OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy v2.0: 08.12.2021
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OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy v2.0
08 December 2021
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Table of Contents
Document Information ............................................................................................................................. 3
Foreword .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Guide to the reader .................................................................................................................................. 6
Acronyms List ........................................................................................................................................... 7
Chapter A. Underpinning Technologies .................................................................................................12
Chapter B. System-related Technologies ...............................................................................................39
Chapter C. System-level Technologies ...................................................................................................68
Chapter D. Supplementary Technology Areas .......................................................................................77
Chapter E. Specialized Technology Taxonomies ....................................................................................89
Annex i. Main changes from v1 (2008) to v2 (2021). ...........................................................................108
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Document Information
Classification
This document is unclassified.
Conditions of release
This document is delivered by the European Defence Agency to the EU Defence Community.
Version history
HISTORY OF CHANGES
Publication date
Change
08.04.2008
First edition: EDA Technology Taxonomy
08.12.2021
Second edition: OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy
Planned update cycle
The OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy will be reviewed constantly within the EDA’s CapTechs with
formal delivery cycles of five years. Full review and update will be done every ten years.
Contact
Any comments should be addressed to:
European Defence Agency
Research, Technology and Innovation Directorate
Rue des Drapiers 17-23
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium
Email: [email protected].eu
Web: www.eda.europa.eu
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Foreword
Taxonomy finds its roots in the Greek language τάξις, taxis (meaning 'order', 'arrangement') and νόμος,
nomos ('law' or 'science'), in this sense, the OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy constitutes a
European effort to provide a scheme of classification for the technologies relevant to the military and
defence context.
The purpose of the OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy is to support the management of military
capability-oriented research programs by enabling the identification of synergies between different
research areas and programmes and creating to a certain extent, a homogeneity of interpretation for
the discussion of specific research topics. From the research and technology perspective, and in
connection with the Overarching Strategic Research Agenda (OSRA) methodology, OSRA Defence
Technology Taxonomy supports EDA in its role to manage military capability-oriented research
programs and to be able to analyse and connect possible areas of research with Capability
Development Plan (CDP) priorities. The OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy will enable a top-down
as well as bottom-up approach analysis in the OSRA framework and will be suitable for analysis of
technology categories with a wide variety and different levels of detail.
OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy originates from the technology taxonomy of Western European
Armaments Group (WEAG). The first version was delivered by the EDA in 2008 and was the first
attempt to list a number of technology areas and categories relevant to the military and defence
context. In this first edition, not only the technologies were clustered and listed but also additional
descriptions were included. The 2008 version was utilised until the development of OSRA as a key
element in defining the Areas of Responsibility (AoR) of the CapTechs including their respective
technological domains.
Since 2008 significant changes have been taking place around the globe, especially in the defence
context. New disruptive and emerging technologies such as: Hypervelocity Defence Systems, Variable
Cycle Engine, Supersonic and Hypersonic Designs, Combat Cloud, Nanosensors, Human Machine
Teaming, Space Traffic Management, 3D printed materials and structures, Multi-Disciplinary Design
and Analysis Framework, Space Defence System, Autonomous Air/Land/Maritime Systems,
Hyperconnected Defence Systems, Biosensors, Energy Storage, Sustainable and Synthetic Fuels, Cyber
Defence, Quantum computing Technologies, Flow Control Technologies, Electromagnetic
Launch/Railgun, CBRN Applications, Digital Twin, Ethics – Rules of Engagement, have shaken the
ground of current and future defence systems.
These changes have motivated a full taxonomy update, with the main objective being to cover all
technologies and techniques in order to complete the current technology landscaping. Making the
taxonomy usable as a tool to identify synergies between different application areas has also been a
driver for this update cycle. The 2021 edition took the 2008 one as the starting point, from this, a full
review of the taxonomy items was undertaken by the CapTech members. A detailed review completed
in 2017 with the support of an EDA contractor, and a dedicated Artificial Intelligence taxonomy
delivered by EDA have also been key sources of information during the full update.
The full update resulted in a document structured into five chapters. The first three (A, B and C) cover
the Underpinning Technologies, the System-related Technologies, and the Systems-level Technologies
respectively. Chapter D, describes the Supplementary Technology Areas which cannot be categorized
in the hierarchical structure covered by Chapters A, B and C. For clarity, and to facilitate the integration
of emerging technologies, a fifth Chapter (E) has been included to incorporate Specialized Technology
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Taxonomies. In this version, special attention has been given to ‘Artificial Intelligence for Defence’ (AI).
The approach adopted by EDA is to focus on AI in Defence and to define it from a functional
perspective, establishing the boundaries of what can be understood by this term and to limit its scope.
Describing what AI does from a functional perspective at the highest abstract level and what should
be included under this term will help the dialogue at the European level on its applications in defence
and to facilitate cooperation.
OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy aims to support the definition of the technologies covered today
by EDAs CapTechs and can be readily updated with emerging or future technologies. Practically
speaking, the taxonomy is the corner stone for the CapTechs as it defines the different AoR of the
CapTechs and it is used as input in the EDA Technology Watch tool for developing the dedicated
queries/information pages per CapTech. In this sense, the objective for the update of the taxonomy is
to be able to support the definition of the technologies covered today by the CapTechs, but also flexible
enough to be able to describe any emerging or future technology. Vis-à-vis the Technology Building
Blocks (TBBs) detailed at OSRA, this Technology Taxonomy has the same role as the Generic Military
Tasks (GMTL), i.e. hierarchical lists which are used to position and describe the TBBs. Both the
Technology Taxonomy and the GMTL are external to the TBBs. They are, however, both used by the
TBBs as the main references.
The European Defence Agency would like to thank all the actors involved in the update of this
document which is now delivered to the EU Defence Community as a glossary of commonly used terms
with a view to establishing a harmonised understanding of the key technologies relevant for the
military and defence context.
Jean-François RIPOCHE
EDA’s Research, Technology and Innovation Director
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Guide to the reader
This version is structured into 5 different chapters (A; B; C; D and E) and one annex (i). Chapters A, B
and C are related in a hierarchical manner.
Chapter A addresses the underpinning technologies from the Structural and Smart Materials; Electronic
Materials; Photonic/Optical Materials to Fuels, Energetic Materials and Plasma Technology and
Chemical, Biological & Medical Materials.
Chapter B contains the system-related technologies covering (among other) Lethality & Platform
Protection; Propulsion and Powerplants; Guidance and Control Systems for Weapons and Platforms;
Electronic Warfare and Directed Energy Technologies.
Chapter C focuses on the system-level technologies from two perspectives, Integrated Platforms and
Weapons and Effectors.
Chapter D describes the Supplementary Technology Areas which cannot be categorised in the
hierarchical structure such as Defence Functions and Policy Support; Manufacturing Processes, Design
Tools and Techniques; Installations and Facilities.
Finally, for clarity and to facilitate the integration of emerging technologies, Chapter E groups
Specialized Technology Taxonomies such as Artificial Intelligence.
A list of the new topics included in this edition and topics with relevant changes, as compared to the
2008 edition, can be found in the Annex i. Main changes from v1 (2008) to v2 (2021).
Detailed tables of contents are provided at the beginning of each chapter to facilitate the navigation
through the document for the reader.
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Acronyms List
ABC
Artificial Bee Colony ......................................... 97
AE
Autoencoders ................................................... 93
AFV
Armoured Fighting Vehicle .............29, 33, 55, 58
AHW
Advanced Hypersonic Weapons ....................... 75
AI
Artificial Intelligence .... 31, 33, 45, 46, 59, 60, 62,
65, 71, 84, 91, 98, 101, 103, 105, 107
AIS
Automatic Identification System ................ 73, 97
AL
Adversarial Learning ...................................... 105
ANN
Artificial Neural Networks.................. 92, 93, 105
AR
Augmented Reality .......................................... 34
ASIC
Application-Specific Integrated Circuit ...... 23, 24
ASM
Airspace Management..................................... 66
ASSP
Application-Specific Standard Product............. 23
ATFM
Air Traffic Flow Management .......................... 66
ATM
Air Traffic Management ............................ 65, 66
ATS
Air Traffic Services ........................................... 65
BDAA
Big Data Advanced Analytics ..........59, 62, 65, 84
BISA
Battlefield Information System Application ..... 65
BMD
Ballistic Missile Defence ................................... 81
C2
Command and Control ............................... 46, 64
C4ISR
Command Control Communications Computers
Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance
..................................................................... 46
CAA
Computational Aero Acoustics ......................... 38
CAD
Computer Aided Design ................................... 38
CALS
Computer Aided Logistics Support ............. 32, 34
CASEVAC
Casualty Evacuation ........................................ 36
CB
Chemical Biological ......................... 29, 36, 56, 67
CBR
Case Based Reasoning ..................................... 92
CBRN
Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear . 26, 30,
66, 85, 86, 87, 109
CBRNE
Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear and
high yield Explosives .................................... 64
CD&E
Concept Development & Experimentation ...... 84
CDAS
Common Defensive Aids Suite ......................... 46
CE
Chemical Energy .............................................. 45
CFD
Computational Fluid Dynamics .................. 38, 49
CIBIS
Common Infrastructure for Battlefield
Information Systems.................................... 65
CIRPLS
Computer Integration of Requirement
Procurement Logistics and Support ............. 34
CIS
Command and Information Systems ... 60, 63, 64,
65, 111
CM
Consequence Management ............................. 64
Counter Measure ............................................. 22
CMC
Ceramic Matrix Composites ............................. 17
CNT
Carbon Nanotubes ........................................... 22
COLPRO
Collective Protection ........................................ 67
COMSEC
Communications Security ................................ 64
CONEMP
Concept of Employment ................................... 84
CONUSE
Concept of Use ................................................. 84
COTS
Commercial Off-The-Shelf ............... 30, 55, 57, 60
CW
Cognitive Warfare ............................................ 36
DAE
Deep Autoencoders .................................. 93, 105
DAG
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Directed Acyclic Graphs ................................... 95
DAI
Distributed Artificial Intelligence ................... 107
DAS
Defensive Aids Suite ......................................... 46
DBM
Deep Boltzmann Machines .............................. 93
DBN
Deep Belief Networks ....................................... 93
DCNN
Deep Convolutional Neural Networks .............. 93
DE
Directed Energy.................................... 51, 52, 97
DeLP
Defeasible Logic Programming ........................ 91
DES
Detached Eddie Simulation .............................. 38
DEW
Directed Energy Weapons................................ 66
DIS
Distributed Interactive Simulation ................... 60
DL
Deep Learning ................................................ 105
DLA
Deep Learning Architecture ............................. 93
DNN
Deep Neural Network ...................................... 93
DRIT
Detection Recognition Identification Tracking . 33
DRNN
Deep Recurren Neural Networks ..................... 93
DSP
Digital Signal Processing ............................ 33, 54
EA
Enzyme Algorithms .......................................... 98
EBW
Exploding-Bridgewire Detonator ..................... 28
ECM
Electronic Countermeasure .................. 21, 24, 52
EDS
Explosive Detection Sensor .............................. 57
EF
Environmentally Friendly ................................. 83
EFI
Electronic Fuel Injection ................................... 28
EHF
Extremely High Frequency ................... 53, 63, 81
ELF
Extremely Low Frequency ................................ 63
ELV
Extra Low Voltage ............................................ 25
EM
Electromagnetic Energy ................................... 45
EMC................................................................... 45
Electromagnetic Compatibility ........................ 62
EMO
Electromagnetic Modelling Optimization ........ 98
EMP
Electromagnetic Pulse ............................... 61, 75
EO
Explosive Ordnance .................................... 23, 45
EOCM
Electro-Optical Countermeasure...................... 52
EOD
Explosive Ordnance Disposal ........................... 45
EOPM
Electro-Optical Protective Measure ........... 53, 66
EPM
Electronic Protective Measures ................. 33, 53
ESM
Electronic Support Measurement .........22, 52, 53
ETC
Electrothermal-Chemical ................................. 27
FA
Firefly Algorithm .............................................. 98
FDIR
Fault Detection Identification and Recovery .. 102
FIR
Far Infra Red .................................................... 23
GA
Genetic Algorithms .......................................... 97
GAN
Generative Adversarial Networks .................... 94
GEO
Geostationary Orbit ................................... 72, 73
GIS
Geographic Information Systems .................... 65
GLM
Generalized Linear Models ............................ 103
GPR
Gaussian Process Regression ......................... 103
Ground Penetrating Radars ............................. 28
GUI
Graphical User Interface .......................... 38, 107
HAPS
High-Altitude Platform System ........................ 72
HEL
High Energy Laser ............................................ 75
HEO
Highly Elliptical Orbit ....................................... 73
HF
High Frequency ............. 22, 33, 53, 56, 60, 63, 81
HFI
Human Factors Integration ........................ 58, 67
HGV
Hypersonic Glide Vehicles ................................ 75
HLA
High-level Architecture .................................... 60
HLT
Human Language Technologies ............... 98, 100
HMI
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Human Machine Interface ....................... 34, 107
HPC
High Power Computing .................................... 38
HRQoL
Health Related Quality of Life .......................... 85
HTS
High-temperature Superconductor ...... 22, 52, 53
HUMS
Health and Usage Monitoring Systems ... 34, 106
HUM-T
Human-Machine Teaming ............................... 37
I&D
Insulating & Dielectric ...................................... 21
I&DF
Information & Data Fusion Technology ........... 34
IC
Integrated Circuit ............................. 82, 106, 111
Internal Combustion ........................................ 47
IDF
Inverse Document Frequency ................... 99, 100
IED
Improvised Explosive Device ................ 28, 45, 46
IFF
Identification Friend or Foe .............................. 65
ILS
Integrated Logistic Support.............................. 32
IM
Information Management ............................... 32
INFOSEC
Information Security .................................. 31, 64
IoT
Internet of Things ............................................. 31
IPE
Individual Protective Equipment ................ 36, 67
IR
Infra Red .......................................................... 20
ISR
Intelligence Surveillance and Target Acquisition
............................................................... 46, 72
ISTAR
Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition &
Reconnaissance ............................. 79, 87, 111
ITU
International Telecommunication Union ......... 72
IW
Information Warfare........................................ 31
JBD
Joint Battlespace Digitization .......................... 65
kNN
K-Nearest Neighbour ....................................... 96
LAN
Local Area Network ......................................... 30
LDA
Linear Discriminant Analysis .......................... 104
LED
Light-Emitting Diode .................................. 23, 64
LEO
Low Earth Orbit .......................................... 72, 73
LES
Large Eddie Simulation .................................... 38
LF
Low Frequency ................................................. 56
LHD
Landing Helicopter Dock .................................. 74
LMS
Learning Management System ........................ 84
LO
Low Observable ............................................... 17
LPD
Landing Platform Dock .................................... 74
LSA
Latent Semantic Analysis ................................. 99
M&S
Modelling & Simulation ......................62, 84, 107
M2M
Machine to Machine ...................................... 107
MANPRINT
Manpower and Personnel Integration ............. 60
MCM
Mine Counter Measure .................................... 22
Mine Countermeasures. 33, 35, 45, 56, 58, 66, 81
MEMS
Micro-Electromechanical Systems .. 23, 24, 26, 57
MEO
Medium Earth Orbits ....................................... 73
MIPPS
Modular Integrated Personal Protection Systems
..................................................................... 67
ML
Machine Learning ..... 31, 59, 62, 65, 84, 104, 107
MLRS
Multiple Launch Rocket System ....................... 58
MMC
Metal Matrix Composites ................................ 17
MMIC
Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit . 23, 52,
55, 63
MMT
Man-Machine Teaming ................................... 37
MRO
Maintenance and Repair Organizations ... 59, 79,
85
MRS
Multi-Robot System ......................................... 61
MSA
Mid-Spectrum Agent ........................................ 29
MSaaS
Modelling & Simulation as a Service ....59, 65, 84
MTI
Moving Target Indication ................................ 55
NBC
Nuclear Biological Chemical ............................ 67
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NCTR
Non-Cooperative Target Recognition .............. 65
NEMP
Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulses ....................... 62
NIR
Near Infrared ................................................... 23
NN
Neural Nets ...................................................... 34
NQR
Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance ...................... 27
