Canberra, Australia — The inaugural Australian Defense Tech Hackathon wrapped up on 8 February 2026, and Panop is proud to have cohosted and co-originated an event that brought over 200 participants, mentors, and visitors together at the UNSW Canberra City Campus to tackle real defence and security challenges facing Australia and its allies.
The idea for bringing the hackathon to Australia was jointly developed by Panop founder Rhys Kissell and European Defense Tech Hub co-founder Benjamin Wolba while the two were in Ukraine — a fitting origin story for an event built around operational urgency and front-line relevance. The initiative was pitched to UNSW Canberra and Beaten Zone Ventures, with both organisations stepping in as cohosts. The event was further supported by sponsors and partners including Advent Atum, GDI Strategies, Innovation Central Canberra, Canberra Innovation Network, and Cognitive Advantage.
Over 48 hours, twenty-one teams worked through 17 challenge statements spanning OSINT, computer vision and edge AI, unmanned and autonomous systems, electronic warfare, modular sensors, and hypersonics and missile defence. Many teams gravitated toward drone and counter-drone technology. Challenge statements were sourced from Australian partners and adapted from a database of challenges drawn from NATO, the EU, and Ukraine, grounding the event in the operational realities of current and future conflict.
More than 50 mentors — including serving military personnel from Australia and the United States, experienced industry leaders, and leading academics — volunteered their weekends to support the teams, with several pulling all-nighters alongside participants. A panel of seven judges with deep Defence and industry backgrounds, representing Ukraine, the US, the UK, and Australia, selected the winning projects.
The top three teams were:
- Crowd Shield — a crowd-sourced defence system to identify, classify, and neutralise unauthorised drone activities.
- HPM and Shielding Solutions — a design for HPM/EM shielded systems manufacturable in small, distributed labs.
- Circinus — a low-cost integrated standalone platform for remote threat detection and categorisation.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, addressed the event, providing firsthand context on the challenges of current and future warfare.
The Australian edition follows a proven European model. EDTH has been running hackathons across Europe for 18 months, with events in Sweden, Germany, the UK, Estonia, Greece, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Slovakia already on the lineup for the first half of 2026. Panop remains committed to equipping those who defend democracy with a decisive technological advantage. Events like ADTH are essential to building the sovereign industrial base and allied innovation networks that the modern threat environment demands.
Media enquiries: media@panop.ai