An invention from a Finnish company that allows the Defense Forces to practice endlessly different situations on the eastern border

It’s about models that Europe now buys from elsewhere or that it doesn’t have at all.

“The real data is complemented by a simulation that digitally recreates the Eastern side of Europe. War can be practiced there thousands of times before it has to be fought, and each round produces training data that does not exist anywhere else,” says Nest AI’s Director of International Business Patrick Gayer.

In training and testing, simulation is also used, where systems and artificial intelligence meet a simulated opponent in a digital model depicting the terrain and conditions of the eastern part of Europe.

Finnish company is now progressing at a rapid pace.

At the end of June, it announced that it had also started cooperation with the Estonian Defense Forces on the development of defense artificial intelligence capabilities.

Nest AI also cooperates with the Defense Forces’ new artificial intelligence center. It and the Estonian Defense Forces will be the first to use the pilot versions of the models. Later, more armed forces of the allied countries will join.

Until now, Nest AI has developed artificial intelligence for unmanned systems such as drones and management systems. Its NestOS is an operating system developed for combat operations. In the future, they will also be based on self-developed artificial intelligence models.

It’s about is that Europe is currently building drones and their software. However, it doesn’t build the AI ​​models that drive them. If the critical operation is based on models trained elsewhere, access to them can be cut off.

This was especially raised when the US administration imposed export restrictions on artificial intelligence company Anthropic’s most advanced language models in June.

However, the development of Nest AI is not about broad language models like those, but about a specific product trained for defense use.

“The intelligence at the core of Europe’s defense must be Europe’s own, and it must be built and developed on the terms defined by Europe itself,” says Nest AI’s founder and chairman of the board Peter Sarlin.

Work focuses initially on models of battlefield autonomy and coordination of force operations. The company receives real operational data from its partners, which is supplemented with simulation and synthetically produced data.

The idea is that the simulation can be used to practice constantly changing situations where new drones, new harassment methods and new tactics appear on the eastern side of Europe.

“It is essential that the system is able to adapt when the enemy and the battlefield change,” comments Sarlin.

According to the company, the artificial intelligence models are designed to work within defined limits, in accordance with military doctrine and the use of force rules. The decisions they make must also be reviewable afterwards.