OA
Operational Analysis ............................ 31, 59, 84
OLED
Organic Light-Emitting Diode .......................... 23
OSS
Open-Source Software ..................................... 30
PA
Photosynthetic Algorithms .............................. 98
PCA
Principal Component Analysis ........................ 103
PFN
Pulse Forming Networks .................................. 48
PMC
Polymer Matrix Composites ............................. 17
POS
Part of Speech .................................................. 99
PSO
Particle Swarm Optimization ........................... 97
QA
Quality Assessment .......................................... 30
RAM
Radar Absorbing Materials .............................. 20
RASEVAC
Robotics Assisted Medical Evacuation ............. 36
RBM
Restricted Boltzmann Machine ........................ 93
RBR
Rule Based Reasoning ...................................... 92
RES
Renewable Energy Sources .............................. 25
RF
Radio Frequency .... 21, 22, 23, 24, 33, 45, 51, 52,
53, 54, 55, 58, 63, 64
RL
Reinforcement Learning................................. 104
SA
Simulated Annealing ................................ 98, 101
SAF
Systems with Autonomous Functions .............. 61
SAPI
Small Arms Protective Insert ............................ 45
SAR
Synthetic Aperture Radar ........................... 55, 73
SATCOM
Satellite Communication .................................. 63
SCS
Safety Critical Software ................................... 31
SE
Synthetic Environment ..................................... 60
SHF
Super-high Frequency ................................ 53, 63
SL
Supervised Learning ....................................... 104
SNR
Signal-to-Noise Ratio ....................................... 22
SSL
Semi Supervised Learning .............................. 104
ST-GCN
Spatial-Temporal Graph Concolutional Networks
..................................................................... 94
STM
Space Traffic Management.............................. 66
STOW
Synthetic Theater of War ................................. 59
STRATCOM
Strategic Communications ............................... 63
SVM
Support Vector Machine .......................... 96, 103
SWAP-C
Size, Weight, and Power, Cost ......................... 57
TaaS
Testing as a Service ...............................59, 65, 84
TL
Transfer Learning ........................................... 105
TTP
Tactics Techniques and Procedures ................. 85
UAV
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle .......................... 46, 74
UCS
Unified Computing System .............................. 65
UEP
Underwater Electric Potential .......................... 56
UGV
Unmanned Ground Vehicle .............................. 72
UHF
Ultra High Frequency ....................................... 24
UL
Unsupervised Learning .................................. 104
UTM
Unmanned Traffic Management ..................... 66
UUV
Unmanned Underwater Vehicle .... 20, 22, 33, 45,
47, 64
UXO
Unexploded Ordnance ..................................... 46
UxV
Unmanned Vehicle ........................ 46, 72, 76, 109
VHF
Very High Frequency ........................................ 24
VSM
Vector Space Mode .......................................... 99
VTOL
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Vertical Take-Off and Landing ......................... 74
WAN
Wide Area Network ......................................... 30
WASAD
Wide Area Surveillance and Automatic Detection
..................................................................... 55
WLP
Wafer Level Packaging .................................... 24
WOA
Whale Optimization Algorithm ........................ 97
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Chapter A. Underpinning Technologies
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Chapter A. Table of Contents
A01 – Structural and Smart Materials and Structural Mechanics ..................................................... 17
A01.01 – Metals and Metal Matrix Composite Technology .......................................................... 17
A01.02 – Ceramics, Ceramic Matrix Composite and Glass Technologies ..................................... 17
A01.03 – Polymers and Polymer Matrix Composite Technologies ............................................... 17
A01.04 – Structural Materials Processing - Joining Technology.................................................... 17
A01.05 – Structural Materials Processing - Surface Protection Technologies .............................. 18
A01.06 – Non-Destructive Evaluation and Life Prediction of Structural Materials ....................... 19
A01.07 – Corrosion and Wear Control Technology ....................................................................... 19
A01.08 – Structural Mechanics ..................................................................................................... 19
A01.09 – Structural Materials - Forming ....................................................................................... 19
A01.10 – Structural Materials - Materials Removal ...................................................................... 19
A01.11 – Smart/Functional Materials for Structural Uses ............................................................ 19
A01.12 – Textiles and Woven Materials ........................................................................................ 20
A02 – Signature Related Materials .................................................................................................... 20
A02.01 – Acoustic & Vibration Absorbing Materials ..................................................................... 20
A02.02 – IR Signature Control Materials ....................................................................................... 20
A02.03 – Radar Absorbing Materials and Coatings ....................................................................... 20
A02.04 – Structural Radar Absorbing Materials ............................................................................ 20
A03 – Electronic Materials Technology ............................................................................................. 21
A03.01 – Silicon-based Materials .................................................................................................. 21
A03.02 – III-V Compounds ............................................................................................................. 21
A03.03 – Other Semiconducting Materials ................................................................................... 21
A03.04 – Insulating & Dielectric Materials .................................................................................... 21
A03.05 – Carbon-based Materials ................................................................................................. 22
A03.06 – Superconducting Materials ............................................................................................ 22
A03.07 – Magnetic Materials ........................................................................................................ 22
A03.08 – 1D & 2D Materials .......................................................................................................... 22
A04 – Photonic/Optical Materials & Device Technology .................................................................. 22
A04.01 – Optical Materials & Devices ........................................................................................... 22
A04.02 – IR/Visible/UV Detector Materials & Devices .................................................................. 22
A04.03 – Non-Linear Optical Materials & Devices ........................................................................ 22
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A04.04 – Display Materials & Devices ........................................................................................... 23
A04.05 – Lasers -all Types ............................................................................................................. 23
A04.06 – Non-Laser Devices .......................................................................................................... 23
A04.07 – Transparent Materials .................................................................................................... 23
A04.08 – Quantum Optics ............................................................................................................. 23
A05 – Electronic, Electrical & Electromechanical Device Technology ............................................... 23
A05.01 – Device Concepts and Fabrication ................................................................................... 23
A05.02 – Device Packaging ............................................................................................................ 23
A05.03 – Device Integration/Reliability......................................................................................... 24
A05.04 – Electrochemical Energy Conversion Fuel Cells ............................................................... 24
A05.05 – Solar Cells ....................................................................................................................... 24
A05.06 – RF Power Sources & Devices .......................................................................................... 24
A05.07 – Acoustic Power Sources & Devices ................................................................................ 24
A05.08 – Other Electrical Power Systems & Devices .................................................................... 24
A05.09 – Electric Machines and Actuators .................................................................................... 25
A05.10 – Inertial/Gravitational Devices ........................................................................................ 25
A05.11 – Energy Efficient Technologies ........................................................................................ 25
A05.12 – Energy Storage ............................................................................................................... 25
A05.13 – Electrochemical Energy Storage - Batteries ................................................................... 26
A05.14 – On Board High Energy Storage and Distribution System ............................................... 26
A05.15 – BioMEMS / Bio Sensors .................................................................................................. 26
A06 – Fuels, Energetic Materials and Plasma Technology ................................................................ 27
A06.01 – Propellants ..................................................................................................................... 27
A06.02 – Conventional Fuels ......................................................................................................... 27
A06.03 – Non-Conventional Fuels ................................................................................................. 27
A06.04 – Explosives ....................................................................................................................... 27
A06.05 – Pyrotechnics ................................................................................................................... 27
A06.06 – Plasma Techniques ......................................................................................................... 27
A06.07 – Explosives Detection Techniques ................................................................................... 27
A06.08 – Ignition Techniques ........................................................................................................ 28
A06.09 – Energetic Materials Production Technique .................................................................... 28
A06.10 – Characterization of Energetic Materials ........................................................................ 28
A06.11 – Sustainable and Synthetic Fuels ..................................................................................... 28
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A06.12 – Novel Energetic Materials .............................................................................................. 28
A07 – Chemical, Biological & Medical Materials ............................................................................... 28
A07.01 – Chemical Agent Defence, Precursors & Related Materials ............................................ 28
A07.02 – Biological Agent Defence, Precursors & Related Materials ........................................... 29
A07.03 – Mid-Spectrum Agent Defence ........................................................................................ 29
A07.04 – Chemical & Biological Detection Techniques ................................................................. 29
A07.05 – Chemical Research for non-CBD Applications ................................................................ 29
A07.06 – Medical Products and Materials .................................................................................... 29
A07.07 – Synthetic Biology Technologies ...................................................................................... 29
A07.08 – CBRN and Nanotechnology Developments .................................................................... 30
A07.09 – Medical Research and MedTech .................................................................................... 30
A08 – Computing Technologies & Mathematical Techniques .......................................................... 30
A08.01 – Software Engineering ..................................................................................................... 30
A08.02 – Protocol Technology ...................................................................................................... 30
A08.03 – COTS and OSS Assessment ............................................................................................. 30
A08.04 – Architectures .................................................................................................................. 31
A08.05 – High Integrity and Safety Critical Computing ................................................................. 31
A08.06 – Secure Computing Techniques ....................................................................................... 31
A08.07 – Encryption / Crypto Technologies .................................................................................. 31
A08.08 – Mathematical Modelling Development ......................................................................... 31
A08.09 – OA Tools and Techniques ............................................................................................... 31
A08.10 – Cyber Defence ................................................................................................................ 32
A08.11 – Software Verification and Accreditation Techniques .................................................... 32
A08.12 – Quantum Computing Technologies ............................................................................... 32
A08.13 – High Power Computing .................................................................................................. 32
A08.14 – Multicore Systems .......................................................................................................... 32
A09 – Information and Signal Processing Technology ...................................................................... 32
A09.01 – Data & Information Management Technology .............................................................. 32
A09.02 – Digital Signal Processing Technology ............................................................................. 33
A09.03 – Optical Signal Processing Technology ............................................................................ 33
A09.04 – Image/Pattern Processing Technology .......................................................................... 33
A09.05 – Speech & Natural Language Processing Technology ..................................................... 33
A09.06 – Optimisation & Decision Support Technology ............................................................... 33
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A09.07 – Information & Data Fusion Technology ......................................................................... 34
A09.08 – Cognitive Systems Computing ........................................................................................ 34
A09.09 – Other Information Processing Technology .................................................................... 34
A10 – Human Sciences ...................................................................................................................... 34
A10.01 – Human Information Processing...................................................................................... 34
A10.02 – Military Human Resources ............................................................................................. 34
A10.03 – Teams, Organisations & Cultures ................................................................................... 35
A10.04 – Human Survivability, Protection & Stress Effects .......................................................... 35
A10.05 – Individual & Team Training ............................................................................................ 35
A10.06 – Human Factors Integration ............................................................................................ 35
A10.07 – Collective Training .......................................................................................................... 35
A10.08 – Human Performance Enhancement ............................................................................... 35
A10.09 – Medical Sciences and Capabilities .................................................................................. 36
A10.10 – Robotics in Medicine ...................................................................................................... 36
A10.11 – Molecular Biology Technologies .................................................................................... 36
A10.12 – Surgical Techniques and Medical Procedures ................................................................ 36
A10.13 – Human Health Physics .................................................................................................... 37
A10.14 – Human Performance Monitoring Techniques................................................................ 37
A10.15 – Human Factors in Manufacturing .................................................................................. 37
A10.16 – Human Machine Teaming .............................................................................................. 37
A10.17 – Cockpit Automation ....................................................................................................... 37
A11 – Mechanical, Thermal & Fluid-Related Technologies & Devices .............................................. 37
A11.01 – Mechanical/Hydraulic Technologies & Devices ............................................................. 37
A11.02 – Lubrication Technology .................................................................................................. 37
A11.03 – Thermal & Thermodynamic Technologies & Devices .................................................... 38
A11.04 – Fluid Mechanics - Phenomenological and Experimental ............................................... 38
A11.05 – Fluid Dynamics Techniques ............................................................................................ 38
A11.06 – Flow Control Technologies ............................................................................................. 38
A11.07 – Aeroacoustics Techniques .............................................................................................. 38
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A01 – Structural and Smart Materials and Structural Mechanics
A01.01 – Metals and Metal Matrix Composite Technology
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of Metallic alloys (all types including
intermetallics and high entropy alloys), Metal matrix composites (all types of MMCs), and materials
used as Fibre and Particulate reinforcements in MMCs. Microstructural analysis of all types of samples,
as prepared, heat treated or fractured (as in e.g. failure diagnosis) and corrosion effects. Research
leading to improved processes for making novel Metallic alloys or MMCs or metal laminates and new
processes for shaping metallic materials, such as casting, powder, vapour deposition, forging,
superplastic forming, additive manufacturing etc., for applications in all service. Includes research to
develop computer aided multi-scale material modelling, thermodynamic modelling and kinetic
modelling to improve alloy design and understand alloy behaviour. Also includes research to
understand relationships between microstructure, manufacturing and performance.
