- Nokia’s Defense unit has joined an industrial consortium led by the Finnish Border Guard to develop next-generation counter-drone systems for patrol vehicles and boats
- The initiative aims to build a sovereign, integrated counter-UAS capability deployed nationwide across land and maritime environments
- Solutions will be evaluated in 2027 through early 2028
Nokia has joined a Finnish Border Guard-led industrial consortium focused on building advanced counter-drone systems for deployment on patrol vessels and ground vehicles. The company’s Defense unit will bring its connectivity expertise to bear on a national effort to strengthen airspace security and safeguard critical infrastructure, Nokia said Thursday.
What Is the Consortium Designed to Achieve?
The Finnish Border Guard is seeking to establish a nationally owned, end-to-end counter-UAS capability that can be rolled out across the country. The consortium will work to interconnect patrol platforms, detection sensors and command infrastructure into a unified system that improves threat visibility and shortens response times in multi-domain scenarios. Evaluation of the integrated solutions is planned for 2027 through early 2028.
What Is Nokia’s Role?
Nokia Defense will deliver a network architecture that ties together the various field platforms and back-end systems through secure, high-throughput data links. Working alongside other consortium partners, the company will help shape a system designed to grow alongside evolving national security needs and remain interoperable with allied frameworks.
What Did Nokia’s Leadership Say?
Mikko Hautala, Chief Geopolitical and Government Relations Officer and Chairman of Nokia Defense, framed the consortium’s work as part of a wider transformation in how security forces manage aerial threats.
“Reliable, secure connectivity is becoming essential to how defense organizations detect, understand and respond to fast-moving threats. By contributing Nokia’s intelligent connectivity and sensing technology to this consortium, we are helping build an operational and interoperable solution that gives border authorities the real-time awareness and resilience they need in complex land and maritime environments,” Hautala said.
What Are Nokia’s Most Recent Defense Partnerships?
The Finnish Border Guard consortium is part of a broader run of defense engagements Nokia Defense has taken on across Europe. At Eurosatory 2026, Nokia Defense and KNDS unveiled a collaboration to push 5G connectivity from armored vehicles out to dismounted troops and robotic platforms in the field, using Nokia’s Banshee portfolio as the networking backbone. Separately, COBBS BELUX, Anduril Industries and Nokia teamed up in Belgium to build a nationally controlled counter-UAS system aimed at protecting military installations and key infrastructure sites.
On the research front, Nokia was tapped to head PROACTIF, a European Union-backed robotics and unmanned systems program drawing on 42 organizations across 13 countries. Focused on emergency response and critical infrastructure protection, the project is expected to yield roughly 90 million euros in commercial output by 2035, signaling Nokia Defense’s ambition to anchor Europe’s unmanned systems ecosystem at the connectivity layer.
