Manager of European Defence Research

From its first tenuous contacts in 2004 with industry, national armaments officials and defence research institutes to involve them in its R&D feasibility studies, EDA has established itself as an efficient manager and implementer of unprecedented collaborative defence research programmes funded by the European Commission.

“We have demonstrated that centrally-funded EU defence research is possible,” says Denis Roger, who served as EDA Director for European Synergies and Innovation from May 2014 to April 2019. Roger helped position the Agency for its future overseer role in EU defence research. “That is a major achievement.”

One of the primary reasons behind the Agency’s creation 15 years ago was to encourage more cross-border defence R&D and capabilities among its Member States. The goals were, as they remain today, to foster innovation, promote interoperability and common requirements among national militaries across Europe and encourage the collaborative planning, development and acquisition of assets and capabilities to generate efficiencies for all.

Ups and downs

As with any entity blazing new ground, the Agency had its ups and downs over the years in pursuit of those goals.

Some of its ambitions for getting national research to converge in specific areas for standardised kit were premature and never took off. By contrast, others are now leading to common standards or approaches to kit such as soldier systems and field hospitals, certification methods for military aircraft or manufacturing processes for weaponry such as additive manufacturing (see box – page 22).

One constraint has been EDA’s own research budget, which has always been tiny. But that has also forced the Agency to carefully choose only those topics for study or development whose chances are highest for follow-on action by the Member States or the EU. These have ranged from small-scale efforts such as modular parts for in-theatre bio-detection systems to technical studies for Europe’s next-generation large-body military drone.

A good example is the Agency’s self-financed pair of studies, known as STASS I and II, to investigate common functions and kit that go into soldier systems: power sources, software and electronics, voice and data communications, sensors and so on. The studies’ results sparked enough interest among their participating nations for the European Commission to include it among the 2017 call for proposals of its Preparatory Action on Defence Research (the “GOSSRA” project) for expanded development.

Indeed, the value of defence research at European level is finally coming into its own with the EU’s planned creation, starting in 2021, of a fully-fledged European Defence Fund (EDF). It will be split into two so-called windows. One will focus on defence capability development, with the Commission co-funding projects at various rates with national capitals. The other window will support defence R&D projects at 100% from the EU’s next 2021-2027 “Horizon Europe” general research budget, with about €500 million set aside each year for that purpose.

Taking into account the lessons learnt from the Preparatory Action on Defence Research (PADR), it would be useful if EDA gains a central role in managing the EDF’s research projects as they get off the ground in 2021. Interest across Europe’s defence community in understanding how this will work is very strong, as evidenced by the 500-strong crowd that gathered in Bucharest in late March for a defence R&T conference co-organised by the Agency and the EU’s Romanian Presidency.

From Pilot Project to EU Defence Research Programme

Though the EDF and its objectives are now taken for granted, the notion of using EU money to directly finance defence research and capabilities was by no means a given, even just a few years ago.

To get there, it was deemed necessary to first test the concept in the form of a small EU-funded pilot project.

“When I first arrived at the Agency in 2014 the pilot project was still a very fuzzy idea, and a controversial one,” said Denis Roger. “Very few people thought it would be feasible and even the Commission was not fully convinced it would fly. We heard all kinds of arguments against it: legally, EU-funded defence research was not allowed; national capitals would never accept it because that was their prerogative; the Commission had no expertise in the sector, and so on.”

But at the initiative of the European Parliament, and working closely with the Agency, the Commission soldiered on. It granted a tiny budget in 2015 of €1.4 million for three pilot projects, each to be implemented by EDA and completed by the end of 2018.

To say that was a challenge for the Agency is putting it mildly.

“The fact that EDA was the implementing body for the pilot projects was a feather in its cap, but being a small Agency, it had to do fast turn-around work,” observed Dirk Tielbuerger, EDA’s Head of Unit in charge of PADR. “Each day in the run-up to the projects’ launch we bumped into new obstacles. Could we copy-paste the EU’s Horizon 2020 rules to the defence sector? What was the right level of detail for the technical requirements? Whose IPR [intellectual property rights] rules would apply? How to manage each project’s market uptake?”

Fortunately, one of the Agency’s big advantages is its large and well-established network of defence ministry contacts at all levels – technical, R&D, acquisition, testing – and its contacts with industry. “That was a major asset in enabling us to bring the projects to completion on time,” he said.

The pilot project’s success led to the Commission’s next defence research decision: to expand the initiative into the formal three-year PADR. Launched in May 2017 with a budget of €90 million, the action is financing a clutch of innovative research efforts, from reconfigurable system-on-a-chip technology and high-power laser effectors to interoperability standards for unmanned military systems and methods for achieving electromagnetic spectrum dominance. PADR will also support research into future disruptive defence technologies.

Again, speed of reaction on the Agency’s part was crucial. “The delegation of PADR by the Commission to EDA was in May 2017. We published its first call the next month and signed the first grant agreement in December 2017. That is lightning fast by most defence standards,” said Tielbuerger.

Ultimately, however, it was the close, near-daily coordination between the Commission and the Agency that enabled the programme to move ahead so quickly.

“I think the most important lesson learnt during the Preparatory Action was the need for really strong cooperation between the EDA and the Commission,” said EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq. “The Commission has the right-of-initiative, can mobilise a lot of money and makes things move with an effective decision-making process. On EDA’s side, it knows all the defence details: project management, harmonisation of views across its Ministries of Defence, how to prioritise the technical goals and its cross-sectoral network of experts. The respective strengths and weakness of the two organisations were complementary, and that is the model for the future,” he observed.