A01.02 – Ceramics, Ceramic Matrix Composite and Glass Technologies
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of structural ceramic materials, including
ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), and glass ceramics, fibre and particulate reinforcements,
microstructural analysis, etc. Research leading to improved processes for making and shaping new
structural ceramic materials, etc., for applications in armour and propulsion systems including
aeroengines. Also includes application of ceramic technologies for high performance device packaging.
Includes research to develop material modelling to improve ceramic material design and understand
the behaviour of ceramic materials.
A01.03 – Polymers and Polymer Matrix Composite Technologies
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of organic materials for structural purposes,
including, polymers and polymer matrix composites (PMCs), thermosets, thermoplastics, elastomers,
and materials used as reinforcing elements in PMCs such as fibres, particulates and laminates. Also
includes work to understand the structural properties of biomimetic composite materials. Research
leading to improved processes for making novel fibres or matrices, or for total composite manufacture,
and new processes for shaping conventional composite materials, etc. Also includes identifying
polymers for binders in LO paints and coatings. Also includes research to improve all sealants based on
polymeric materials. Includes research to develop material modelling to improve design of materials
based on polymers, including polymer composites, and understanding of the behaviour of such
materials, particularly mechanical properties.
A01.04 – Structural Materials Processing - Joining Technology
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of joints between metallic, or ceramic or
polymer-based materials, or between dissimilar combinations of these material types, etc. Research
to improve joining/bonding processes used for any of the above cases, such as adhesive, diffusion,
welded, interlayer, pre- and post-joining treatments, etc. Also includes the application of cost-effective
joints in all service environments. Includes joining technology for high temperature materials and
intermetallics.
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A01.04.01 – Welding
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of welded joints in metals and polymers,
including microstructure and non-destructive testing. Research into techniques including gas, arc,
friction-stir and explosive welding.
A01.04.02 – Brazing/Soldering
Research to determine the properties of soldered or brazed joints including lead-free solders for
electronics and brazing materials including amorphous brazing foils for ceramics and high temperature
alloys.
A01.04.03 – Bolted Joints
Research to determine the properties of bolted joints including mechanical design and bolt torque,
including joints between dissimilar materials such as carbon-fibre composites and metals.
A01.04.04 – Adhesive Joints
Research to determine the properties of adhesive joints including pre-bonding surface treatments,
cleaning, etc. Includes research into techniques to ensure joint integrity.
A01.04.05 – Explosive Joining
Research to determine the properties of explosive welded joints including joining dissimilar materials.
A01.05 – Structural Materials Processing - Surface Protection Technologies
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of surfaces on structural materials, and which
increases understanding of wear and corrosion mechanisms and prevention, thermal barriers, and
other protective techniques to increase the lives of structures and components. Research to improve
processes to control surface behaviour and increase lives of components and structures in service
environments using advanced coating processes such as metal arc and flame spray, suspension and
conventional plasma spray, cold spray coating, chemical vapour deposition, electroplating, diffusion
processes, specialised paint formulations, and other protective coatings including multifunctional
coatings. Research into developing environmentally benign substitutes for cadmium and hard
chromium surface coatings and chromate primers.
A01.05.01 – Painting
Research to determine the properties of painted surfaces including pre-treatment and quality control
of the painted surface. Research into environmentally benign solvents (especially water-based), and
substitutes for chromate primers.
A01.05.02 – Wear Resistant Surface Protection Technologies
Research into technologies to improve the wear resistance of surfaces by e.g. nitriding, surface
hardening, thermal spraying with hard coatings, environmentally benign substitutes for hard
chromium plating.
A01.05.03 – Corrosion resistant
Research into technologies for corrosion resistant surface coatings including environmentally benign
coatings for anti-fouling.
A01.05.04 – Thermal barrier
Research into materials and technologies for thermal barrier coatings for high temperature engine
components, missiles and other high speed systems. Also research into ablative coatings.
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A01.06 – Non-Destructive Evaluation and Life Prediction of Structural Materials
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of defects in structural materials using non-
destructive tests and techniques of all types to detect flaws and cracks. Also work to develop inspection
procedures through to service applications. Understand the limitations of techniques like ultrasonic,
radiography, acoustic emission, optical and eddy current procedures. Research studies to develop
innovative techniques (e.g. Digital Twin) to predict service life of structures and individual components
under the influence of mechanical, thermal and chemical environments, singly and conjointly, etc. and
from theoretical and materials behaviour data including studies to understand internal
microstructures and the effects of flaws.
A01.07 – Corrosion and Wear Control Technology
Research to understand corrosion mechanisms including stress corrosion, pitting and crevice
corrosion, electrochemical corrosion and high temperature corrosion. Research to understand wear
mechanisms including abrasion and erosion and cavitation. Research to develop procedures to reduce
wear and corrosion, such as surface hardening, shot peening, laser surface glazing, nitriding, etc.
A01.08 – Structural Mechanics
Research studies to determine the effects of vibration fatigue and shock on structures and
components, using practical dynamic and static structural analysis methods/techniques or employing
finite element analysis and other computerised simulation techniques to understand the response of
structures to a variety of conjoint mechanical environment influences. Analysis and evaluations of
fracture mechanics, and fracture resistance as applied to airworthiness and other safety issues. Also
includes work to exploit life extension technology. Also includes research supporting determinations
of static, dynamic and hydrodynamic performance of marine and aircraft structures, and the structural
design of land vehicles, and marine platforms, especially those, which may undergo explosive and fire
loadings. Also includes research to aid the assessments of design options for and safety margins of
future military satellites. Also includes research in the fields of aeroelasticity, hydroelasticity and
structural dynamics and structural acoustics. Also includes supporting work to aid structural integrity
studies.
A01.09 – Structural Materials - Forming
Research to understand new forming processes and improve scaled-up industrial processes required
to shape all forms of structural materials to near-net shape and size with appropriate microstructures,
cost effectively. Research to understand forming processes and their relation to microstructure and
performance, including additive manufacturing.
A01.10 – Structural Materials - Materials Removal
Research to understand and improve all mechanical and other types of physical techniques employed
to remove material accurately and without microstructural damage during the manufacture of close
tolerance components used in defence equipment. Research to understand processes such as drilling
and high-speed machining and how machined surfaces affect properties such as corrosion, fatigue and
friction.
A01.11 – Smart/Functional Materials for Structural Uses
Research to understand optical fibres, conducting wires, electro-active polymers, electroactive
ceramics and shape memory alloys as either sensing elements or actuators in "smart/functional"
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structural materials. Also includes materials aspects of application of embedded silicon micro-sensors
for in-service in-situ monitoring of composite structures. Also includes studies on Biomimetic materials
which may have structural applications in defence equipment. Also includes research on morphing
materials for structural uses.
A01.12 – Textiles and Woven Materials
Research to understand textiles and woven materials of natural and artificial fibres including
nanofibres. Includes research for coating fibres including plasma and chemical coating, conducting,
insulating and multifunctional coatings for water, wind, light, flame, IR, chemical and biological
resistance. Includes ballistic fibres. Also includes research to integrate power and data cables in
textiles. Research to understand signature management including pattern printing and dynamic
signature management.
A02 – Signature Related Materials
A02.01 – Acoustic & Vibration Absorbing Materials
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of materials which can be used to
attenuate/dampen the transmission and reflection of sound energy in military equipment, for
example, ships, submarines, torpedoes, and other UUVs. Research and development of designs aimed
at improving the vibration dumping, in order to reduce crew fatigue and enhance weapon system
accuracy. Also includes support for applications requiring reduced signature materials. Also includes
medical acoustic materials, flesh simulants, and materials for machinery isolation and blast protection,
including active (smart) materials for control of vibration and noise. Research into processes which
shape such materials and which lead to improved bonding to underlying structures. Includes relevant
frequency selective or responsive materials.
A02.02 – IR Signature Control Materials
Research to determine the properties and characteristics of materials which absorb infra-red radiation
and which can be used to reduce the IR. signature of military equipment. Also includes tailoring
properties like reflectivity and emissivity (all types). Includes supporting the environmental and
multispectral requirements for Land vehicle applications for improved IR. absorbing materials. Also
includes materials which change properties (e.g. IR reflectivity) for application in stealth coatings.
Includes relevant frequency selective or responsive materials.
A02.03 – Radar Absorbing Materials and Coatings
Research to understand materials which serve as electromagnetically active constituents in coatings
for use on low radar cross section structures. Also includes such materials for signature reduction
applications, including frequency selective or responsive RAM, switchable conductors and tailored
dielectrics. Evaluations of RAM, and multispectral materials for use in missile systems, missile
detection and platform stealth applications. Also includes research into materials for high temperature
RAM.
A02.04 – Structural Radar Absorbing Materials
Research to understand the radar absorbing characteristics of modified fibre reinforced polymer
composites and associated conducting and absorbing sealants. Also includes non-invasive loss layers
and frequency selective or responsive surfaces in material terms. Also includes materials issues when
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integrating structural RAM into warship designs, and the environmental and mechanical applications
of structural RAM in Land vehicle applications.
A02.04.01 – Chromic/Tunable Materials
Research to understand mechanisms and materials to allow dynamically tunable visible and IR
reflectivity and absorption including electrochromic materials, thermochromic materials, and
thermoelectric materials.
