XPONENTIAL Europe offered a view into how the unmanned systems and geospatial industry is evolving. In this contributed article, Daniel Fuller of Clarify Consulting reflects on the key shifts he observed across the UAS landscape.
I spent a few days at XPONENTIAL Europe in Düsseldorf in March. Some things were hard not to notice.
The event was bigger than last year: more people, more activity on the floor. That part was good to see. But bigger didn’t mean more balanced. Walking the halls and sitting through sessions, one shift was impossible to miss: the defense side of this industry now dominates the conversation in Europe. Not marginally, noticeably.
Commercial applications — mapping, inspection, energy, utilities, construction — felt quieter than last year. Fewer operators and end users on the floor. Fewer complete, real-world solutions on display. More subsystems, components, and pieces of a larger stack.
The innovation stage leaned heavily in the same direction, with much of the conversation centered on European and NATO defense policy, European sovereign capability, collaboration with the US, lessons from Ukraine, and evolving training and capability needs.
The focus on sovereign defense across Europe is real and it matters. The geopolitical context driving that shift isn’t going away. But it does create a gap, and that gap is worth talking about.
A Signal the Market Is Already Sending
The cancellation of Commercial UAV Expo Amsterdam — scheduled for late April 2026, reinforces what I felt on the floor at XPONENTIAL Europe. It’s not that commercial UAS is dying. It’s that attention and investment are currently being pulled in a different direction, at least on that side of the Atlantic.
That makes the US edition of XPONENTIAL in Detroit this year worth watching closely. Will defense dominate the conversation there the way it did in Europe? Or will the commercial side hold more ground in the US market? My instinct is the answer will be different, but I don’t think the gap will be as wide as it once was. The defense narrative is global.
What the Startup Zone Revealed
Easily the most energizing part of the event for me was the XPO+ Launcher startup zone. I serve as Global Ambassador for XPO+ Launcher and acted as Jury Captain for the startup pitch competition: 17 early-stage teams, 3-minute pitches, 2-minute Q&A. Short, intense, and a very small window into what each team is actually building.
I also had the chance to be on the innovation stage for a fireside chat with Mark Wachter and Eno Umoh, talking about why ecosystems like XPO+ Launcher matter for early-stage teams. That conversation touched on something I think about a lot in my work: the gap between having a strong solution and being able to communicate why it matters to the right buyer.
Spending time debriefing with the founders after the competition gave me a clear picture of where the friction is. Most teams were building real things. The challenge wasn’t the technology, it was the story around it.
A few patterns came up consistently:
Show more, don’t just tell.
Case studies were often missing or weak. The best teams made their impact tangible, they could tell you what problem they spotted early, who they solved it for, and what changed as a result. That specificity is what builds credibility.
Competition is always present, even when you don’t see it.
Saying “we have no competitors” is rarely true and rarely convincing. The real competition is usually the status quo: manual processes, legacy systems, the way things have always been done. If you can’t articulate what you’re replacing and why the current approach falls short, there’s no reason for anyone to switch.
Cost needs context.
Even without exact pricing, buyers are asking whether this is worth it. Help them answer that. Give ranges. Compare to current methods. Show time saved, risk reduced, ROI over time. Technical value isn’t enough on its own; economic clarity builds confidence.
This is the kind of work I do at Clarify Consulting : helping companies and startups in the autonomy and unmanned systems space sharpen how they enter markets, build partnerships, and communicate their value. Working directly with these founders at XPO+ Launcher was a direct extension of that. It’s a reminder of how much early-stage teams can accelerate by getting the positioning right before they scale the sales machine.
What Stays True Regardless of the Market Shift
This industry still runs on relationships. That hasn’t changed, and it was visible throughout the week, in hallway conversations, in the debrief sessions with founders, in the kind of candid exchanges that don’t happen on a main stage.
One thing that came through clearly from every founder conversation: this is a journey. Judges at a pitch competition see a moment in time, not the full trajectory. The teams that tend to win over the long run are the ones who keep building, keep showing up, and stay close to their customers even when the environment shifts around them.
The fundamentals don’t change, even when the market priorities do.
I wrote about this dynamic more directly in an earlier piece on building successful partnerships between UAS startups and established companies . The fundamentals don’t change, even when the market priorities do.
The Broader Picture
It does feel like the industry is maturing, just not evenly. There’s clear progress on the defense side, although it feels a bit like the early days again. But the earlier-stage challenges on the commercial side haven’t disappeared.
Getting the right solutions into the hands of real end users, building the trust needed to close enterprise deals, finding the right channel partners, that work is still happening, just with less visibility at the big shows right now.
The next phase of this industry isn’t just about better technology. It’s about better alignment between policy, product, and actual use. That’s true whether you’re building for defense procurement or commercial operations.
And figuring out how to navigate that gap, for startups and established players alike, is exactly what I find most interesting about this moment.
—
Daniel Fuller is the founder of Clarify Consulting, where he works with companies and startups entering the autonomy and unmanned systems space on market entry, partnerships, and commercial strategy. He publishes Beyond the Fog, a monthly newsletter covering the realities of operating in the UAS industry. You can follow his work and thinking on LinkedIn.
More Recent News: Vicki Lukas on 3DEP and the Future of Mapping
