Risk, robustness and resilience for autonomous vehicles in military operations

Closed

Code: 35963 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-LS-RA-SI-CYBER-3RAV-STEP | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

Unmanned vehicles (UxV) such as drones, ground vehicles, and surface/underwater vessels are bound to become an integral part of military operations. From a security perspective, this poses various new challenges that need to be properly resolved to deploy these vehicles in real missions and exploit their full potential.

The cyber-physical nature of UxVs affects security in various way. It brings the attack surface of a typical computer (network) into a new context where successful cyber-attacks can have serious consequences in the physical world, while imposing new physical and operational constraints on available and well-established cyber security controls. New attack vectors emerge, and threat models need to be revised.

Designing appropriate security controls for UxVs requires capabilities to identify and evaluate complex trade-offs between data protection, cybersecurity and assured autonomy to best support a mission. Automating parts of the analysis process is necessary to handle the complexity of this task, including processing large amount of data, reducing costs and risks associated with testing physical systems, and producing structured and traceable documentation.

Existing security and safety approaches may be tailored to suit UxVs so that they can be made both secure and robust against well-known deliberate and accidental threats, however new solutions are expected. An additional challenge is whether UxVs can be made resilient in the sense that they can still react in a way that minimises the consequences, and possibly allows for alternative ways to complete the mission autonomously, in the presence of a successful cyber-attack.

Exchange Scheme Third Call for Proposals (oc3-2025-TES-01)

Closed

Code: 35961 | Identifier Code: ENFIELD | Programme name: 20613 | Start submission calls: 15/02/2025 | End submission calls: 14/04/2025

The ENFIELD – Exchange Scheme Open Call aims to attract the top-level researchers to conduct fundamental research in the fields of Green AI, Adaptive AI, Humancentric AI, and Trustworthy AI. These research activities are focused on addressing specific scientific and technological challenges within the domains of energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and space.

EIT Call for Proposals 2025 for a new EIT Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) on Water, Marine and Maritime Sectors and Ecosystems (‘Water’)

Closed

Code: 35959 | Identifier Code: HORIZON-EIT-2025 | Programme name: 2939 | Sub-program: European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) | Start submission calls: 20/02/2025 | End submission calls: 17/06/2025

The EIT Community is characterised by a focus on results and on achieving long-lasting impact in the way the EU approaches and manages innovation. It is therefore critical that the KIC demonstrates substantial impact at the socioeconomic level over time, and significant progress towards achieving its mission and objectives. The KIC should harvest intellectual, human, material and financial resources to create valuable outputs such as innovation communities, high quality curricula, start-ups, innovative products, services, technologies, through which it develops and sustains value-added business, enhances competencies necessary for innovation and entrepreneurship, and for developing solutions to major societal challenges.

A KIC is expected to create the following impacts:

• technological/economic/innovation impact by influencing the creation and growth of companies, as well as the creation and deployment at scale of new innovative solutions to address the global challenges, creating direct and indirect jobs and mobilising additional public and private investments;
• educational impact by strengthening human capital in research and innovation, enhancing innovative and entrepreneurial skills both at individual and organisational levels and fostering the creation and diffusion of knowledge and innovation openly within society;
• societal impact, including the impact derived by the delivery of systematic solutions within and beyond the EIT Community, also through Cross-KIC activities, by addressing EU policy priorities in the Water, Marine and Maritime Sectors and Ecosystems (‘Water’) through innovative solutions, engagement with citizens and end-users and by strengthening the uptake of innovative solutions in these areas in society.

Participation of Cypriot Enterprises in Meetings Abroad to attract investments – Meet Investors Travel Grants (02/2025)

Closed

Code: 35954 | Identifier Code: MEET INVESTORS/0225 | Programme name: 2941 | Start submission calls: 17/02/2025 | End submission calls: 15/12/2025

The Call is open to innovative enterprises seeking to attract private investment to further develop their enterprise.

Open call for cascade grants of NEBA Alliance

Closed

Code: 35952 | Identifier Code: NEBA Alliance | Programme name: 20613 | Start submission calls: 28/02/2025 | End submission calls: 05/05/2025

The NEBA Alliance is a project consortium funded by the European Commission. The goal of the Alliance is to codesign the foundation of a long-lasting European network of NEB Academy Hubs, which can reach workers and stakeholders across all EU countries and offer meaningful trainings and knowledge transfer and form the NEB Academy. NEB Academy’s long-term mission is to train, upskill, and reskill the construction ecosystem to achieve a carbon neutral building sectorand a beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive transformation of the built environment.

