Arsenale
Those who produce, defend. Those who know how much they can produce, decide.
In April 2026 the European Commissioner for Defense told Parliament that Russia produces four million artillery shells a year and the Union two (source). Two years earlier Brussels was declaring a production capacity three times the real one, and it was not lying: it did not know (source). Europe's defense industrial base is made of more than twenty-five hundred small and medium enterprises that, by the Commission's own admission, work "on a national basis, with limited cooperation" (source). In Italy they are eighty percent of the sector (source). Each one knows how much it can produce. Nobody knows how much they can produce together.
It is not a money problem. Readiness 2030 puts eight hundred billion on the table (source); when the orders arrive, the factories get built, and Rheinmetall built one for three hundred and fifty thousand shells a year in fifteen months (source). It is a visibility problem. Today, if a buyer asks a supply chain how many units it can deliver in ninety days and which foreign components it depends on, the answer arrives in weeks, by email, on spreadsheets that are already old by the time they are read. The EDIP regulation asks for proof that non-EU components stay under thirty-five percent (source); the NATO Secretary General talks about a defense industrial revolution; but a mobilization plan without a map is a plan built on trust.
Europe has invested in the capacity to produce. It has not yet invested in the capacity to know how much it can produce.
| 4 M / 2 M | artillery shells a year: Russia, European Union |
| SMEs in the European defense industrial base | |
| of the Italian sector is made of SMEs | |
| on the table with Readiness 2030 | |
| the cap on non-EU components EDIP asks companies to prove |
What we are building
Arsenale is a federated system that makes the production capacity of a supply chain visible, in real time and in a verifiable way, one company at a time, without any company handing its data to any other.
The Node sits inside the plant, even cut off from the network, connected to the ERP, to the shop floor system and to quality. It holds the company's knowledge and rules and answers one class of question only: what can I produce, in how much time, with which dependencies, and what I do not know. Every answer has its source and its log, compatible with the quality systems the company already maintains.
The Network connects the nodes under each one's rules. The supplier sees the orders, the buyer sees the status, neither sees the other's data. A node shuts down when the company decides to shut it down, and the knowledge stays with the company.
The Map is what those entitled to see it see: the aggregated capacity of a supply chain, the single-source breaking points, the qualifications on hold, the components that come from the wrong country. In one hour, not in three weeks.
The artificial intelligence model running inside it is replaceable, today and five years from now. The map is not. That is why the Node specification is public: which data a node exposes, which it does not, and how nodes talk to each other. Whoever adopts it strengthens the network, whoever they are.
Why it is Italian, and why now
The first industrial production line in history was the Arsenale of Venice: one galley a day, three centuries before Ford. The Republic's deterrent was not the fleet, it was the capacity to build it. The map of how much a country can produce is strategic information in itself, and it has to stay in the country, with inspectable code and nodes owned by the companies. This is not an opinion about geopolitics: it is a security requirement, and the Italian Ministry's "AI and Defense 2026" strategy says the same thing in other words when it asks for modular, open systems with no lock-in, and an ecosystem of mid-sized firms alongside the large contractors (source).
What we do, what we do not do
We do the factory, not the battlefield.
- Capacity
- Supply chain
- Data
- Rules
- Targeting
- Weapon systems
- Operational decisions
The first Node works on a factory that exists only on paper, Vertesa, with invented data and real problems: you can try it, and you can read how it answers when it does not know.
If you produce in the supply chain
If you run a company that produces for defense and you want to be among the first nodes, write to us. We are not asking for your data: we are asking for an hour to understand how things work at your plant.
Direct questions
Does Arsenale collect company data?
No. The Node sits inside the plant, even cut off from the network, and the data stays there. The Network connects the nodes under each one's rules: the supplier sees the orders, the buyer sees the status, neither sees the other's data.
Do you need a network connection?
To run the Node, no: it sits inside the plant even when cut off from the network, connected to the ERP, to the shop floor system and to quality. A connection is needed only when the company decides to expose a view to a buyer or to an authority, and that request stays in the log.
Who owns the Node?
The company. A node shuts down when the company decides to shut it down, and the knowledge stays with the company. The specification of which data a node exposes and which it does not is public; the engine that computes, governs and logs is Yempik's.
Does Arsenale do targeting or weapon systems?
No. We do the factory, not the battlefield: no targeting, no weapon systems, no operational decisions. Capacity, supply chain, data, rules.
- Arsenale: the manifesto and the first node
- The map cannot live in Denver
- European rearmament is won in the factory, not at the front
- The invisible Arsenal, the seven-part series
Arsenale is a project by Yempik, Rome. Open Node specification, version 0.1. The Node engine and the governance layer are Yempik's. Manifesto version: 1.