surge capacity is the right measure of readiness.

Winsemius defines this as the ability to scale from concept to full operational capability within six weeks. A nation that can do that with a modest peacetime inventory is more defensible than one with a large static stockpile and no credible path to rapid expansion. Achieving genuine surge capacity requires structural changes:

  • Pre-positioned tooling and supply chains
  • Capacity Credits: pre-paid production capacity held in reserve and activated on short notice
  • Availability Fees: supplier compensation for maintaining readiness, not only for delivering units
  • Mean Time To Restore (MTTR) as a binding performance metric in every contract

Without these mechanisms in place, surge capacity remains a planning assumption rather than an operational reality.

Principle 03

A Focused Theatre: JEF, the Baltic, and the Drone Wall

Winsemius operates with a deliberately concentrated geographic and institutional focus.

The Joint Expeditionary Force — a ten-nation grouping comprising the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Iceland — is NATO-compatible but considerably more agile than the Alliance as a whole. Its Northern Flank and Baltic orientation aligns with the most pressing near-term security challenges in Europe.

  • The Drone Wall is Winsemius's primary demonstrator project
  • A continuous surveillance and denial capability along the Baltic frontier
  • Dual-use by design, providing a live stress test of the surge capacity model
  • The first of several replicable capability templates across the JEF region
Principle 04

A Horizontal Technology Stack

Most defence technology has been built vertically, with bespoke platforms that cannot share components across adjacent systems.

Winsemius's position is that this architecture is both strategically limiting and economically wasteful. The alternative is a horizontal technology stack — modular building blocks that operate across air, ground, sea, and space:

  • Communications: RF, laser, and LEO mesh networks
  • Sensing and Imaging: EO, IR, radar, and hyperspectral capabilities with AI processing at the edge
  • Power and Energy: battery, solar, and hybrid power configurations
  • Mechatronics: rapid prototyping and in-theatre manufacturing capability

This architecture enables faster adaptation, genuine supplier competition, and a significantly lower cost of iteration than bespoke platform development allows.

Principle 05

Contracts That Reward Readiness, Not Delivery

The legacy procurement model pays for units delivered and then loses interest in whether those units remain available or improvable.

Winsemius considers this a fundamental misalignment of incentives. Outcome-based contracts must be structured around four binding performance metrics:

  • Availability: is production and operational capacity ready when required?
  • Time-to-Surge: how quickly can capability scale under pressure?
  • MTTR: how fast is capability restored after disruption?
  • Iteration Speed: how many improvements are introduced into fielded systems per quarter?

Shifting to this model means replacing per-unit payments with availability fees and capacity credits. It requires new contracting expertise within defence ministries and new accountability from suppliers — and Winsemius believes it should become the procurement standard across JEF nations.

Principle 06

Sovereignty Through Openness

There is a version of tech sovereignty that Winsemius rejects: the idea that strategic autonomy means building everything domestically.

This tends to produce capability dependent on a small number of domestic vendors rather than a large number of foreign ones — the dependency problem is not solved, it is merely relocated. Real sovereignty is structural:

  • Open interfaces and standards across all capability layers
  • Multi-vendor ecosystems where genuine competition keeps the market honest
  • Source code transparency in operationally critical systems
  • Procurement rules that make vendor lock-in contractually impermissible

A nation that has built its capability on open architecture can replace any component, onboard any new supplier, and adapt to any new requirement. That is what strategic autonomy looks like in practice.

Principle 07

Opening Capital Markets to Defence Technology

One of the most consequential policy failures in European defence has been the effective exclusion of dual-use technology companies from mainstream capital markets.

Investors have found the governance complexity, export control requirements, and classification concerns around defence-adjacent technology difficult to navigate. The result is that some of the most strategically important technology development in Europe is chronically underfunded. What it requires is a governance framework that gives investors transparency without compromising operational security:

  • Clear documentation of usage and application at the appropriate classification level
  • Export control and ITAR compliance built into company structures from the outset
  • Reporting frameworks designed for institutional investor audiences
  • Liquidity pathways including public listings and secondary markets

Amsterdam's Zuidas financial district is well-placed to anchor this kind of dual-use capital ecosystem. Winsemius sees building it as inseparable from the broader procurement and capability agenda.

Proposed White Papers

Where we are taking this

The following white papers develop the Winsemius policy agenda in three priority areas.

The Funding Gap: Making the Case for a JEF Defence Capital Facility

A policy paper arguing for the establishment of a dedicated, multi-government funding facility for JEF-aligned dual-use defence technology. The paper would make the economic and security case for pooled public capital as a catalyst for private investment, set out a governance model that satisfies both investor and security requirements, and propose concrete steps for JEF member states to establish the facility within existing treaty frameworks.

From Purchase Orders to Performance Contracts: A Procurement Reform Agenda for JEF Nations

A policy paper making the legislative and institutional case for replacing platform-based procurement with outcome-based SLA contracting across JEF defence ministries. The paper would identify the specific legal and regulatory barriers that currently prevent availability fee and capacity credit structures, propose model contract frameworks, and set out a realistic transition roadmap.

Open by Default: The Innovation Case for Mandating Open Architecture in European Defence

A policy paper arguing that requiring open interfaces and multi-vendor competition as a condition of public defence contracts is the single most effective lever available to accelerate innovation and reduce long-run capability costs. The paper would draw on precedents from the commercial technology sector, quantify the innovation premium that open architecture generates, and propose a JEF-level policy standard.

Want to discuss any of these positions?

info@winsemius.eu