A02.04.02 – Metamaterials and Metasurfaces
Research to understand the materials, design and manufacturing of metamaterials metamaterials and
metasurfaces including how to control bandwidth and tunability of these materials. Metamaterials
consist of bulk materials hosting three-dimensional sub-wavelength arrays of scatterers that modify
the electrical constitutive parameters of the hosting media. Metasurfaces, on the contrary, consists of
bi-dimensional arrays (surfaces) of scatterers that can impose very abrupt changes of amplitude, phase
and polarization of the impinging electromagnetic waves.
A03 – Electronic Materials Technology
A03.01 – Silicon-based Materials
Research to characterise new silicon materials which offer advances in low-cost thermal detectors and
low power high performance electronic devices. Also work to improve growth and control of epitaxy
for Si and SiGe alloys and improve understanding and growth of porous silicon for quantum and bio-
compatible devices. Also research on silicon carbide for use in microwave and high temperature
electronic devices.
A03.02 – III-V Compounds
Research to improve the growth and control of III-V compounds such as GaAs, InAs, InSb, GaSb, AlSb,
AlN, InP and GaN for use in passive sensing, ECM sub-systems, radar and active imaging. Research to
understand and evaluate the electronic characteristics of the III-V materials and their use for Defence
systems. For instance, military and space applications could benefit as GaN devices have shown
stability in radiation environments. Because GaN transistors can operate at much higher temperatures
and work at much higher voltages than gallium arsenide (GaAs) transistors, they make ideal power
amplifiers at microwave frequencies. In addition, GaN offers promising characteristics for THz devices.
A03.03 – Other Semiconducting Materials
Research to improve CMT technology applied to high performance and elevated temperature
detectors. Also includes research to characterise II-VI compounds.
A03.04 – Insulating & Dielectric Materials
Research to evaluate applications of I (both electrical & thermal) & Ds to integrated circuits, thermal
detectors, to pigments in LO coatings and as IR absorbing materials. Research to improve the growth
of ferroelectric materials at low temperatures for applications in room temperature detectors. Also
includes understanding application of I&D devices in high power RF systems.
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A03.05 – Carbon-based Materials
Research to understand the electronic characteristics of carbon60, carbon suspensions, diamonds and
diamond coatings which may benefit defence systems. Research to identify and understand organic
semiconductors and optical polymer matrices for electronic and optoelectronic effects.
A03.06 – Superconducting Materials
Research to evaluate thin films for microwave sensing and signal processing. Research to understand
wire fabrication technologies for electric power applications. Also includes developing
superconducting materials for mine-CM magnetic sweeping and for high power RF systems. Also
includes research to develop HTS materials for ESM-Comms, and ESM-non Comms.systems.
A03.07 – Magnetic Materials
Research to understand magnetic behaviour of thin film magnetic materials for use in sensors and in
signature reducing applications. Also includes "smart" magnetic materials which may find application
in HF acoustic transducers used for MCM sonars.
A03.08 – 1D & 2D Materials
Research to understand and evaluate the electronic characteristics of the materials such as
unidimensional (1D) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and two-dimensional (2D) like graphene due to their
superior electrical properties (exhibiting room temperature ballistic transport) which allow for
fabrication of faster and more power-efficient electronics.
A04 – Photonic/Optical Materials & Device Technology
A04.01 – Optical Materials & Devices
Research to evaluate and analyse optical components, splitters and couplers. Also includes work on
optical materials for wideband RF fibre optic links and fibre optics for communications, in particular
with UUVs, underwater weapons, anti-tank missiles, hydrophone arrays and in data transmission
systems. Also includes research to understand design and fabrication of optics for use in demanding
defence applications, and materials for both lenses and their coatings.
A04.02 – IR/Visible/UV Detector Materials & Devices
Research to evaluate and analyse high performance photon detectors, wide field detectors (small
pixels, large number of pixels), highly sensitive detection (for high SNR and low light illumination). Also
includes optical devices for high-speed detection, optical switching, and infrared detection on SiGe,
ferroelectrics and InSb arrays.
A04.03 – Non-Linear Optical Materials & Devices
Research to understand optical materials capable of fast switching, or for tuneable filters, optical
limiters and those showing non-linearities in liquid crystals, polymers and polar organic materials. Also
includes evaluations of NLOs for personnel protection systems. Also includes studies of non-linear
optical characteristics and susceptibility, harmonic generations, and devices for applications in
waveguides and tuneable lasers.
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A04.04 – Display Materials & Devices
Research to understand nanophase polydisperse tuneable filters, other novel liquid crystal materials
and new technologies like OLED, micro-LED offering benefits for future military display applications.
Research to evaluate the benefits in terms of DRI of new devices like head-up displays, small screens
with high resolution, high contrast and high brightness.
A04.05 – Lasers -all Types
Research to produce (in particular miniaturize – proposition of new architectures) and characterize
laser sources (from UV to FIR ) for applications in active imaging, laser countermeasure and laser
weapons systems, optical telecommunications. Research to evaluate the benefit for these latter
applications of new technologies like semi-conductor lasers (laser diodes), fibre lasers.
A04.06 – Non-Laser Devices
Research to understand certain specific structures in III-V materials and in porous silicon for light
emitting diodes, and structures in other types of LEDs .
A04.07 – Transparent Materials
Research to understand diamond and sapphire windows and coatings, and other materials which are
transparent to optical radiation and other electromagnetic radiation. Also includes studies of the
characteristics of materials which serve the above purpose and which are also capable of sustaining
mechanical and/or thermal loads, in applications like aircraft canopies, missile radomes, and sonar
domes. Also includes relevant frequency selective or responsive surfaces.
A04.08 – Quantum Optics
Research to understand the application of quantum optics to precision measurement. The use of
coherence of atomic pulses can be used for measurements of inertial accelerations, gravity and
rotation. Quantum technology will be essential in designing the next generation of accelerometers and
gyroscopes.
A05 – Electronic, Electrical & Electromechanical Device Technology
A05.01 – Device Concepts and Fabrication
Research to evaluate and analyse technologies for application in novel IR and EO devices like displays.
Also includes process technologies required to fabricate flexible and stretchable devices to be
seamlessly integrated with soft and curvilinear human skin or clothes (such as electronic devices
capable of storing and processing data – wearable computing devices), and characterisation of device
structures, including hybrid structures and nanotechnology developments. Also includes studies of
micro-structured and deformable surfaces to control the scattering direction of incident radiation for
stealth purposes. Also includes devices for applications in high power RF systems. Also includes MEMS
fabrication technology and device developments which give rise to novel luminescence effects.
A05.02 – Device Packaging
Research to understand application of new technologies to package system-on-chips, ASIC, ASSP and
RFCMOS devices as well as MMICs and other RF power components at the prototype stage, and also
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when applied to multichip modules. It includes novel wafer-level-packaging (WLP), 2.5D and 3D
integration, opto / MEMS integration. Also includes novel packaging requirements for bio-compatible
Si and micro-sensors. Work to improve ruggedization of devices is also included.
A05.03 – Device Integration/Reliability
Research to evaluate and analyse defects in electronic components, device obsolescence tracking
processes, specifications, and tests for reliability, quality and fitness for purpose. Also includes
integration of discrete devices in silicon-based materials and in other types of semiconductors. Also
includes work to understand the requirements for devices in applications like high power RF systems
and ASIC devices handling large amounts of sonar data.
A05.04 – Electrochemical Energy Conversion Fuel Cells
Research to understand fuel cell systems, fuel reforming, fuel storage (hydrogen or alternatives like
methanol, ammonia or ethanol) and system integration issues (including necessary conversion of
electrical power), related to all types of integrated hybrid and all-electric propulsion applications and
for all other types of power systems (e.g. high power pulsed systems). Also includes fuel cell technology
for man-portable systems. Research on this topic should be done in close connection withA05.13 –
Electrochemical Energy Storage - Batteries, as Fuel Cells generate the electrical energy that will be
stored in Batteries. Experiences of Fuel Cell Technologies for submarines should also be considered.
A05.05 – Solar Cells
Research to understand organic solar cells for affordable, lightweight, flexible integrated power
supplies, and to underpin capability to evaluate and analyse solar cells for satellite applications. Also
includes research into photovoltaic cells for defence applications for storing, conserving and
dispatching energy produced with solar energy generation technologies using innovative energy
management systems. In addition, thermal Energy Storage Systems (solar collectors, heat pumps, hot
water production) should be considered.
A05.06 – RF Power Sources & Devices
Research to give ability to evaluate and analyse solid state materials (like SiC) and RF power devices
e.g. amplifiers and circuits (from UHF/VHF to microwave and millimetre wave, and THz), novel
architectures for application in radar, communication and ECM systems.
A05.07 – Acoustic Power Sources & Devices
Research to understand acoustic power sources with high power and wide bandwidth as well as
compact acoustic sources for application in active sonar systems.
A05.08 – Other Electrical Power Systems & Devices
Energy harvesting and scavenging, address the challenge of eliminating or reducing the power source
or wiring requirements and lowering the logistic burden from supplying power (including batteries) to
remote or on the move equipment and devices. In this context, this refers to research to understand
developments of innovative electrical power converting devices, such as power electronics and
complete electrical energy systems, for incorporation into a variety of mobile defence equipment
requiring standalone energy sources. This includes associated test activities, predictive modelling and
simulation and standardization. Also includes research and improvement of all dedicated electrified
systems and components, power electronics such as inverter technology or DC-DC converters, as well
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as energy management systems (electrical machines are considered under topic A05.09 – Electric
Machines and Actuators). Research on the digitization and increasing interconnection of electrical
vehicle systems and their sub-systems, taking into account redundancy aspects as well as condition
monitoring and status reporting (the specifics regarding weapon systems are considered in section
B03.08) Also includes the work on safety, reliability and maintainability of electrified ground vehicle
systems with higher voltage levels (beyond ELV). Also includes the research on new materials (SiC, GaN
on SiC, GaN on diamond), components and manufacturing processes related to electrical power
systems.
A05.09 – Electric Machines and Actuators
Research to understand and evaluate technology for electric machines (motors and generators) and
other electromechanical actuators required in a wide range of demanding military applications. Also
includes associated test activities, predictive modelling and simulation and standardization. This also
includes the improvement of electrical power generation systems based on stationary and vehicle-
integrated generators (e.g. for hybrid vehicles), start-stop and starter-generator systems and their
system integration. Also includes the research and improvement of servo drives and electromechanical
actuators and their system integration. Also includes the research on new materials and manufacturing
processes (e.g. additive manufacturing of magnetics and coil windings etc.). Also includes research for
alternatives to permanent magnet stator avoiding rare earths. Electric Motors are already in use in
several classes of Naval Combatants. Further R+D should focus on power efficiency and scaling effects
(smaller size of motors, but in higher quantity).
A05.10 – Inertial/Gravitational Devices
Research to understand and develop inertial and gravitational devices, particularly detectors, for use
in a variety of military applications such as guidance systems. Also includes work to apply silicon
microsystems technology for micro-accelerometers and micro-gyros, including embedded control and
signal processing electronics.
A05.11 – Energy Efficient Technologies
Energy efficiency is closely linked to security with issues such as security of supply, import
independence and safe production. As set out in the EU Global Strategy, given the changing security
and operating environment, the defence sector is likely to be deployed to increasingly harsh
environments with possible energy and water shortages. This will have implications for equipment and
personnel function, possibly resulting in increased power requirements because of climatic change and
average environmental limits being exceeded with greater frequency. Therefore Smart Grids solutions
integrating RES energy efficient technologies and legacy systems to increase and manage the grid
efficiently should be taken into consideration.
A05.12 – Energy Storage
Energy storage technologies should be investigated for appropriate use in military camps’ power
supply and demand management as part of intelligent energy management as well as in military
platforms including for hybrid power systems. The research should include hydrogen storage systems,
solid oxide fuel cell generating both electricity and hydrogen and fully integrated model of hydrogen
production, storage, transportation and utilisation for heat, power and mobility. Future energy storage
technologies research shall include supercapacitors (Ultra-capacitors, Lithium-ion Capacitors), to
highly constrained applications with requirements for high energy density.
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A05.13 – Electrochemical Energy Storage - Batteries
Research on the integration of effective, powerful, high density and reliable energy storage systems
and any power charging systems. Research on rechargeable batteries for the improvement of their
versatility and interchangeability across system boundaries within the scope of military use and their
simultaneous use in different mobile and stationary deployment scenarios, for dismounted, land,
maritime and air applications. This includes the improvement of battery management systems and
innovative system approaches (including hybrid technologies) to increase the lifetime of the batteries
(high number of cycles and calendar life). Also includes work on testing and standardisation of energy
storage systems. Also includes evaluation and analysis of power source integration using microsensors
for autonomous operation to monitor all issues relating to battery performance. Also includes the
analysis of innovative civil-developing energy storage technologies and their suitability for military
requirements (environments, robustness, safety, logistics etc.). Includes the research for the new
generation of supercapacitors. If applicable outgassing of batteries is also to be taken into account.
