The military voice and interface for EU policies

“Weaving one’s way through the EU’s labyrinth of policies, agendas and players takes time, skill and a close knowledge of how things work in Brussels. These are factors that can easily elude a military or defence ministry accustomed to dealing with its own single national government and procedures,” said Emilio Fajardo, EDA’s Director for Industry, Synergies & Enablers.

Organising the voice of Europe’s militaries in Brussels has become crucial, particularly with the gathering pace of defence-related initiatives flowing from the EU’s doors. It’s why EDA utility as their interlocutor has grown in importance in recent years.

This is no casual or haphazard evolution. Having liaised with the EU for 15 years, the Agency is uniquely positioned to pinpoint when union policy affects national militaries, where the opportunities are for its ministries and how to best organise their voice to identify and defend their interests. Indeed, EDA’s role as the collective policy voice for Europe’s militaries was confirmed by the 2015 Council decision on EDA, which called on the Agency to “pursue coherence with other Union policies in so far as they have implications for defence capabilities”.

Strategically, this was reiterated by the EDA’s steering board of defence ministers in May 2017 when issuing their Long-Term Review and recommendations for the Agency’s future. The review strengthened the EDA’s position in three areas regarding capability development, including its role as the “facilitator towards the European Commission and EU Agencies” and as the ministries’ interface for “exploiting wider EU policies” to the benefit of defence.

That reaffirmation has positioned the Agency for new responsibilities vis-à-vis EU initiatives, while opening up opportunities to help its Member States exploit EU policy and funding to their advantage. For example, EDA has worked for years with the European Commission to identify how the EU’s massive Structural Funds for regional economic development could be better deployed toward dual-use technologies – i.e. civil capabilities with military spin-off benefits. It also began piloting projects in 2016 to test the technical and political feasibility of using EU funding directly for defence capability development and research. Those projects helped lay the groundwork for the EU’s forthcoming foray into defence capability development, which begins in 2021 with the launch of its European Defence Fund.

Interaction in all guises

While these are some of the more outwardly visible signs of the Agency’s interface role, what it does behind the scenes – and down in the weeds – is just as important. Organising the Member States’ military voice on highly technical issues, particularly where they intersect with civil authorities, is vital since those issues can directly impact security and defence missions.

This angles out in many directions such as the Agency’s on-going assessment of how the EU’s wide-ranging REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) directive affects the military. It also coordinates on behalf of its militaries with EU and international agencies on space-related policies, and does the same in the maritime domain. Here it closely liaises with EU authorities to strengthen Europe’s maritime surveillance while overseeing multi-nation R&D projects to help deliver the advanced capabilities that Europe’s navies need.

Energy is another sector where EDA functions as a direct link between its militaries and EU policy, most notably by administering on behalf of the Commission its Consultative Forum for Sustainable Energy in the Defence and Security Sector. Given that Europe’s armed forces spend billions of euros each year on energy, the savings potential is vast.

“The Consultation Forum has not only developed interesting ideas that should lead to concrete action for improving energy management and efficiency in the military and for enhancing the resilience of defence-related critical energy infrastructure, but it is also an excellent example of smooth and efficient collaboration between EDA and the European Commission,” says Jorge Domecq, the EDA’s Chief Executive.

It is the air domain, however, where the Agency’s interface role has been particularly intense. For example, it has been working with its national militaries since 2008 on a long-term endeavour known as the Military Airworthiness Authorities (MAWA) Forum. Its goal is to herd national military aviation and their various fleets of platforms – whether rotary, fixed-wing or unmanned – toward a common airworthiness approach.

This is harder than it sounds because the Military Aviation Authorities models and organisations are different and the military aviation regulations fragmented. Consequently, EDA is helping put in place equivalency and mutual recognition procedures among them. That also means working with civil authorities such as the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and others to identify where existing civil standards could be applied, partially or otherwise, to military aircraft.

This is in line with what has been done to develop the European Military Airworthiness Requirements (EMAR). “We first take the relevant civil regulation and if this is fit for purpose, we simply copy-paste to our domain. If not, then we have to find a bridging solution which is harmonised to the maximum extent possible,” explained Fajardo.

Though very technical and often slow-moving, the MAWA forum’s work has huge but positive cost, operational, regulatory and even industrial implications for Europe in the long run. EDA estimates that a considerable amount of costs will be avoided in the future by aligning national airworthiness procedures with one another and, where possible, with those of EASA.

