ASELSAN represented the Turkish defense industry at the NATO-Industry Forum held in Bucharest on November 5-6, 2025. ASELSAN CEO Ahmet Akyol addressed critical topics of the sector at the forum. Akyol stated, “At the panel, we discussed ways to enhance cooperation with NATO, support suppliers, and strengthen the defense industry ecosystem.”
This important event, jointly organized by NATO’s Allied Command Transformation and the Defense Industry, Innovation, and Armaments Division, brought together over 900 senior leaders, national delegations, and industry representatives to discuss ways to accelerate capability delivery in the modern security environment.
The Alliance’s Urgent Call: Inventing Is Not Enough
The forum included participation from 26 NATO and partner countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Ukraine, and engaged with over 300 company representatives. The event brought policymakers, operational users, and industry leaders together under one roof to find solutions to shared challenges and rapidly deploy innovations to the field.
The forum’s core theme was summarized as: “Inventing is not enough; the alliance must test and deliver capabilities in months rather than years.” This requires closer collaboration between operational users, innovators, financiers, and industry, turning experiments quickly into deployable capabilities.
Four Strategic Focus Areas Amid Rising Demand
Defense demand across the Atlantic is outpacing existing supply. NATO and the industry aimed to increase production while maintaining support for Ukraine and meeting new capability targets. In this context, the forum focused on four main efforts:
- Scaling defense production rapidly.
- Developing investment and risk-sharing models that support rapid adoption.
- Deploying dual-use technologies in an interoperable manner.
- Creating solutions that will transform the alliance’s deterrence, defense, and, if necessary, combat capabilities.