A05.14 – On Board High Energy Storage and Distribution System
There are a number of technologies requiring research for military applicability for more compact,
more efficient and reliable propulsion/drive systems, such as internal combustion engine optimisation,
turbocharging and engine downsizing, higher pressure ratio engines, hybrid engines and electric
engine systems. On-board high-power distribution electromagnetic management. Compact power
conversion technologies with wide band gap devices for higher voltage shipboard power distribution
systems. Power dense and efficient electrical backbone with dynamic reaction times. Dielectric
materials for bidirectional power control modules and development of power converters and power
management controllers. Components and methods to quickly detect and clear electrical faults and
replace slow-acting circuit breakers and protective relays (thus enabling safer operation, reducing arc
faults, and increasing the power density of the electrical system and overall power for mission loads).
High-power solid-state circuit breakers for shipboard power. Advanced power generation and energy
storage technologies for lithium-ion batteries, fuel cells, and ultracapacitors. Multifunction and
reconfigurable energy storage solutions for buffering pulse loads. Compact, large-format, module-
level, high-density tactical energy storage technologies. Development of hybrid polymer/ ceramic
dielectric materials and devices, supercapacitors, and electrochemical capacitors for auxiliary power
applications. Phase change heat transfer and materials with increased thermal conductivity for thermal
management. Hybrid polymer/ ceramic dielectric materials and devices, supercapacitors, and
electrochemical capacitors for auxiliary power applications. boron carbide, boron nitride, and
graphene for power electronics to enable higher voltages, frequencies, and temperatures.
Identification/development of new materials with higher thermal conductivity and a lower cost than
standard wide band gap semiconductor materials. Manufacturing techniques that process materials
to modify their surface structure to enable tailored heat transfer properties. New phase change
substances that absorb heat by changing the phase of the material. Artificial intelligent controls using
deep learning neural networks for load-levelling and high-power switches and controls. Photonic
crystals and plasmonic sensors for diagnostic systems for high-temperature systems. Modelling and
simulation of the power and thermal management and controls systems as part of the platform.
Includes research on superconducting engines.
A05.15 – BioMEMS / Bio Sensors
Research to understand developments of innovative BioMEMS / bio sensors devices including pressure
sensors, microphones, inertial MEMS, microfluidic chips, microdispensers, optical MEMS, MUT flow
meters, gas and humidity sensors integrated or used in the life science, healthcare and environmental
domains and applicable for defence (like for CBRN applications).
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A06 – Fuels, Energetic Materials and Plasma Technology
A06.01 – Propellants
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse propellant materials for weapons systems applications
and for compliance with OB and CINO policy on handling and use of propellant materials. Also includes
use of predictive modelling in the characterisation of new propellants. Also includes research leading
to improved fuels for ramjets. Also includes technologies applicable to environmentally-friendly
disposal procedures at end of service life.
A06.02 – Conventional Fuels
Research to aid the evaluation and analysis of fuels used in all defence equipment, for compliance with
OB and CINO policy/EU Green Deal aspects. Also includes work to understand problems relating to fuel
faults and failures, and hazard management processes. Research to improve capability to specify,
conduct approval and quality assessments, and evaluate products and equipment during working life.
A06.03 – Non-Conventional Fuels
Research includes biofuels, artificial leaf from the sun light and carbon dioxide, the production of
biofuels using enzymes, bacteria or algae, flying wind power and other new ways to produce wind
energy, piezoelectrical energy sources, harvesting of kinetic energy, hybrid/alternative energy sources.
A06.04 – Explosives
Research to aid the evaluation and analysis of explosive materials used in weapons systems and
armour applications, and for compliance with OB and CINO policy on the handling and use of energetic
materials for defence purposes. Also includes research to improve understanding of detonics and use
of predictive modelling. Also includes modelling of blast and shrapnel effects. Also includes research
needed to address disposal issues at end of service life.
A06.05 – Pyrotechnics
Research to understand application of pyrotechnics and nano-thermites in weapons systems,
countermeasures, underwater mine disposal, and for compliance with OB and CINO policy for handling
and use of pyrotechnic materials. Also includes behavioural studies of materials used for initiators and
as obscurants, and the use of predictive modelling of pyrotechnics. Also includes research to address
disposal issues relevant to pyrotechnics at end of their service life.
A06.06 – Plasma Techniques
Research to understand plasmas which have potential defence uses, such as in ETC gun systems. Also
includes research to understand intense light propagation, absorption and scattering effects in
plasmas, and interactions of plasmas with all forms of matter. Also includes research to address plasma
techniques for explosives and plasma techniques for inert materials.
A06.07 – Explosives Detection Techniques
Includes research using active optical sensing and surface enhanced Raman effects for chemical
detection purposes. Also includes research on Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR), Magnetic
Resonance, THz technologies, Mid-infrared Spectroscopy and Radar to enhance detection capability
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applied to both bulk and trace detection techniques for explosives. Also includes work on bio-
engineered organisms for use in explosive detection systems and related degradation determination
activities. Also includes research on IED detection thorough Ground Penetrating Radars (GPRs),
mechanical components and through techniques based on electromagnetic effects, neutron
generation, directed energy detonation, etc.
A06.08 – Ignition Techniques
Includes research to address igniters, EBW, EFI, ignition trains, fuse, primary explosive, detonation cord
blasting cap, electrical ignition, optical ignition and novel ignition methods.
A06.09 – Energetic Materials Production Technique
Research addressing new production techniques for Energetic Materials, such as additive
manufacturing (3D printing), flow chemistry, continuous (co-)extrusion of gun propellants, Resonant
Acoustic Mixing (RAM), among others. Also includes research on safer and improved control of
production methods.
A06.10 – Characterization of Energetic Materials
Research to improve methods and techniques to characterize energetic materials concerning safety,
sensitivity, combustion, detonation, thermal properties, etc.
A06.11 – Sustainable and Synthetic Fuels
Research to aid the replacement of conventional fossil fuels such as hydrocarbon fuels refined from
fossil sources (e.g. gasoline, diesel and kerosene) by synthetic fuels (biofuels, and e-fuels), Ammonia
(NH3), On board Hydrogen production (bioethanol reforming, methanol reforming, metal hydrure
hydrogen storage) with equal physical properties but produced sustainably (green fuels) and with
minimum CO2 emission footprint.
A06.12 – Novel Energetic Materials
Research of new energetic materials formulation, aiming at improved performance, less toxicity and
more environmentally friendly (green), while maintaining a certain level of insensitivity towards
external stimuli. Also includes investigation of alternative substances, to replace those limited by legal
regulations.
A07 – Chemical, Biological & Medical Materials
A07.01 – Chemical Agent Defence, Precursors & Related Materials
Research to aid the ability to identify, analyse and evaluate chemical materials which might be used as
a threat against the EU. Also includes research to understand toxicity, producibility and properties of
chemicals, and analyses of how such agents might be used, and to maintain the ability to predict the
consequences of their use. Research to maintain expertise to specify detection, protection and medical
countermeasures. Also includes work to understand pathology and handling of supertoxic chemicals.
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A07.02 – Biological Agent Defence, Precursors & Related Materials
Research to aid the ability to identify, analyse and evaluate biological materials which might be used
as a threat against the EU. Also includes research to understand toxicity, producibility and properties
of biological materials, and analyses of how such agents might be used, and to maintain the ability to
predict the consequences of their use. Research to maintain expertise to specify detection, protection
and medical countermeasures. Also includes work to understand in vitro, pathology and handling of
highly infectious pathogens.
A07.03 – Mid-Spectrum Agent Defence
Research to aid the ability to identify, analyse and evaluate those materials that are produced from
biological sources, such as biotoxins and bioregulators, which have severe toxic effects on personnel,
and may be used as threat against the EU Also research to maintain the capability to predict the
probable consequence of their use in the military environment. Also research to maintain expertise to
specify detection of MSA, protection from MSA and appropriate medical countermeasures.
A07.04 – Chemical & Biological Detection Techniques
Research to maintain expertise in CB agent materials and toxic chemicals detection techniques,
particularly monitoring levels of hazard, identifying the agent and establishing the exposure period
retrospectively. Also includes research into the physics of aerosol collection and characterisation, and
application of MS and IMS techniques to the analysis process. Also research to support capabilities in
genetic engineering and amplification, antibody/antigen interactions, gene probes and biosensor
transduction. Also includes work using novel silicon sensor devices, such as bio-compatible (more
applications at topic A05.15 – BioMEMS / Bio Sensors) porous silicon sensors, and the use of optical
sensing and surface enhanced Raman effects.
A07.05 – Chemical Research for non-CBD Applications
Research to understand toxicology and safety issues relating to non-CB chemicals used in a wide range
of defence equipment. Also includes work on the behaviour of fire protection coatings and maintaining
abilities to specify fire resistant materials employed in ships, aircraft and AFVs. Also includes research
to aid the analysis and evaluation of new materials to be used as alternatives to halons and other
materials prohibited by the Montreal Protocol. Includes research into monitoring techniques for
submarine atmospheres, and research into advanced chemical analysis techniques applicable to
defence-related materials.
A07.06 – Medical Products and Materials
Research to evaluate and analyse blood products and other important medical materials, including
biomimetics and other bio-inspired materials for medical purposes. Also includes work on vaccines,
prophylaxis, other disease controlling substances and portable medical diagnostic devices. Also
includes work on synthetic biology to produce personalized antibiotics.
A07.07 – Synthetic Biology Technologies
Research and development of biological parts, devices and systems, including synthetic cartilage in
human joints, biobots, artificial muscles, artificial & self-renewing skin, tissue engineering and other
complex gene networks.
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A07.08 – CBRN and Nanotechnology Developments
Research to evaluate and analyse nanotechnology advances for application in novel devices,
decontamination techniques, protection equipment’s, and other relevant themes regarding to CBRN
safety. Also includes process technologies required to fabricate advanced products and protection
equipment with innovative properties (self-sensing, self-healing, self-cleaning, self-decontaminating,
antifouling and others), and their characterisation.
A07.09 – Medical Research and MedTech
Research to understand the requirements regarding medical devices in current and future battlefields.
This includes research on new technology improving military medical care and medical training as well
as technology for autonomous medical capability support. This also includes autonomous medical
evacuation and medical robotics for combat casualty care.
A08 – Computing Technologies & Mathematical Techniques
A08.01 – Software Engineering
Research to understand software systems engineering, coupled with diverse domain understanding in
order to advise on software integration processes, Quality Assessment (QA), COTS product integration,
development of algorithms, techniques, models and software engineering processes applicable for
radar, and guidance and control applications. Research to understand simulation language
developments and their benefits to military systems. Research on algorithms for automatic target
detection, tracking, recognition and identification. Research on software systems that implement
models of neural systems (for perception, motor control or multisensory integration) - Neuromorphic
computing. Also includes work to understand the behaviour of relevant types of embedded software
and time-critical aspects of middleware, also for edge processing.
A08.02 – Protocol Technology
Research to understand protocols for satellite and terrestrial communications systems management
and control, relevance of civil protocols and their interaction with military networks, including LANs
and WANs. Research on Internet Protocols technologies and next generation networks, also includes
migration technologies. Research to aid evaluation and analysis of protocols relevant to
communications and communications design for battlefield use. Also includes research into
Distributed Interactive Simulation protocols. Also includes research to understand the role of
middleware (transaction managers) in defence networked information systems.
A08.03 – COTS and OSS Assessment
Research to understand the implications, behaviour and integration of Commercial Off-The-Shelf
(COTS) and Open-Source Software (OSS) components in defence systems. This includes release
management ensuring functionality as well as freedom of risks (backdoors, viruses, restriction of
functionalities, data transfer to the vendors or developers etc.). Also includes compliance and
licensing, maintenance and help on make or buy/use decisions.
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A08.04 – Architectures
Research to understand architecture systems and parallel computing developments. Research on
emerging paradigms that seamlessly integrates large number of smart objects with the internet,
interlinking the physical and the cyber worlds and keeping them in a tight and continuous interaction
(by example IoT - internet of things). Research on framework developments that allows data to be
shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries (by example semantic
web). Also includes the design of Distributed systems. Research also includes the military Multi-domain
Operations Clouds (combat cloud).
