At side of the 15th Trans-Regional Seapower Symposium in Venice, FW MAG met with Domitilla Benigni, CEO of ELT Group, to discuss the priorities and strategies of the historic Rome-based company.

FWMag: Ms. Benigni, what are your priorities at the moment?

D. Benigni: Let me start with a premise. We are coming off 2-3 years of strong growth, and that growth will continue in the near future, driven by the evolving international landscape and the general increase in defense and security spending. In this context, ELT Group is capitalizing on its expertise and know-how in managing the electromagnetic spectrum, which, as current conflicts show, starting with Ukraine, is decisive for modern military operations. Our priority is precisely to consolidate and further strengthen this profile.

FWMag: Could you elaborate?

D. Benigni: Today, wars are fought with information. Our task is therefore to protect it and make it usable and actionable, so that the right decision can be taken at the right time. This is an extremely demanding task in an era marked by so-called "infobesity", the overabundance of information.

FWMag: How do you carry out this task which, as you yourself admit, is extremely demanding?

D. Benigni: We do it through our capabilities in the Cyber Electro Magnetic Activities (CEMA) domain, but also through our legacy products, such as ESM/ECM and SIGINT, which allow information to be collected.

FWMag: Speaking of capabilities, given the lessons from operational theaters, how is your ADRIAN counter-drone system performing?

D. Benigni: For ELT Group, ADRIAN is now a full family of systems, with a land configuration, a naval configuration and a civilian one, known as NADIR, which has been and continues to be a major market success. We are also upgrading the family with new capabilities, for example the ability to identify the communication protocol of an attacking drone in order to take control of it.

FWMag: So this capability is already mature?

D. Benigni: If a customer asks for it, we are ready to deliver.

FWMag: Let's turn to markets. Any prospects you can disclose?

D. Benigni: At the moment we aim to consolidate our traditional presence in the Gulf and to expand in Southeast Asia, where we recently opened a sales office in Indonesia, alongside the office we already had in Singapore. From Jakarta we will be able to better manage the contract for the 2 PPAs (Multipurpose Offshore Patrol Vessels). At the same time, we want to strengthen our position in Europe by leveraging the new EU funding instruments, SAFE above all, and partnerships.

FWMag: On partnerships, what can you tell us about ELT's participation in GCAP?

D. Benigni: I can tell you that it is fundamental for us, in industrial and technological terms and in terms of relations with other major international players, just as the Eurofighter TYPHOON has been and still is.

FWMag: Indeed, the TYPHOON has had a profound impact on the European aerospace industry...

D. Benigni: Exactly. We are talking about a program that has been delivering technology and jobs for 40 years and promises to do so for a long time to come. GCAP is moving in the same direction: so long live GCAP!

FWMag: Let's go back to the beginning for a moment. When you spoke about future growth, did you also mean industrial growth, new acquisitions, and so on?

D. Benigni: I'll say it again: we want to keep growing, both organically (we are already hiring at a rate of 300 people per year) and inorganically.

FWMag: Let's close with the supply chain, the issue of issues...

For us the supply chain is an added value, and our customers know it well. Today 80% of our suppliers are Italian and 90% European. This makes us more solid. And more credible.

***

The latest chapter of FWMag's X-Tra, published on the occasion of the 15th Trans-Regional Seapower Symposium (T-RSS), is dedicated to "Cyber Electro-Magnetic Activities as Digital Deep Strike" and was written by ELT Group CEO Domitilla Benigni. The work is available for free in digital format in the X-Tra section of FWMag.

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