Radionor Communications: combat-proven radios, standards apart

Analysis as of 9 January 2026.

Trondheim is better known for its university than for its arms industry, which is rather the point of Radionor Communications AS. Founded in 2000 by RF engineer Atle Sægrov, the firm spent two decades turning phased-array theory from NTNU's orbit into a line of tactical broadband radios — the CRE2 family — that steer digitally formed, needle-thin beams in C-band across distances measured in tens of kilometres, and in some configurations far beyond. The beam is the argument: concentrate the signal and an adversary struggles to find it, let alone drown it. At least 15 NATO-aligned defence customers now field the equipment, Ukrainian forces have kept it working under sustained Russian electronic attack, and in 2025 Norway's defence materiel agency converted field trials into a multi-year framework contract worth NOK 110 million.

What makes the company a sovereignty story rather than merely a radio story is where nothing comes from. Every stage of design and production sits in Norway, and the product line carries an explicit "No ITAR/EAR" designation — no US-controlled components, hence no Washington veto over who may buy, deploy or upgrade the kit. The radios also embed a positioning function that lets networked units locate one another when satellite navigation is jammed or spoofed, a quiet answer to one of Europe's most-cited dependencies. A service centre now being established in Kyiv extends that posture to the one place where it is tested daily.

The institutional footprint is real but thin. Under the European Defence Fund's 2021 SME call, Radionor joined ALTISS, a swarming-UAV surveillance project with partners in France, Belgium and Hungary; the consortium drew roughly €3.2 million in EU money against a budget near €3.86 million, of which Radionor's own grant came to €561,421. Since 2019 the company has supplied long-range modules to Rohde & Schwarz under a strategic partnership, giving a German prime an all-European answer to American datalinks. At home, Norway's Program Mime and the Kongsberg-led THOR radio effort orbit the same technology base. Intellectual property anchors the position: a European patent granted in 2021 (EP2710400B1, priority date 2011, with a US twin) covers the fusion of communications and positioning, a third-party count tallies some 33 filings worldwide, and no filing is disclosed in China.

Yet the same profile that reads as strength from one angle reads as exposure from another. Radionor's waveform is proprietary: it speaks IP at the network layer, but it is not an ESSOR waveform and no STANAG certification is in evidence, so a coalition wanting its links needs Radionor boxes at both ends or gateways in between. The radios protect against jamming but do not jam back — the combined communications-and-attack systems Europe is now funding through projects like AI-WASP are not expected before roughly 2028. Reaching truly strategic ranges still means falling back on HF or satellite links. And on the finance side, the ledger of EU sovereignty instruments is blank: no STEP Seal, no SAFE lending, no EIB defence facility — and expanding production to meet surge demand is put at some millions of euros and one to two years should large orders land.

Two questions hang over the file. The first is the standards dilemma. If Radionor migrates toward common European waveforms, it trades away part of the proprietary edge on which its patents rest; if it stays apart, its addressable market in coalition operations stays bounded by the gateway workaround. Which side of that trade the company chooses — and whether ESSOR-era procurement even leaves it a choice — is unresolved in the public record. The second is capital. A founder-led SME with no EU financing markers may soon face demand shaped by common procurement programmes sized for primes. Whether a small firm's own resources can fund that scale-up, or whether the price of growth is the very independence that makes Radionor eligible under Europe's sovereignty rules, the sources do not yet say.