Topic updates

22 October 2025
The call EDF-2025-DA closed at 17.00 on 16 October 2025. 26 proposals were submitted for evaluation.

Collaborative air combat

TOPIC ID: EDF-2025-DA-AIR-CAC

Type of grant: Call for proposals

General information

Programme:

Call: Development actions implemented via actual cost grants (EDF-2025-DA)

Type of action: EDF-DA EDF Development Actions

Type of MGA: EDF Action Grant Budget-Based [EDF-AG]

Status: Forthcoming

Deadline model: single-stage

Planned Opening Date: 18 February 2025

Deadline dates: 16 October 2025 17:00 (Brussels time)

Topic description

Expected Impact:

The outcome should contribute to:

• Shared consolidated EU perspective for Air collaborative warfare.
• Common EU standards for collaborative air combat for EU Member States and EDF Associated Countries that are interoperable with NATO standards.
• Participate to structure and develop an EU ecosystem to support AI technology sovereignty for military usages.
• Incremental increase of the interoperability of warfare systems so that the EU Member States’ and EDF Associated Countries’ armed forces would be able to operate collectively and efficiently.
• Better use of resources (single and multiple domains and assets).
• Quick wins identification to be implemented on current or future systems (e.g., ability to associate different generations of assets, dissemination of conception guidance for long-term development of future EU air combat system). Quick wins approach would also enable cross-border SMEs to participate in this topic.
• Harmonisation of EU industrial processes and methods for the development of assets or equipment contributing to air combat collaborative capabilities.

Objective:

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.

Specific objective

In order to adapt to new tactics, concepts and collaboration standards, as well as new design rules applicable to the evolution of legacy systems evolution and future systems, the mission systems should be flexible and scalable. This requires the development of key technologies and capability building blocks for collaborative air combat, such as but not limited to:

• A service-oriented architecture that allows all nations to operate together through common standard and functional interfaces, without having to use the same equipment or assets, would contribute to the modernisation of the various EU Member States’ and EDF Associated Countries’ military fleets.
• Interoperability standards for Information Technology (IT) systems (e.g., communication, dissemination, service sharing, cyber security), including a common data format reference, that enable joint combat and provide a common entry point and common processes for proprietary systems.
• Scalable edge computing with huge amounts of processing power and storage capacity on board new generation assets (manned or unmanned) to implement and enhance several mission management functions. Tightly integrated operation of manned and unmanned assets (through collaborative mission management) or intelligent processing of heterogeneous sensor data (e.g., radar, optronics and electronic warfare) across heterogeneous assets could therefore be enabled, improving the overall operational performance of each asset and its perception of the rapidly evolving tactical environment.
• Dedicated Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in a variety of technical and operational domains, such as but not limited to flight certification and airworthiness standardisation issues, or the identification, selection and use of prototypical AI toolkits, libraries, methods (e.g., machine learning, neural networks, …), in order to ensure a trustworthy command and control of manned and unmanned systems from the perspective of an airborne combat asset, as well as the correct handling and exploitation of the wealth of information generated by distributed sensors across collaborating assets.

Existing and future open standards (e.g., ECOA, IMA) need to be addressed. Regarding software, these open standards need to be addressed to meet the challenge of harmonising the software footprint of all types of equipment and systems operating in the airpower framework.

Scope:

Proposals must investigate solutions for standardised collaborative air combat, supported by demonstrations, where appropriate, for application to challenging air combat scenarios in contested and highly contested environments.

Based on commonly agreed standards and requirements of the EU Member States and EDF Associated Countries, proposals must initially aim at medium-term results to be implemented as standardised collaborative mission management to positively influence the development of the next generation of EU air combat capabilities.

Proposals must consider manned and unmanned combat platform assets to be operated by the EU Member States and EDF Associated Countries, and related concepts, as part of next generation systems for air combat operations through an incremental interoperability approach.

Proposals must take into account the foreseeable evolution of mission systems, aiming at standardised functional and physical interfaces of effectors and consolidating at EU level common and harmonised processes for the operation of relevant AI technologies, with a view to ensuring EU autonomy on AI engineering tools and libraries.

In addition, to ensure compliance with NATO and other possible coalition situations, proposals must also address interoperability with systems of non-EU origin and NATO standards, allowing for extended interaction between combat aircraft and a variety of collaborative assets used in all other operational domains that contribute to air combat operations.

Proposals may consider potential implementations on existing platforms if a major upgrade is foreseen.

Types of activities

The following types of activities are eligible for this topic:

Accordingly, the proposals must cover at least the following tasks as part of mandatory activities:

• Studies:
  • Analysis of the latest evolution of existing and emerging standards applicable to air combat, including NATO ones, and results of relevant ongoing projects and future combat programmes.
• Design:
  • Standardisation recommendations concerning the processes and methods for the development, validation, and qualification of AI-based components, both safety and non-safety critical:
    • Usage prototyping of AI toolkits, libraries, methods enabling an independent and sovereign use of these technologies by the EU for military purpose.
    • Develop EU sovereign tools and libraries for the illustration of the standardisation of the process for the development, validation and qualification of AI based components and functions.
  • Further develop and-or supplement existing standards and define in details, where necessary, new standards, support and promote them, addressing them with the standardisation bodies, within the following perimeters:
    • In order to support collaborative mission management and sensors collaboration between heterogeneous assets:
      • Functional and technical architecture design.
      • Functional service-oriented interface design.
      • Design of service-oriented architectures and functional service-oriented interfaces for mission system.
      • Design of services-oriented sensors interfaces.
    • In order to enable interoperability, secure exchange of resources/information and data sharing with other assets in various coalition situations (e.g., NATO, EU and non-EU, national context) while offering a better evolutivity and greater interchangeability (software and hardware):
      • Design of communications architecture (including cyber issues).
      • Design of functional interfaces of the different layers of communication architecture (Core Services and Communications Services according to C3 Taxonomy).
      • Design of validation methods and associated means (e.g., functional simulators).
    • In order to improve interoperability and development efforts of effectors:
      • Design of functional and physical interfaces of future effectors (i.e., remote carriers and weapons).
      • Further develop required standards and protocols for effector integration (e.g., Logical Store Integration Framework (LSIF)).
    • In order to improve mission system scalability and the associated development efforts (easier and faster Aerial Mission Systems development and upgrade):
      • Design of a tool for Software development.
      • Develop architecture principles and standardisation of hardware interfaces for mission systems.
  • Demonstrate the application of a set of proposals of standards:
    • Development of implementation references of some parts of a set of proposals of standards (functional interfaces).
    • Definition and demonstration of an Integration and Validation approach including, but not limited to, early and continuous integration and validation, using the developed implementation references.

The proposals must substantiate synergies and complementarity with foreseen, ongoing or completed activities in the field of air combat, notably those described in the call topic EDF-2021-AIR-D-CAC related to Collaborative air combat.

Functional requirements

The proposed product and technologies should meet the following functional requirements:

• Ensure the interoperability of heterogeneous air systems (from existing to next generation systems, manned and unmanned), including when in coalition situations with EU Member States’ and EDF Associated Countries’ forces and NATO forces.
• Be applicable for the design of mission system for next generation combat assets (e.g., next generation fighter aircraft systems, unmanned combat systems) and the upgrades of legacy air combat systems.

Start submission

The submission system is planned to be opened on the date stated on the topic header.

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