More than 600 legal entities from EU Member States and Norway will take part in the projects supported by almost €1 billion of EU funding. The consortia bring together small and medium sized enterprises, universities, research centres and large companies.
The projects are designed to meet priorities set out in the European Defence Readiness 2030 agenda and tackle capability gaps identified by Member States. They focus on air and missile defence, drones and anti drone systems, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and military mobility.
The signature of the agreements marks the start of major projects aimed at improving Europe’s air and missile defence capabilities, including BEAST which “aims to develop cutting edge technologies to detect, track, and neutralize aerial threats, thereby significantly strengthening the EU’s integrated air and missile defence systems”. GARUDA has also begun and “will develop next generation air combat systems incorporating innovative solutions to enhance both offensive and defensive air capabilities, contributing to comprehensive missile defence readiness”.
New projects have also been launched to advance a European drone defence. Small UAS is “focusing on the development of compact unmanned aerial systems for rapid tactical deployment”, while VANTAGE “will be able to perform various command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) tasks as well as kinetic strikes”.
Source: European Commission (press release).
