Speaker
Description
Strategic autonomy is created not in policy papers but in melt pools, powder plants, and qualification labs. Europe is rearming, yet its materials and manufacturing base has not kept pace with its ambitions: critical dependencies in refractory metals, titanium feedstock, and powder production sit alongside a deeper structural problem: qualification. Metal additive manufacturing offers defence exactly what it needs: on-demand spares for ageing fleets, geometry-enabled protective and signature-management structures, and processing routes for alloys that conventional metallurgy cannot handle. Yet certified adoption lags years behind technical capability. This plenary lecture argues that the bottleneck is not the technology but the ecosystem around it, and presents the Netherlands as evidence of what works: a short innovation chain from university research through applied institutes to industry and government, illustrated by the current collaboration with the Netherlands Ministry of Defence on additively manufactured ballistic protection. In-situ process monitoring is presented as a concrete route to breaking the qualification deadlock, and refractory alloys as the next frontier for space and defence systems. The talk concludes with a candid assessment of what European industry must invest in now. Because sovereignty is, ultimately, a manufacturing problem, and manufacturing problems are solvable.
| Speaker Country | Netherlands |
|---|---|
| Would you like to publish your paper in the special issue of BHM "Berg- und Hüttenmännische Monatshefte" | No |