For much of the history of electric vehicles, the battery has been treated as luggage. Engineers design a structure, find room for one of the heaviest components on board, then add more structure to hold it, protect it and cool it. Every kilogram of duplicated structure leaves less mass available for payload or energy storage.
At The Structural Battery Company (The SB Co.), we start from a different premise. Batteries must no longer be viewed as passive cargo. If energy storage can carry mechanical loads as well as deliver power, the battery starts doing two jobs at once.
From Dead Weight to Backbone
That is the thinking behind Drone Spine, which bonds cylindrical cells into a structural core that forms part of the backbone of a heavy-lift uncrewed aircraft. It combines structure, energy storage and high-voltage power distribution in a single subsystem developed for aircraft with a maximum take-off mass of 600 kg.
In February 2025, working with ISS Aerospace and Marshall on a project supported by the UK Government’s Defence and Security Accelerator, we demonstrated a 400-volt structural battery during tethered flight testing of a heavy-lift aircraft.
Removing duplicated battery housings and structure frees mass and internal volume for payload, energy storage, sensors or propulsion. That can improve range or carrying capacity, depending on how the platform is configured.
Heavy-lift drone performance depends on integration as well as propulsion. Improve that integration and you change what an aircraft can do.
Far More Than a Drone Technology
In the air, the potential applications are clear. Paramedics could receive blood, oxygen, defibrillators and trauma kits at remote incidents, bypassing blocked roads and difficult terrain. A drone able to deliver more fire retardant over a greater distance could help crews tackle a small wildfire before it becomes a major one. Farmers could spray, seed or fertilise larger areas between stops.
The same economics apply to cargo deliveries, where reducing airframe mass can create room for more paying payload.
In defence, logistics often decides the outcome. A drone that travels further or carries more could reduce the number of resupply missions, extend reach into contested areas and expose fewer personnel on dangerous routes. From my military experience, the value of equipment lies in what it enables people to achieve and how reliably it can be sustained.
But the principle is not confined to aircraft. Platforms that carry their own power and are constrained by mass or volume present similar opportunities.
At sea, autonomous surface vessels and uncrewed underwater vehicles are limited by endurance and the space their power systems consume. Integrating energy storage into their structures could give designers room for more sensors or more time on station, supporting persistent maritime patrol, ocean monitoring and seabed survey.
We are exploring these opportunities through Innovate UK’s Global Incubator Programme: Seabed to Space Dual-Use Technologies, delivered with COVE in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
On land, uncrewed ground vehicles face the same trade-off between power, mass and payload. A robotic platform for agriculture, forestry or frontline logistics that sheds structural mass could carry more, work for longer or travel further over rough ground.
Beyond the atmosphere, small satellites could house energy storage in their structural panels and chassis, creating more capable spacecraft for the same launch mass.
If the structure of a vehicle can store energy, you change what that vehicle can do.
North America Is Calling
As a UK-based technology start-up, we are finding the markets in both the US and Canada welcoming and compelling. In recent months, I have attended BlueTIDE in Newport, Rhode Island, and joined a UK delegation at the Manitoba-UK Defence Summit in Winnipeg. The appetite to explore new ideas, develop partnerships and discuss investment has been tangible.
The UK has many of the ingredients to lead in advanced technology, and it supports research and prototypes well. In our experience, the harder step comes when a demonstrated technology must become a qualified, repeatable product ready for customers.
For a deep technology business, the funding gap can become a vicious circle. In our experience, investors often ask for signed customer contracts before committing capital. Customers ask for a qualified product and evidence of reliable manufacture before signing. Yet qualification and manufacturing readiness are precisely what the investment must fund.
Without investment, the company cannot complete the work. Without completing the work, it cannot secure the contracts. Without contracts, it cannot attract investment.
This is called the “valley of death” for a very good reason. A promising technology can fail commercially before it has had the opportunity to prove its value to customers.
Breaking that circle requires a cultural shift from risk aversion to risk awareness. Investors, customers, manufacturers and government must understand the remaining risks, agree who is best placed to manage them, and commit resources against milestones that progressively reduce uncertainty. Requiring a start-up to secure firm orders before funding qualification can effectively ask its customers to carry the development risk.
Waiting for certainty carries its own risk: losing the technology, people and industrial capability to somewhere willing to back their development.
We’re Going Where the Market Takes Us
If the UK wants more of its innovations to become successful businesses, it needs to strengthen the bridge between demonstration and commercial deployment. That means connecting investment, qualification, manufacturing and customer adoption, with a clear understanding of who can manage each development risk.
The technologies that will shape autonomous aviation, maritime systems and the next generation of defence capability are being developed in Britain today. Their commercialisation creates opportunities for skilled employment, intellectual property and lasting industrial capability.
As for The SB Co., I write this article from the departures lounge at London Heathrow, on my way to the Defense Investment Forum in Newport, Rhode Island, where we always receive a warm welcome. We now also have our very own desk at the COVE offices in Nova Scotia.
We are going where the market takes us!
