The European Defence Agency today signed the first three contracts under its R&T Joint Investment Programme on Force Protection (JIP-FP).
These contracts represent a total investment of 13.1 million Euros, including co-funding from industry, and were selected from proposals worth more than 100 million Euros received through a call for projects issued in May 2007.
The three successful projects aim at the development of individual protective armour, a multi-sensor anti-sniper system and stand off detection of CBRNE devices. Each of them will be sustained by a highly skilled pan-European industrial consortium including SMEs, research centres and universities. More detailed information on the selected projects and contractors is attached.
"The EDA is delighted that the first contracts under the JIP have been awarded barely six months after the programme was officially launched,” said EDA R&T Director Bertrand de Cordoue. “This demonstrates that the innovative model of the programme can make a real difference to promoting collaboration in European defence R&T."
This JIP-FP initiative, dedicated to technologies for protecting deployed armed forces against threats such as snipers, booby traps or improvised bombs, was agreed one year ago at a ministerial meeting of the EDA Steering Board with a budget totalling 55 million Euros over three years. The formal Programme Arrangement was signed by the 20 contributing Member States last May.
Among the ground-breaking management rules, designed to overcome some of the drawbacks of traditional R&T collaboration in defence, are: Opting out, to allow Member States which are not interested to withdraw from the programme; Competition among consortia of research entities from all contributing Member States (cMS); Access to the programme outputs granted to all cMS; Selection of projects not based on strict industrial return criteria for cMS; and Management of the programme by a Committee where representation of each cMS is weighted according to its contribution to the programme budget.
The 20 cMS are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
Resources
JIP-FP Press Briefing
Background Note on Force Protection