Brave & Bellicose*

1143. 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 is a showcase of modern Portuguese military technology: the companies, engineers and labs building defense tech in Portugal today, in one place, 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 sea is already 18 times its land. Its continental shelf claim, pending at the UN since 2009, would extend the seabed under Portuguese jurisdiction to more than 40 times its land, 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. Most of that work stays invisible outside Portugal.

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 line comes 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:

Four and a half centuries later "Sou da forte Europa belicosa" is the motto of Base Aérea n.º 8 in Ovar, Portugal, 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.