$EOS.AX The Netherlands and EOS signed a letter of intent this week, announced by the Dutch Ministry of Defence on 24 September. Both parties intend to develop the High Energy Laser into a full weapon system and to examine setting up a production site with a Dutch-led European supply chain. EOS intends in principle to carry out development and production in the Netherlands, which the ministry says makes the Netherlands EOS's European base. If the further development succeeds, the Netherlands intends to acquire a number of laser systems. State Secretary Derk Boswijk gave more detail in a radio interview the same morning. He described the arrangement as the Netherlands placing a fairly substantial order in exchange for EOS coming to the Netherlands, producing there and doing the knowledge development locally. So this is explicitly industrial policy as much as procurement. His reasoning is the cost asymmetry. He pointed to the opening days of the conflict between the US and Iran, where Patriot interceptors costing hundreds of thousands to a million each were fired at drones worth tens of thousands. On the technology he said it is no longer a thing of the future, the technology exists and it works. He was also clear it is not a silver bullet, and that Patriots, counter-drone systems and lasers will operate alongside each other. Asked whether there is a risk that EOS fails to develop the weapon properly, he said they have confidence in its potential, because they have already seen the prototype. He noted the prototype has a much weaker capability than the planned system and is already achieving impressive results. That is what convinced them the technology belongs to the future of air defence. On capability he said the system could defeat drone swarms and penetrate one and a half to two centimetres of plate steel. On cost, the system itself is roughly as expensive as a traditional air defence system, with the saving coming from ammunition rather than acquisition. Underneath it all is strategic autonomy. Boswijk called air defence a sector where Europe is heavily dependent on suppliers from outside Europe, and said that if the Netherlands gets this right, it could make other countries dependent on it instead.