A showcase of modern Portuguese military technology to defend Europe.
Portugal, MMXXVI1143. The year Portugal became a kingdom, at the Treaty of Zamora. Its border with Spain was set in 1297 and has barely moved in more than 700 years. It's often called the oldest border in Europe.This website brings together the companies, engineers and labs building defense technology in Portugal today, so the people who need them can find them.
For decades Europe let someone else worry about its defense. That time is over. The continent has to build, buy and field its own capability again, and it has to do it quickly.
Portugal's waters already cover 18 times its land area. Its continental shelf claim, pending at the UN since 2009, would extend the seabed under Portuguese jurisdiction to more than 40 times its land area, nearly the size of the whole EU.Portugal can help more than most people think. Portuguese teams are shipping drones, autonomous vessels, sensors, satellites and secure networks right now, and most of that work is still invisible outside the country.
We put it in front of the people who need it: armed forces and procurement teams looking for capability, investors looking for the next defense company, and engineers looking for work that matters.
The motto is a line from Os Lusíadas, Luís de Camões' 1572 epic and the poem every Portuguese kid reads in school. It tells how, in 1498, Vasco da Gama's fleet anchored off the Island of Mozambique on its way to India. The governor of the islands came aboard and asked where they were coming from. Vasco da Gama answered through an interpreter:
forte (for-tuh), from the Latin fortis
Strong, and above all brave. In Camões' Portuguese it meant strength of heart as much as strength of arm. It's the same fortis as in fortes fortuna adiuvat: fortune favors the brave. Today nobody lives it like Ukraine. "Be brave like Ukraine" became the country's motto in 2022, and by holding the line for all of us, Ukrainians have become the most European of all.
belicosa (beh-lee-kaw-zuh), from the Latin bellicosus, from bellum, war
Ready and willing to fight. Camões meant it as praise: a people who knew war and didn't flinch from it. The word describes character, the temper of a whole people, where its cousin bélico only describes the things of war. In modern English it carries an edge of aggression, and we keep that edge on purpose: deterrence only works when the other side believes you'll fight.
Also, four and a half centuries later, "Sou da forte Europa belicosa" is the motto of Portuguese Air Base number 8, in Ovar, built during the Cold War to host and support NATO aircraft. We took it as ours. Brave is who we are. Bellicose is being ready to prove it. Portugal needs to build again, and Europe needs to stand up for what is right, once again.
"I'm from brave and bellicose Europe."
If you build defense technology in Portugal, we want to showcase it here. Tell us what you make, who it protects and how it works.