A08.05 – High Integrity and Safety Critical Computing
Research to understand high integrity hardware and software and their applications in defence
equipment. Includes new developments in safety critical software (SCS), particularly new tools and
methodologies used to investigate fault tolerance/detection, atomicity and liveness. Also includes
work on software quality and reliability issues in SCS and also work to improve knowledge of fault
tolerant computing and fault tolerant software.
A08.06 – Secure Computing Techniques
Research to understand secure operational procedures and secure segregation of information,
including infosec and vulnerabilities at all hardware and software levels of communications and
information systems, and understanding the nature of Information Warfare (IW), high integrity
software, open systems integration, architectures and standards. Research to ensure compliance with
international standards and best practices. Also includes quantum computing techniques, malware
detection techniques and methods through different tools and their implementation, and other
intrusion detection systems.
A08.07 – Encryption / Crypto Technologies
Research on different data encryption / decryption methods (by example quantum technologies,
homomorphic encryption) in the context of information warfare processes and INFOSEC. It includes
the understanding of quantum optical processing for secure communications systems, system
vulnerabilities, and encryption work. Also work to understand interaction of communications systems
design and encryption techniques.
A08.08 – Mathematical Modelling Development
Research to understand and develop new modelling techniques which advance a wide range of
defence applications. For example, new approaches to hydrocode and analytical modelling to underpin
CE warhead research and attack of future targets. Includes new modelling approaches in/for synthetic
environments, human factors, communications networks and related issues. Also includes work to
improve the modelling of risk assessment techniques. Also includes work on Artificial Intelligence (AI),
Machine Learning (ML) and autonomous decision methods with and without human in the loop
approach.
A08.09 – OA Tools and Techniques
Research to aid the evaluation and analysis of OA/OR techniques for application to security or defence
issues, particularly those which allow more effective provision of advice to MoD. Also includes the
exploitation of object-oriented techniques within a modelling framework applied to all levels of
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communications, information systems networks and management, and to provide rapid prototyping
and cost-effective re-use of validated model elements.
A08.10 – Cyber Defence
Research on novel concepts to improve interoperability, capabilities and test and validate concepts
through experimentation. Research to understand technical vulnerabilities in systems and software.
Also includes emergent and changing properties of cyberspace itself. Research on systematic
properties of cyberspace. Research on security standards and tools via promoting those already in
existence or developing specific ad-hoc standards. Also includes information on equipment solutions
and pooling and sharing for cyber defence capabilities. Also includes to research on generate automate
actions to cyber-attacks. Also includes cyber hardening
A08.11 – Software Verification and Accreditation Techniques
Research on the verification and accreditation of software, but not the validation of models which
should be carried out within the appropriate technology area.
A08.12 – Quantum Computing Technologies
Research to understand the use of quantum physics, also called quantum mechanics, to perform
calculations in a manner radically different than conventional models of computation. Also includes
novel concepts related to advancing quantum computing technologies, secure computing, and
cryptography and quantum key distribution. Also includes understanding laws of quantum mechanics
to process information. Also includes quantum nanotechnologies.
A08.13 – High Power Computing
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
A08.14 – Multicore Systems
Research on transition from monocore, over dual-core, to modern multicore systems for safety-critical
aviation applications/computer technology, according to EU supply chain needed (chips, networks).
Furthermore, distributed electronics and computing/distributed control system are included in this
topic.
A09 – Information and Signal Processing Technology
A09.01 – Data & Information Management Technology
Research to understand data mining (from homogenous and heterogeneous information sources) and
automatic image retrieval based on content addressed coding. Also includes work to understand ILS
and CALS techniques and to maintain archival and current information databases concerning trials,
equipment and manufacturing. Also includes work to understand international standards and
codification bodies requirements. Also includes research to address the requirements of military
mission simulators in the air environment, and real-time database structures. Includes new data and
information storage techniques, including data warehousing technologies. Includes research into new
data and information compression techniques. Also includes work on information management and
information compression techniques, and application of IM techniques to knowledge-based
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engineering designs. Also includes research to support the exploitation of middleware in defence
database management systems.
A09.02 – Digital Signal Processing Technology
Research to understand DSP for high-throughput MCM sonars and UUVs., underwater weapon homing
and countermeasure algorithms and systems. Also includes DSP techniques in relation to radar
systems, weapon dynamics, guidance and weapon/target interactions. Also includes work to
understand application of DSP to Satcom EPM and multifunction RF modems, to future software radio
concepts, EPM and adaptive systems concepts for tactical communications. Research to understand
novel mathematical techniques and to aid the evaluation and analysis of DSP in systems involving PAR,
sonar, and communications hardware. Also includes fast DSP techniques, signal correlation, single flux
quantum logic in high temperature superconducting devices, and Focal Plane Processing techniques.
Also includes data compression/decompression techniques for video and other applications. Also
includes research on processing methods of spectrum sensing and digital signal processing steps for
cognitive radio networks.
A09.03 – Optical Signal Processing Technology
Research to understand pattern and target recognition for repeaters, and jammers, signal generation.
Research to aid evaluation and analysis of adaptive optics and distributed apertures. Also includes
work to understand use of novel components for implementation in optical processing algorithms.
Also includes Optical Surveillance Platform Optical Signal Processing in the context of prototyping
ground stations. Also includes data compression and decompression techniques for video and other
applications and compressive sensing algorithms to enhance DRIT capabilities. Also includes study and
optimization of coding and link modulation to reduce fading due to propagation effects.
A09.04 – Image/Pattern Processing Technology
Research to understand IR focal plane arrays and passive mm wave imaging, making use of advanced
super resolution algorithms. Also includes relevant mathematical techniques, and hardware and
software implementation. Also includes work to understand HF sonar imaging, and real time image
processing to support unmanned vehicles, machine vision and AFV crew aids. Also includes research
to improve understanding of algorithms used for target detection, recognition and identification
purposes in weapon and countermeasure system applications, and also used for weapon dynamics,
guidance and weapon/target interactions. Radar/optical/IR image processing from satellites for
observation purposes is also included.
A09.05 – Speech & Natural Language Processing Technology
Research to understand novel mathematical techniques, requirement assessment, fast prototyping,
language modelling, hardware and applications evaluation. Research to aid the development of
speech/voice recognition systems for the air environment and for AFV crew station applications.
A09.06 – Optimisation & Decision Support Technology
Research to understand AI and expert techniques for support of data fusion, decision support
techniques and their application to satcom system management. Also includes AI/ET in the context of
information management, MCM sonar classification systems, combat management systems and
planning aids, torpedo homing and simulations, and in wargames supporting analysis of security or
other defence issues. Also includes machine intelligence developments, and decision planning aids.
Also includes research to develop techniques to aid better situational awareness. Research to
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understand optical processing components and algorithms for neural network implementation. Also
includes work to understand the uses of Neural Nets in HUMS, for example, fatigue and load
exceedance monitoring. Also includes work to understand application of novel mathematical
techniques specific to NNs used in a range of weapons systems, simulations and wargames. Also
includes work on neuro-fuzzy systems and recurrent NNs.
A09.07 – Information & Data Fusion Technology
Research to understand applications of I&DF techniques in multispectral sensor systems, sensor
integration and picture compilation, anti-stealth and target identification, and various weapons
systems issues such as guidance, dynamics, and weapon/target interactions. Research to aid
evaluation and analysis of data fusion applied to combat aircraft and sensor systems, including
software, simulation and flight trial techniques. Also includes work to understand human factors
requirements for data fusion. Also includes work to support CALS and CIRPLS activities. Also includes
work on decentralised architectures and emergent behaviour.
A09.08 – Cognitive Systems Computing
Research on technology platforms which are based on scientific disciplines such as artificial intelligence
or signal processing. Also includes machine learning, big data analytics, language processing, deep
learning systems, predictive analytics based on self-organizing data. Also includes self-learning systems
that use data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing. Also includes creating
automated IT systems that are capable of solving problems without requiring human assistance. Also
includes machine learning algorithms
A09.09 – Other Information Processing Technology
Research to understand applications of OIPT to all aspects of weapon systems, simulations and
wargames, and to aid the evaluation and analysis of non-spatial recognition algorithms as applied to
long range targeting systems, and to model the optical properties of complex pigments and binders.
Also includes fuze algorithms.
A10 – Human Sciences
A10.01 – Human Information Processing
Studies of human sensory, perceptual and cognitive processes. Includes work on modelling of the
human visual system; human error and reliability; studies of workload reduction for crew systems in
military platforms and installations; hypothesis formation; human decision making and situational
awareness; and principles of human interaction with systems. Research on the effects of the
Augmented Reality (AR) in the improvement of the situational awareness and its influence on the
decision-making process. Research on human information processing based on data gathered through
manned and unmanned teaming. Research on multi modal Human-Machine interfaces (HMI).
A10.02 – Military Human Resources
Development of techniques for the recruitment, selection and retention of personnel. Includes work
on the management of equal opportunities; aptitude, personal qualities, and physical characteristics;
manpower modelling; and systems complementing.
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A10.03 – Teams, Organisations & Cultures
Studies of groups ranging from small teams to complete societies. Includes work on team process and
effectiveness; impact of command and leadership style on organisational behaviour; human
determinants of collective performance - e.g. morale; studies of the impact of cultural norms on social
behaviour; and studies of influences on social perception, such as work underpinning Psychological
Operations.
A10.04 – Human Survivability, Protection & Stress Effects
Studies relating to the impact of stressors on human performance, behaviour and well-being. Includes
work on the impact of irregular duty schedules; sleep loss; physical and mental fatigue; impact of
thermal strain; clothing assemblies; decompression and diving studies; post-traumatic stress effects;
fear; head impact modelling; prevention of musculo-skelatal injuries; and studies of the human
performance implications of protection against environmental and weapon threats.
A10.05 – Individual & Team Training
Studies of skills and physical training techniques. Includes management of skill acquisition and skill
fade; Crew Resource Management techniques; training needs analysis; and physical fitness training.
(Excludes Skills Training systems B08.01 – Skills Training systems).
A10.06 – Human Factors Integration
Development of methods, tools, and processes to support the integration of people with complex
systems. Includes modelling of human performance; development of design standards; kinetic body
modelling and anthropometry; and techniques for the allocation of functions to systems. Includes
research into applications to integration of speech, performance of MCM sonar, and visual displays.
Also includes work on human-interface design and evaluation, such as vision modelling studies,
ergonomics and interfaces that provide a direct communication between brain and computerized
devices for the identification and assessment of (i.e. CBRN) threats. Moreover, to consider
neurotechnologies which are explicitly related to cognitive functions such as communication, memory,
decision making, attention, situation awareness, social interactions, complex problem solving, which
are all and specifically relevant in the military domain both in offensive and defensive scenarios, by
using Brain Machine Interface technologies and invasive/no-invasive brain stimulation.
A10.07 – Collective Training
Studies of techniques for training collective performance. Includes collective non-real-time training;
after action review; and metrics of collective performance. This will allows to form teams that be
capable to be fully immersed in their mission and to work effectively as a team with a good
understanding of the tasks required.
A10.08 – Human Performance Enhancement
Studies of interventions excluding training (A10.05 – Individual & Team Training and A10.07 –
Collective Training) and protection (A10.04 – Human Survivability, Protection & Stress Effects), that
enhance individual physical and mental performance. Includes work on nutrition; pharmacological
agents; ergogenic aids; and other treatments for to enhance human performance, including full
understanding of risks to health through continuous personal health monitoring. Also includes
research on biometrics applications, simulation and mapping of brain to detect changes in soldiers’
physiology and predict humans and groups behaviour from background data. Also to consider tools to
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improve wellbeing and alertness referring to devices either to maintain or to enhance the vital
functions (first and second order), such as respiration, blood circulation and consciousness as well as
water-electrolyte and acid-base balance, kidney function and heat balance (wellbeing); and devices to
establish or enhance either the self-awareness or sensory perception with regards to the recognition
of vital signs and the surrounding environment. Includes research on smart textiles equipped with
sensors monitoring vital human performance data of persons (i.e. wearing CBRN-individual protective
equipment (IPE)) with the aim to extend the mission time through physical support (e.g. exoskeletons)
and improved mental performance (e.g. neuroenhancement).
A10.09 – Medical Sciences and Capabilities
The science of medical conditions and their treatment, as well as capabilities allowing diagnostics,
treatment, and decision support. This topic includes telemedicine and neurosciences.
A10.09.01 – Telemedicine
Medical decision support using telecommunication systems, algorithms or AI. Research to improve
telemedicine systems integrated in military platforms and infrastructures: communication solutions,
augmented reality for casualty assistance support, etc.
Medical staffing is an identified need in most countries. Enabling medical capabilities with decision
support based on telemedicine or artificial intelligence could improve first-responder care, triage, and
evacuation decisions. European interoperable medical decision support systems must be based on
national and European legislation as well as medical evidence and best practice.
