The International Defense Industry Exhibition was held in Kielce, over 300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Despite the seeming distance, the stark contrast between the calm of Kielce and the chaos of war felt particularly striking. Preparing for the exhibition, one could be acutely aware that just a few hours earlier, Russian bombs had fallen on Lviv, only a five-hour drive from the MSPO. This proximity to the conflict underscored the fragile boundary between normalcy and turmoil.

How has the conflict in Ukraine influenced the body armor industry? 

The event in Ukraine has made a big awareness around the world of how to look at their defense. You saw before that the defense was shortened for quite some years. There were discussions on, for example, main battle tanks that were becoming obsolete. Countries actually were getting rid of their main battle tanks。First, you see that countries look at: ‘Is my equipment still up to date and fit for those threats 。And secondly, ‘Is the kind of protection that we’re having still sufficient?’ Because, you see, the answer to those questions is that for the first time, countries were not having the right equipment. You see that the protection of the soldier is becoming extremely important again. And at the same time, the protection level that countries had was also insufficient.