The European Commission has adopted the fifth annual work programme of the The European Defence Fund (EDF), allocating over €1 billion for collaborative defence research and development projects.
This is additional funding to support the development of critical defence technologies and capabilities, with around €100 million each for areas such as land warfare, space, air and naval operations, as well as energy sustainability and the green transition.
More than €40 million of EU funding is also being allocated for research and development activities in strategic areas such as naval and underwater operations, cyberspace operations, simulation and training, etc.
9 calls for proposals are being launched on 31 topics, which will pave the way for a wide range of enabling technologies related to autonomous triage and evacuation of wounded personnel, a multifunctional information dissemination system, human-artificial intelligence dialogue, chips for defence applications, etc.
The European Defence Fund, with a budget of around €7.3 billion for the period 2021-2027, is the Commission's instrument for supporting defence research and development. Without replacing the efforts of Member States, it encourages cooperation between companies of all sizes and research actors across the EU and Norway (as an associated country).