Protection of personnel, systems and infrastructure
Force protection and mobility at all levels minimises losses to hostile action while ensuring security of supply for the forces on the battlefield*. Therefore, optimising the best protection of personnel, systems and infrastructure in all situations and circumstances against existing and future threats is a priority for Defence.
Protective solutions may relate to collective platforms or infrastructure, but also to the individual soldier. Furthermore, the innovative aspects of these solutions may relate to the technical solution itself, and/or to the threat against which it offers protection, and/or testing methods.
Therefore, Research Area 08 is quite elaborate, and so it covers protection against threats that may or may not relate to research Area 07 (Advanced Weapon Systems). A non-exhaustive summary follows below for both cases.
Protection against threats related to Research Area 07 (Advanced Weapon Systems)
Examples include:
– Research on physio-pathological mechanisms caused by non- or less-lethal arms
– Countermeasures against advanced/improved ballistic weapons/ammunitions
– Directed Energy Weapons (DEW): detection and prevention
– Assessment of the non-lethality of electromagnetic weapons or wideband radar
– Systems vulnerability and their protection against electromagnetic weapons
– Protection against advanced energetic materials
Protection against other threats
Examples include:
– Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)
– Countermeasures against naval mines in coastal waters
– Countermeasures against asymmetric warfare such as suicide attacks and weapons of mass destruction
– Countermeasures against (Improvised Explosive Device) IED threats, including research on energetic materials used in these devices, with, amongst others, study of potential new precursors, potential new Homemade Explosives (HME), tertiary explosives and a complete analysis and characterization of these substances
– Protection against (terrorist) CBRN threats, including aspects such as detection of agents, decontamination, physio-pathological mechanisms
– Protection of infrastructure against complex dynamic loads such as those caused by an explosion, through analysis of the dimensioning, maintenance, fatigue characteristics, and structure reliability
– Environmental threats
* European Defence Fund – Indicative multiannual perspective 2021 – 2027