A10.09.02 – Neuroscience
The science of the nervous system. It includes the study of neurological anatomy, the physiology and
pharmacology of nervous signal transmission, the biological neuronal network, as well as biological
cognitive sciences. Cognitive warfare (CW) neurosciences play an important role in the research of
cognitive resilience and neuroweapons.
A10.10 – Robotics in Medicine
Research on the use autonomous platforms could serve as vehicles of opportunity for Casualty
Evacuation (CASEVAC). Development of a common European autonomous CASEVAC standard would
allow the specification of CASEVAC capabilities for the procurement of future autonomous platforms.
Longer term developments should include dedicated Robotics Assisted Medical Evacuation (RASEVAC),
where autonomous platforms with medical robotics capabilities may start life-saving treatment during
the transport process. This should include robotic surgery and robotic prosthetics
A10.11 – Molecular Biology Technologies
Studies to evaluate the threat level from biological pathogens generated through DNA engineering,
bacterial transformation, transfection, chromosome integration, molecular hybridization, rewriting
DNA: mutations, random mutagenesis, point mutation, chromosome mutation.
A10.12 – Surgical Techniques and Medical Procedures
Research to evaluate and analyse non-CB medical defence issues such as treatment of battlefield
casualties affected by either conventional or novel weapons, using surgical and medical skills,
operating theatres, and mathematical modelling. Also includes work to understand ballistic and
explosive effects on human tissues, and the effects of hyperbaric oxygen treatment of soft tissue
injuries. This includes simulation techniques for training the battlefield and other casualties’
treatments.
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A10.13 – Human Health Physics
Research into the application of dosimetry techniques to assess the nature and scale of radiation
effects on military personnel. Also includes work to understand the use of epidemic modelling
including use of man as a detector.
A10.14 – Human Performance Monitoring Techniques
Research into techniques to sense and monitor the performance of personnel. Includes physiological
sensing and monitoring.
A10.15 – Human Factors in Manufacturing
Research into techniques that enhance human capabilities within the industrial workplace, both in the
design shop and on the factory floor. Also includes "time-and-motion" studies in the context of human
control over manufacturing processes.
A10.16 – Human Machine Teaming
Research includes the definition of a novel design and interaction principles for managing
automated/autonomous aircraft functions and cooperating with System-of-Systems teammates,
including adaptive interfaces can be defined as man-machine teaming (MMT). This theme addresses
the definition of a new paradigm of human-machine teaming in future collaborative and connected air
warfare. New generation military aircraft participating in collaborative air combat will require a human
system interface that enhances the awareness of the tactical situation and allows an ergonomic
cooperation between crews and machines for a safe flight and high performance in cooperation with
both manned and unmanned assets. This will cover human-machine/human-human/machine-
machine Teaming (HUM-T).
A10.17 – Cockpit Automation
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
A11 – Mechanical, Thermal & Fluid-Related Technologies & Devices
A11.01 – Mechanical/Hydraulic Technologies & Devices
Research in mechanical and hydraulic technologies and their application in a wide range of devices
used in land, sea or air systems. Also includes understanding, modelling and evaluation of devices such
as bearings, seals, clutches, actuators, pumps, etc
A11.02 – Lubrication Technology
Research to aid the evaluation and analysis of lubricants and lubricating systems used in defence
equipment under demanding conditions. Also includes work to understand problems relating to
lubrication faults and failures and associated hazards. Research to improve capability to specify,
conduct approval and quality assessments, and monitor performance of lubrication products and
systems throughout service life. Also includes new lubrication systems technologies. Also takes
account of future requirements from environmental protection for lubricants will be taken into
account.
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A11.03 – Thermal & Thermodynamic Technologies & Devices
Research in thermal and thermodynamic technologies and their application in a wide range of devices
used in land, sea and air systems. Also includes understanding, modelling and evaluation of
thermodynamic cycles, heat exchangers, thermal de-icing devices, etc. Also includes work on heat
transfer by conduction, convection and radiation. Also includes work into combustion processes typical
of gas turbines and conventional internal combustion engines.
A11.04 – Fluid Mechanics - Phenomenological and Experimental
Research to identify and understand phenomena in aerodynamics, gas dynamics and hydrodynamics,
e.g. vortex behaviour, flow separations, unsteady flows including cavitation, all other types of flows.
Also covers work in experimental facilities - wind tunnels; shock tubes; water tanks; etc. Also includes
work to understand the nature of facility testing, including wall interference corrections, support
interference corrections, non-intrusive measurements, balance design and calibration, pressure
measurements. Also includes work to support the testing of all types of fixed wing and rotorcraft
components such as intakes, afterbodies, propellors, helicopter rotors, isolated weapons, weapon
carriage and release, wing/body configurations, dynamic derivative, scale effect, and transition fixing.
Compliments CFD research in A11.05 – Fluid Dynamics Techniques.
A11.05 – Fluid Dynamics Techniques
Research to understand computational fluid dynamics, and to aid the evaluation and analysis of
hydrodynamic (aerodynamic respectively) performance of all types of marine (aerial respectively)
platforms. Also the evaluation and analysis of supercomputer outputs, fluid dynamic and numerical
mathematics in turbulence modelling, transition prediction, viscous flow, solution algorithms
(including high power computing – HPC), grid generation, CFD/CAD interfaces, GUI and data
interpretation/presentation. Also includes fluid dynamics for air vehicles (fixed wings and rotorcraft)
and the use of models to predict loads, signature, novel rotor and fixed wing technology and advanced
configurations, and the aerodynamic effects of icing on rotors and fixed wings. Also includes high
resolution CFD techniques (LES/DES) for the flow modelling for the acoustics.
A11.06 – Flow Control Technologies
Research to improve aerodynamic performance of systems through a local mechanical or fluidic action.
Targeted systems include wings, control surfaces, rotating components (rotors, fans, compressors…).
The research covers development, integration and test (numerical, wind tunnel and flight) of sensors,
actuators and control techniques.
A11.07 – Aeroacoustics Techniques
Research to establish the acoustic signature of all type of vehicles (land, sea, air) in all types of
environments. Includes noise source identification/characterisation, propagation and perceived noise
as well as noise reduction technologies development, through numerical and experimental means.
Also includes specific numerical developments in CAA (Computational Aero Acoustics).
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Chapter B. System-related Technologies
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Chapter B. Table of Contents
B01 – Lethality & Platform Protection .............................................................................................. 45
B01.01 – Warheads ....................................................................................................................... 45
B01.02 – Penetrators ..................................................................................................................... 45
B01.03 – IED Detection and Defeat Techniques ........................................................................... 45
B01.04 – Battle Damage Reduction Techniques ........................................................................... 45
B01.05 – Explosive Ordnance Disposal.......................................................................................... 45
B01.06 – Mine Detection and Clearance ....................................................................................... 45
B01.07 – Armour systems ............................................................................................................. 45
B01.08 – Defensive Aids Suite Systems ......................................................................................... 46
B01.09 – Other Platform Protection Measures ............................................................................. 46
B01.10 – Combat Management Systems ...................................................................................... 46
B01.11 – C4ISR ............................................................................................................................... 46
B02 – Propulsion and Powerplants ................................................................................................... 46
B02.01 – Gas Turbines ................................................................................................................... 46
B02.02 – Reciprocating and Rotary IC Engines .............................................................................. 47
B02.03 – Rocket Engines and Ramjets .......................................................................................... 47
B02.04 – Gun and Launch Tube Propulsion .................................................................................. 47
B02.05 – Electrical Propulsion - Rotary & Linear ........................................................................... 47
B02.06 – Transmissions and Powertrains...................................................................................... 47
B02.07 – Electromagnetic Launch ................................................................................................. 48
B02.08 – Ion Thrusters .................................................................................................................. 48
B02.09 – Nuclear Propulsion ......................................................................................................... 48
B02.10 – Air Propellers and Rotors ............................................................................................... 48
B02.11 – Advanced Propulsors and Propellers ............................................................................. 48
B02.12 – Final Drive - Wheels and Tracks ..................................................................................... 48
B02.13 – Alternative Propulsion Systems ..................................................................................... 48
B02.14 – Fission and Fusion .......................................................................................................... 48
B02.15 – Thrust Vectoring ............................................................................................................. 49
B02.16 – Variable Cycle Engine ..................................................................................................... 49
B02.17 – Hybrid Propulsion ........................................................................................................... 49
B02.18 – Supersonic Propulsion .................................................................................................... 49
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B02.19 – Hypersonic Propulsion ................................................................................................... 49
B02.20 – Scramjet.......................................................................................................................... 49
B02.21 – Green Naval Power Generation and Propulsion ............................................................ 49
B03 – Design Technologies for Platforms and Weapons .................................................................. 49
B03.01 – Aerodynamic Designs ..................................................................................................... 49
B03.02 – Hydrodynamic Designs ................................................................................................... 50
B03.03 – Structural Design ............................................................................................................ 50
B03.04 – Mechanical Designs ........................................................................................................ 50
B03.05 – Low Observability and Stealth Designs .......................................................................... 50
B03.06 – Ballistic Designs .............................................................................................................. 50
B03.07 – Thermal/Cryogenic/Power Management Designs ......................................................... 50
B03.08 – Electrical/Electronic Designs .......................................................................................... 51
B03.09 – Optical Designs ............................................................................................................... 51
B03.10 – Acoustic Designs ............................................................................................................. 51
B03.11 – Environmental Protection Designs ................................................................................. 51
B03.12 – Multidisciplinary Designs ............................................................................................... 51
B03.13 – Supersonic and Hypersonic Designs ............................................................................... 51
B04 – Electronic Warfare and Directed Energy Technologies ........................................................... 51
B04.01 – Directed Energy Technologies (DET) - RF ....................................................................... 51
B04.02 – Directed Energy Technologies (DET) - Lasers ................................................................. 52
B04.03 – Directed Energy Technologies (DET) - Other .................................................................. 52
B04.04 – Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) - RF .......................................................................... 52
B04.05 – IR/Visible/UV .................................................................................................................. 52
B04.06 – Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) - Acoustic ................................................................ 52
B04.07 – Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) - Magnetic and Electrical ........................................ 52
B04.08 – Electronic Support Measurement (ESM) - Communications ......................................... 52
B04.09 – Electronic Support Measurement (ESM) - Non-Communications ................................. 53
B04.10 – Electronic Protective measures (EPM) - RF .................................................................... 53
B04.11 – Electro Optical Protective Measures (EOPM) - IR/Visible/UV ........................................ 53
B04.12 – Electronic Protective measures (EPM) - Acoustic .......................................................... 53
B04.13 – Electronic Protective measures (EPM) - Magnetic and Electrical .................................. 53
B05 – Signature Control and Signature Reduction ............................................................................ 53
B05.01 – Radar Signatures ............................................................................................................ 53
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B05.02 – Laser Signatures ............................................................................................................. 53
B05.03 – Thermal / IR Signatures .................................................................................................. 53
B05.04 – Visible/UV Signatures ..................................................................................................... 54
B05.05 – Acoustic Signatures ........................................................................................................ 54
B05.06 – Electrical and Electrochemical Signatures ...................................................................... 54
B05.07 – Magnetic Signatures ....................................................................................................... 54
B06 – Sensor Systems ........................................................................................................................ 54
B06.01 – RF Sensors/Antennas - Active ........................................................................................ 54
B06.02 – RF Sensors/Antennas - Passive ....................................................................................... 55
B06.03 – Imaging Radars ............................................................................................................... 55
B06.04 – IR Sensors - Active .......................................................................................................... 55
B06.05 – IR Sensors - Passive ........................................................................................................ 55
B06.06 – Visible/UV Wave Sensors ............................................................................................... 55
B06.07 – Acoustic Sensors - Active ................................................................................................ 56
B06.08 – Acoustic Sensors - Passive .............................................................................................. 56
B06.09 – Non-Acoustic Sensors - Underwater .............................................................................. 56
B06.10 – Electrical & Electrochemical Sensors ............................................................................. 56
B06.11 – Magnetic Sensors ........................................................................................................... 56
B06.12 – CB Sensor Systems ......................................................................................................... 56
B06.13 – Explosive Detection Sensors ........................................................................................... 57
B06.14 – Microsensor Systems for Active Control of Structures .................................................. 57
