Hi there, I'm Maddie Savage, and for today's Business Daily, I'm digging into an industry that's thriving around Europe.

Defence tech. It's a sector that includes a wide range of technologies designed to help countries protect and defend themselves,

from surveillance tools to military and maritime software and flight simulators.

I've been to visit one of the cities where the industry is growing rapidly, Helsinki, in

Finland.

The war in Ukraine just kind of put everything on steroids.

Things started happening a lot fast.

And I guess we're all aware, at least here in this part of Europe that the world is a lot more

insecure than it used to be.

In this programme, I'll be meeting some of the Finnish defence tech startups generating

global interest, finding out how the industry's image has changed over the last few years

and digging into the challenges for the sector in Finland and around Europe.

We built these bureaucratic processes into the governments, into the acquisition organisations

that are preventing Europe for moving fast enough.

That's all coming up on Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

But first, I'm starting the program around 4,500 metres in the air, above a mountain range just above George on the south coast of South Africa.

Clear skies and I'm flying a fighter jet. Well, not really. This is a simulator, a mixed

reality simulator developed by one of the defence tech companies that's really making a mark

in Finland.

Yeah, that was me a few weeks ago, wearing a headset and sitting in a cockpit where I had pedals and control panels like the ones in real F-16 fighter jets.

I was trying to explain how the simulator works while I was attempting to control it, and it didn't

go too well.

...