Full-size demonstrators for next generation soldier systems

Closed

Code: 35949 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-DA-PROTMOB-SS | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

This call topic aims to develop the next-generation dismounted soldier system (NGDSS), finding synergies with existing topical EDF projects’ concepts and developments through an updated open-source architecture, as well as NATO efforts and the development of individual and networking capabilities.

Future modular multifunctional land platforms and enabling technologies, including green technologies

Closed

Code: 35947 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-DA-GROUND-FM2LP | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

This topic aims to further develop the technologies required to enhance the performance and effectiveness of armoured land platform systems in high-intensity operations, making them more capable, modular, multifunctional and energy efficient by maximising synergies, standardisation and interoperability of armoured land vehicle families.

Collaborative air combat

Closed

Code: 35945 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-DA-AIR-CAC | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

Today’s EU Member States’ and EDF Associated Countries’ air forces are built on a wide variety of heterogeneous systems. This diversity poses the challenge of interoperability at functional, software and hardware levels. With the plausible introduction of unmanned systems into air combat, future interoperability require much deeper networking, which could be provided by a new generation of tactical data links.

The overall objective is to jointly develop an EU perspective to enable EU Member States and EDF Associated Countries to harmonise, standardise and share processes and tools to efficiently operate, in the medium to long term, joint air combat capabilities combining future air combat systems, manned or unmanned platforms, legacy platforms and their evolution, including sensors and effectors.

Drone-based affordable mass munitions

Closed

Code: 35943 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-DA-SI-GROUND-DAMM | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

As it is related to EUDIS, and in addition to the development activities, this call topic aims to support innovation opportunities and enable small companies to demonstrate innovative technologies relevant to drone-based affordable mass munitions and receive limited acceleration support. To achieve this objective, financial support to third parties (FSTP, i.e., cascade funding) is included as a mandatory part of the grant. This should increase the opportunities for various smaller actors, including those not previously active in the defence sector, to adapt innovative technologies for drone-based affordable mass munitions and to identify potential business opportunities in the defence sector.

Privacy-preserving human-AI dialogue systems – Participation in a technological challenge

Closed

Code: 35941 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-LS-RA-CHALLENGE-DIGIT-HAIDP-STEP | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

The fast progress of generative artificial intelligence (AI), large language models and dialogue systems (chatbots) paves the way towards high impact defence applications in various domains such as intelligence, strategic planning, tactical operations, and life-cycle support. However, these technologies are still prone to errors, leading them in particular to present false or misleading information as fact (hallucinations). They should also be adapted to defence-specific needs. There is therefore a need for further research to develop high-performance human-AI dialogue systems for defence.

Privacy-preserving human-AI dialogue systems – Organisation of a technological challenge

Closed

Code: 35939 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-LS-RA-CHALLENGE-DIGIT-HAIDO | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

Human-AI dialogue systems offer impressive results but are still prone to errors of various types. Moreover, there is no established metric to measure system performances. In order to ensure trustworthiness and steer progress, these systems should be submitted to common tests using shared data and clear metrics and protocols.

The goal of this call topic is thus to set up a testing environment and organise a technological challenge to evaluate the performances of such systems for defence use cases, including their abilities to manage classified information and to justify their answers. The challenge should be open to research teams supported through another call topic (EDF-2025-LS-RA-CHALLENGE-DIGIT-HAIDP) and possibly by other sources of funding. Representative defence users should be involved to contribute to the definition of the use cases and associated data, to test the demonstrators produced by the participating teams, and to provide feedback.

Non-thematic development actions by SMEs

Closed

Code: 35937 | Identifier Code: EDF-2025-LS-DA-SME-NT | Programme name: 3564 | Start submission calls: 18/02/2025 | End submission calls: 16/10/2025

This call topic encourages the driving role of innovative SMEs to turn technology and research results into defence products in a fast and cost-efficient way, possibly by adapting technologies from civil applications or addressing hybrid warfare.