The Shift to Asset Intelligence in Defence
Welcome to Corpora.ai’s September newsletter, as we bring a busy summer to a close we’re excited for what’s coming next. This month saw Corpora's Co-founder and CEO, Mel Morris CBE, take to the EY stage at their Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 retreat. Mel shared experiences from his own journey building and scaling companies, providing practical advice for the next generation of founders. Highlighting that ideas are easy, but scaling great ideas into profitable businesses isn’t. It was great to be alongside Britian’s entrepreneurial community, celebrating the stories that are driving UK growth.
We also announced our investment in Convert Technologies, a UK defence technology scale up. Through the partnership Convert gains access to our frontier research technology to accelerate their research and development and uncover new opportuntities. As Martin Boddy, Manging Director a Convert Technologies put it “Corpora’s capabilities have strengthened our defence-sector intelligence activities and significantly boosted team productivity”. It’s great to have them on board and we’re excited to support Convert as they continue to scale. Read more about Convert’s work and how their technology creates a new class of capabilities for the defence sector in the piece below written by Martin Boddy, Convert’s managing director, or click here to read the press release.
From Tracking to Intelligence: Knowing More About the Assets That Matter
By Martin Boddy, Managing Director at Convert Technologies.
Martin Boddy
In defence and other mission-critical environments, knowing where an asset is has always mattered. However, location alone only tells you half the story about an asset.
Where has the asset been? What conditions has it experienced? Has it been exposed to excessive temperature, humidity, shock or vibration, and will it still operate when it reaches its expiry date (SLED)? Also, crucially, who is authorised to see that information?
These questions point towards a broader transition from asset tracking to asset intelligence. This shift sits at the heart of the technology being developed by UK company Convert Technologies.
Giving physical assets a digital history
Convert’s technology brings together information about the location, environment, condition and history of physical assets.
Rather than relying on separate systems, periodic inspections or incomplete records, information can be captured automatically throughout an asset’s operational life. Location can be combined with environmental data such as temperature, humidity, shock, vibration and movement, creating a richer picture of what an asset has experienced in the field.
For defence organisations managing high-value and sensitive equipment, this has implications for inventory visibility, logistics, maintenance, supply-chain assurance and through-life management.
Convert’s technology moves the question beyond “Where is it?” towards “Where has it been, what has happened to it, and what does that tell us about what should happen next?”.
Asset Intelligence provided by Convert's technology
Intelligence requires security
Creating more detailed information about defence assets also creates an obvious challenge: that information must be protected.
Knowing the location, movement, condition or history of a sensitive asset does itself represent valuable intelligence. Security therefore needs to be integral to the technology rather than added afterwards.
Working with industry partners, tight controls are in place around data and who can access it. Information can be protected within secure environments, with access controlled according to role and clearance, helping protect particularly sensitive information while still allowing authorised teams to use the data they need.
The result is not simply connected assets, but a secure asset-intelligence ecosystem in which critical information can be shared without automatically making every piece of data available to every user.
Connecting intelligence across the organisation
This development towards intelligence ecosystems reflects a wider cross-sector convergence of advanced sensing, communications, Digital Twins, artificial intelligence and structured data.
The challenge is no longer simply generating or collecting more information. It is about identifying hidden connections, understanding what the information tells you and subsequently using it to make informed decisions. It is in this way, that access to Corpora’s research technology allows Convert Technologies to work smarter, investigate problems faster and identify potential solutions that would otherwise take considerably longer to find.
The objective is not to replace specialist knowledge, but to give specialists better access to the information they need, when they need it.
This capability also strengthens preparation for future threats and supports sovereign defence. By drawing together trusted held knowledge, operational evidence and emerging-threat research.
A future built around knowing
As sensing, communications and AI continue to develop, physical assets could increasingly carry a trusted digital history covering their location, condition, provenance and operational experience.
But in defence, knowing more must go hand-in-hand with controlling who is allowed to know it.
The opportunity is therefore bigger than tracking. It is about creating secure, trusted intelligence that helps authorised people understand what has happened to an asset, investigate why it happened and make better-informed decisions about what should happen next.
That is where tracking becomes intelligence and intelligence remains securely in the right hands.
That’s all from this months newsletter from Corpora, we hope you enjoyed reading and will join us next month!
Any questions or to get in touch with us contact [email protected].
