Stendr Appoints Major General Henning-André Frantzen as Advisor

OSLO, Norway, June 12, 2026 – Stendr, a Norwegian defence technology company building an AI-native platform for the rapid development and deployment of defence software and hardware, today announced the appointment of Major General (Ret.) Henning-André Frantzen as Advisor. The appointment follows Stendr's recently announced $5.4 million pre-seed round, one of the largest in Nordic defence technology to date.

The nature of warfare has changed. Drones are cheap, autonomous, and increasingly ubiquitous, and defence systems built for a previous era struggle to keep pace. Stendr's first product, VAKR, is a passive, multi-modal sensor system that detects, tracks, and classifies aerial threats through a networked mesh of low-cost nodes, giving defenders affordable, scalable coverage and the information to act.

Frantzen brings exactly the kind of senior policy experience Stendr is building around. He served as Head of the Department of Defence Policy and Long Term Planning in the Norwegian Ministry of Defence from 2021 to 2025, capping a career in the Norwegian Armed Forces that spanned more than three decades. Across that career he held senior roles in defence policy, doctrine, and operations, and served as commander and rector of the Norwegian Defence University College. He holds a PhD in War Studies from King's College London.

As an advisor, Frantzen will support Stendr on defence policy, capability planning, and the long-term strategy behind VAKR. 

“As head of defence policy and long-term planning in the Ministry of Defence, I watched one equation keep getting worse: it costs less to attack than to defend. Stendr solves for this. A network of low-cost passive sensors that sees together and survives losses, built in Norway by a team with a proven record of building world-class companies. Capabilities we own, and coverage where today there is none,”

commented Major General (Ret.) Henning-André Frantzen, Advisor, Stendr.

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“Henning has spent his career on Europe’s hardest defence questions. He has seen the capability gaps from the inside, at the most senior level. That judgment is exactly what we need as we scale VAKR. We are proud to welcome him as an advisor,” said Aleksander Leonard Larsen, co-founder and CEO, Stendr.

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