In a similar vein, EDA has worked closely with its militaries to attain pre-diplomatic clearance for their aircraft when flying across borders within Europe. That, too, means liaising with a wide range of actors, both civil and military. Mutually recognised diplomatic clearance procedures are also leading to savings in time, money and effort for military operations.

EDA as air domain liaison

Not only does the air domain cut across all its members’ military forces, but it necessarily demands close interaction and coordination with civil authorities. Airspace is a confined asset and must be shared in a balanced way between its military and civil stakeholders, the latter of whom are leading today’s technological and policy efforts to exploit it more efficiently.

The example par excellence of the Agency’s interface role here is its close coordination with stakeholders involved in Single European Sky (SES), the Commission’s initiative to reform Europe’s air traffic management (ATM) system. There are many stakeholders, to say the least: Commission, EASA, Eurocontrol, SESAR Joint Undertaking and SESAR Deployment Manager, EUROCAE, national ATM authorities, NATO and many industrial players.

Launched in 2004, SES’s evolving bundle of regulatory, operational and technological changes will impinge on Europe’s militaries, which will have to adapt their own air traffic procedures, equipment and platforms to function smoothly within the modernisation of Europe’s air traffic management system and a more dynamic airspace management. Even if SES will bring some opportunities for military aviation, the militaries’ collective cost for complying with the upcoming SES related technical solutions lies between 4 and 11 billion euros.

EDA’s remit here is to facilitate the coordination of the military to defend their operational needs within SES and, “to ensure that military aviation will continue to provide and further improve, effective security and defence in Europe in the changing context of the civil aviation sector”, said Christophe Vivier, who leads EDA’s unit dealing with SES. “So far, we have achieved good results: the military is well integrated into the SES landscape and considered a key partner, since security and defence are a shared responsibility”.

Finding funds for its members

One way the Agency has mitigated the cost of SES for Europe’s militaries has been to winkle out funds from the EU for them. “We’ve received EU funding of around €93 million to help upgrade national military ground infrastructures contributing to the modernisation of the ATM system in the framework of SESAR deployment,” said Vivier.

Though that amount is less than 5% of what the EU has given to the commercial and ATM sectors, it is a promising development in that the military has never before received money from the Commission for this kind of upgrade work. “Not all our Ministries of Defence are aware of the possibilities for getting funds from the EU or how to propose projects, which is why we are working with them to secure the funding by supporting them in identifying collaborative projects,” he observed.

The €93 million covers only the ground segment of military ATM regarding Europe’s civil ATM network, but it is a crucial segment of work. The future ATM system will be based on information exchanges between all stakeholders – including the military – through ‘SWIM’, SES’s System-Wide Information Management solution, with everything in the air and on the ground related to aviation connected to it.

This  is  raising  a  number  of  cyber-security  issues.  “We  have  to  make  sure  SWIM  is  very  robust  and  resilient  enough  to  protect  confidentiality,  meaning  we  might  need  to  develop  a  specific  interface  because  of  the  security levels required by the military versus civil security users,” observed Vivier.

There are other areas as well where military operations and capability goals intersect with SES. The integration alongside civil air traffic of military remotely piloted aircraft systems, more commonly known as drones, is a case in point.

“We are looking at the whole range of air integration issues,” he said, adding that three technical enablers – autonomy, drone C2 links and detect-and-avoid systems – are crucial for Europe’s strategic autonomy. “A drone has to be integrated with Europe’s civil ATM structure thanks to its airworthiness certificate and appropriate safety mitigation measures, particularly for those flying at medium altitude for long periods.”

How and when militaries use airspace for drones en-route flights is another issue vis-à-vis civil aviation authorities. “Segregated airspace in such a case might negatively impact the performance of the ATM network. We think the solution would be for them to support our needs for non-segregated space so our platforms can fly with more flexibility while mitigating this problem,” said Vivier.

“To do so as soon as possible, we are looking for ways to fly at different hours or different flight routes that could accommodate both sides on this issue. The overall goal is to start flying our platforms by 2025 outside segregated but controlled areas where all traffic is known by ATM authorities. Then, after 2030, the military could fly its drones in all airspace, with no restrictions, he concluded.