Against a backdrop marked by the shift toward electric vehicles and growing competition from Chinese manufacturers, major European automakers are beginning to consider entering the military sector. Renault has confirmed that its Le Mans plant will assemble drones for the Chorus project in collaboration with Turgis Gaillard, with the capacity to produce up to 600 units per month in less than a year.
Renault’s message is deliberately precise: it does not intend to become a player in the defense sector, but rather to put part of its capacity to work on strategic programs when it makes economic and industrial sense. In other words: to diversify without giving up the automotive industry.
In this context, a potential partnership between Indra and SEAT to manufacture light military vehicles in Martorell should not be viewed as unusual. It is the Spanish version of a broader trend: using the automotive industry’s industrial base to meet new defense and technological sovereignty needs.
This move does not stem from weakness. SEAT closed out 2025 with a record-breaking 586,300 deliveries, driven primarily by CUPRA. As Christensen argues in “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” serious industrial companies don’t wait until they have a problem to explore new avenues of business. And 2026 will be a test year: the launch of the CUPRA Raval—the first 100% electric vehicle manufactured in Martorell—will say a lot about the pace of the transformation. If the market responds, all the better. If not, having alternative lines of business as a fallback can be a very valuable safety net.
Ficosa fits perfectly into this ecosystem, as it already supplies optical equipment and components to SEAT. In October 2025, Indra Group and Ficosa Inversión signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on LSAS electro-optical driver assistance and surveillance systems for the VCR 8×8 Dragón and VAC vehicles. It is not the same project as SEAT’s, but the underlying trend is the same: Indra is building a network of industrial capabilities centered on defense vehicles, drawing on companies with real-world experience in electronics, vision, and the automotive sector.
This reveals something important: the shift from the automotive industry to the defense sector is not limited to vehicle assembly. It also involves transferring expertise that already exists within the automotive value chain: cameras, sensors, perimeter surveillance, onboard electronics, and driver-assistance systems. These are precisely the areas where European suppliers have been building up knowledge and the capacity to scale up for years.
But the most interesting aspect is not the product—it’s the method. The defense, aerospace, and space sectors demand manufacturing capabilities, but also extraordinary levels of traceability, reliability, and data control throughout the entire lifecycle. Adopting this approach requires working with much more stringent standards and accelerates the adoption of tools that are still a work in progress in the automotive industry.
Concepts such as the digital thread, digital twins, real-time monitoring, and predictive quality analytics are no longer just promises—they have become requirements. It is no longer enough to simply manufacture well: one must be able to demonstrate, at any given moment, what has been manufactured, under what parameters, under what conditions, and with what objective evidence of compliance. This discipline, which is critical in the defense and aerospace sectors, can act as a catalyst to elevate the plant and its supplier network to a new technological level.
The real opportunity lies not only in manufacturing for the defense sector. It lies in the fact that the defense sector compels companies to adopt a culture of quality and technological excellence that also transforms the automotive industry—more sensors, greater software-hardware integration, enhanced process control, and expanded certification capabilities. At a time when European competitiveness increasingly depends on combining manufacturing, software, AI, and advanced quality—such as through a QMS—these types of projects can be much more than just a means of diversification.
If this evolution is managed well, defense can generate business; but, above all, it can provide a systematic approach.
Content written by:
Xavier Conesa Foix, CGO of Kapture.io QMS
With more than 30 years dedicated to industrial quality improvement, Xavier combines technical expertise and strategic vision to transform quality control and incident management in the plant.