B06.15 – Motion Sensor systems .................................................................................................. 57
B06.16 – Environmental Monitoring Systems ............................................................................... 57
B06.17 – Multispectral/Hyperspectral Imaging (VIS/IR/UV) ......................................................... 57
B06.18 – Nanosensors ................................................................................................................... 57
B07 – Guidance and Control systems for Weapons and Platforms .................................................. 58
B07.01 – Navigation systems ........................................................................................................ 58
B07.02 – Weapon Guidance and Control systems ........................................................................ 58
B07.03 – Platform Guidance and Control systems ........................................................................ 58
B07.04 – Dynamic Positioning ....................................................................................................... 58
B07.05 – Display systems .............................................................................................................. 58
B08 – Simulators, Trainers and Synthetic Environments .................................................................. 59
B08.01 – Skills Training systems .................................................................................................... 59
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B08.02 – Tactical/Crew Training systems ...................................................................................... 59
B08.03 – Command & Staff Training Systems ............................................................................... 59
B08.04 – Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality .......................................................................... 59
B08.05 – Synthetic Environments - Synthetic Force Generation .................................................. 59
B08.06 – Synthetic Environments - Natural Environment Generation ......................................... 60
B08.07 – Synthetic Environments - Management systems ........................................................... 60
B09 – Integrated Systems Technology .............................................................................................. 60
B09.01 – Systems Engineering and Integrated Systems Design .................................................... 60
B09.02 – Interoperability Standards ............................................................................................. 60
B09.03 – Radiation Hardening ....................................................................................................... 61
B09.04 – Robotics and Automated/Autonomous systems in Operational Systems ..................... 61
B09.05 – Manned and Unmanned Teaming ................................................................................. 61
B09.06 – Reliability and Maintainability of Systems ..................................................................... 61
B09.07 – Health Monitoring systems ............................................................................................ 62
B09.08 – Safety systems ................................................................................................................ 62
B09.09 – System Repair Technologies ........................................................................................... 62
B09.10 – Electromagnetic Compatibility ....................................................................................... 62
B09.11 – In-Service Data Capture systems .................................................................................... 62
B09.12 – Integrated System Testing and Evaluation ..................................................................... 62
B09.13 – Middleware systems ...................................................................................................... 63
B09.14 – Co-operative Systems Technologies............................................................................... 63
B10 – Communications and CIS-related Technologies ...................................................................... 63
B10.01 – Communications Systems - Below Microwave Frequencies .......................................... 63
B10.02 – Communications Systems - Micro and Millimetre Wave ............................................... 63
B10.03 – Optical Wireless Communications - IR/Visible/UV ......................................................... 63
B10.04 – Communications Systems - Acoustic .............................................................................. 64
B10.05 – Mission Type - Consequence Management ................................................................... 64
B10.06 – Communications & CIS Security Systems ....................................................................... 64
B10.07 – Command & Information Systems Integration .............................................................. 64
B10.08 – Distributed Networks ..................................................................................................... 64
B10.09 – Non-Cooperative Target Recognition ............................................................................. 65
B10.10 – Intelligent Technologies for Complex Systems .............................................................. 65
B10.11 – Geographic Information Systems ................................................................................... 65
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B10.12 – Optimisation, Planning & Decision Support Systems ..................................................... 65
B10.13 – Infrastructure to Support Information Management & Dissemination ......................... 65
B10.14 – Network Management Systems ..................................................................................... 65
B10.15 – Air Traffic Management Systems ................................................................................... 65
B10.16 – Communication Systems - CBRN Applications ............................................................... 66
B10.17 – Communication Systems - Casualty Rate Estimation Services ....................................... 66
B10.18 – Space Traffic Management ............................................................................................ 66
B11 – Personnel Protection Systems ................................................................................................. 66
B11.01 – Physical Protection systems - Threat ............................................................................. 66
B11.02 – Physical Protection systems - Environment ................................................................... 66
B11.03 – CBR & N Protection systems - Physical .......................................................................... 67
B11.04 – CBR & N Countermeasures - Medical ............................................................................. 67
B11.05 – Protection Systems – Architecture ................................................................................. 67
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B01 – Lethality & Platform Protection
B01.01 – Warheads
Research to understand, model, evaluate and analyse all types of warhead designs employing chemical
energy (CE) and electromagnetic energy (EM) in the context of armour/anti-armour interactions,
weapon/target interactions, attack of hard/buried targets and underwater weapon applications,
including the behaviour of the debris cloud and any unwanted effect. Also includes work on insensitive
munition designs. Also includes work to support quality assurance of all types of warhead components.
Also includes research relating to fuzing, as a device to activate the warhead, such as microwave fuzes
and all types of fuze systems and arming systems. Also includes research on solid state devices for
safety and arming purposes, "smart" functionality, and application of electrical, optical and other novel
methods of initiation of propellants and charges. Also includes the environmental effect study and
resistance of warhead against vibrations, shock, extreme temperatures, EMC and EMC exposures.
B01.02 – Penetrators
Research to understand, model, evaluate and analyse all types of penetrator designs employing kinetic
energy (KE) in the context of armour/anti-armour and hard/buried target interactions. Also includes
relationship between microstructure and performance.
B01.03 – IED Detection and Defeat Techniques
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
B01.04 – Battle Damage Reduction Techniques
Research to understand and reduce the vulnerability of military platform structures and installations
to all types of penetrative and blast or shock wave effects. Also includes performance degradation and
operational analysis.
B01.05 – Explosive Ordnance Disposal
Research to support the evaluation and analysis of land-based countermine technology. Also includes
work to understand all forms of EO and related devices requiring disposal, including underwater EOD.
Also includes research on disposal systems for energetic materials and other munition materials in
accordance with environmental legislation requirements.
B01.06 – Mine Detection and Clearance
Research to evaluate and analyse counter-mine technologies covering mechanical, magnetic, RF
detection and manual, remote controlled and autonomous neutralisation systems and platforms. Also
includes work on diver signatures, diver communication, mine hunting and avoidance sonars,
sweeping, UUV systems and MCM reconnaissance and disposal systems. Also includes research on
landmine detection, neutralisation and route marking systems. Also includes work on advanced
handheld landmine detection systems. Also includes work to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) supported
systems for the image processing and pattern recognition.
B01.07 – Armour systems
Research to model, evaluate and analyse all types of armour systems, such as hard armour for vehicles,
soft armour for personnel and SAPI plates. in the context of armour/anti-armour and hard/buried
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target interactions and behaviour of the debris cloud (including UXO removal). Also includes work on
heavy armours and electric armours, including materials behaviour studies under extreme stress/strain
rate conditions. Also includes mine and improvised explosive device (IED) effects simulation work and
protective measures modelling. Also includes understanding anti-torpedo hardkill devices for ships and
submarines.
B01.08 – Defensive Aids Suite Systems
Research to understand and improve the performance of all elements in DAS systems, including
identification, recognition and semi or fully automatic countermeasures. Research on the related
sensor data and AI algorithms including networking and the potential use of UAVs and advanced
pyrotechnic countermeasures. Also includes work on platforms integration and compatibility with
other systems to ensure that any conflicts between the DAS system and the platform's signature
control techniques are minimised. Also includes DAS/CDAS aspects of weapon/target interactions.
B01.09 – Other Platform Protection Measures
Research to understand and improve techniques and procedures to protect sea systems platforms
from threat weapons such as torpedoes such as work on netting techniques. Also includes research to
analyse and develop extensive sensor equipment and threat detection systems for active counter
measures. Also includes analysis of actions for recovering (through reconfiguration, repair and
replacement) lost fighting, sailing or floating capability against a range of threats. Also includes
research on platform protection measures not mentioned specifically elsewhere in these notes. Also
includes smart countermeasures against torpedoes.
B01.10 – Combat Management Systems
Research into systems able to support decision making processes in operations through the integration
of all weapons, sensors and data generated. They include specific consoles and actuators to display
tactical data and to activate firing systems.
B01.11 – C4ISR
Research to evaluate and analyse rapid and accurate decision-making and proactive decision support
tools for C2/CS/ISR in Big Data environments, for manned and unmanned aerial, land-based, surface
(ships, boats, UAV, USV) and underwater vehicles (submarines, UUV). Includes also multi sensor, high
speed data fusion engines.
B02 – Propulsion and Powerplants
B02.01 – Gas Turbines
Research to evaluate and analyse compressor and turbine component characteristics, power and heat
management aspects/heat exchangers, combustor technologies, aero engine emissions, noise
prediction and reduction, aero engine controls and system simulation plus auxiliary systems. Also
includes system integration aspects such as intakes, nozzles and ducting concerning diverse platforms
and related structural design aspects. Also includes variable cycle engine/variable engine component
technologies. Also includes improved testing techniques to determine engine performance parameters
and component/engine part characteristics. Also includes work to improve the resistance of gas
turbines to effects such as erosion, wear, foreign/domestic object damage and environmental effects,
corrosion in particular. Also includes supply chain aspects at technology level. Further research
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activities could focus on the usage of Gas turbines as power generators for electric or hybrid propulsion
systems and their optimization towards the use of synthetic fuels. Scaling effects (smaller size but
higher quantity) could also be considered.
B02.02 – Reciprocating and Rotary IC Engines
Research to understand integration aspects, as well as improving efficiency, of IC engines for platform
and weapons systems. Also includes research on engines to give a high performance irrespective of
fuel type. Also includes research on reducing vibration and/or noise generation in these engines
(acoustic/hydroacoustic signature). Research on operation with alternative fuels like synthetic fuels
and hydrogen. Research on transferability of developments from civil applications with special
consideration of military fuels in regard of special measures for exhaust compliance in civil
applications. Research on requirements for engines combined with electrified powertrains.
B02.03 – Rocket Engines and Ramjets
Research to understand solid and liquid fuel ramjets, ramrockets and rockets. For example,
combustion systems, ramburner aerodynamics and reaction kinetics, throttle control systems, air
intakes, nozzles including nozzleless boost systems, design of rocket and ramjet missile cases and
associated internal insulation systems. Also includes relevant predictive modelling studies. Includes
research on chemical propulsion on-board satellites.
B02.04 – Gun and Launch Tube Propulsion
Research to understand all aspects of gun tube designs using chemical propellants (all calibres). Also
includes work on relevant weapon system integration applications and associated structural design
issues. Also includes work on electrothermal gun system designs. Also includes research into non-
chemically-driven launcher tube systems (but not electrically driven tube systems).
B02.05 – Electrical Propulsion - Rotary & Linear
Research to understand electric propulsion systems including their integration into submarines,
surface ships, underwater weapons, UUVs, and manned and unmanned land vehicles. Also includes
work on relevant platform or weapons system integration aspects and associated structural design
issues, as well as power provision, storage and distribution systems. Also includes work on
electromagnetic launch systems/gun designs and their integration into land and sea platforms, such
as power supplies and power management systems. Also includes associated predictive modelling and
simulation on all of the above aspects.
B02.06 – Transmissions and Powertrains
Research to understand rotorcraft and propeller engine transmissions and their role in the overall
power train. Also includes research to understand ship/submarine gearboxes and powertrains in the
context of their acoustic impact. Also covers work on the improvement of wheeled and tracked vehicle
transmissions and powertrains, including life and reliability aspects. Research to manage the transition
from conventional powertrains to electrified powertrains, including all different hybrid and electrified
powertrain architectures and integration aspects. Also includes research on dedicated hybrid
transmissions and related power management systems, including external power charging systems
and power storage systems in military environment research on safety, reliability, maintainability.
Research on potentials to increase agility and fuel efficiency. Research on interoperability of
transmission and powertrain systems on different vehicles.
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B02.07 – Electromagnetic Launch
Includes research into railguns, single-/multistage coilguns, armaturer, sliding contacts, rail erosion,
Lorentz force, power supply, pulse-forming-networks (PFN), homopolar generators, magnetic
permeability.
B02.08 – Ion Thrusters
Research to understand ion thruster designs to improve performance and operating life. Includes
research on ion thrusters integration on-board satellites.
B02.09 – Nuclear Propulsion
Research to provide advice on the engineering aspects of non-nuclear elements in nuclear propulsion
systems.
B02.10 – Air Propellers and Rotors
Research to understand propeller and lifting rotor design in the context of performance, integrity and
life aspects, and interactions with the local operating environment included radiated noise effects.
Also includes work to understand rotor interactions with the local operating environment. Also
includes work to minimise rotor icing effects.
B02.11 – Advanced Propulsors and Propellers
Research to understand and analyse propulsors/propellers configurations (design, materials) for low
signatures and high efficiency. Also additive layer manufacturing for propellers.
B02.12 – Final Drive - Wheels and Tracks
Research to understand wheel and track interactions with the local operating environment, to improve
traction and safety, and to maximise integrity and life. Research on impact of electrified powertrains
in military environment and on interaction between vehicle and terrain.
B02.13 – Alternative Propulsion Systems
Alternative fuels as part of the energy source mix can increase energy efficiency and reduce reliance
on fossil fuels which in turn reduces vulnerability to cost and operational risks (including to logistics
from moving fuel supply convoys across hostile environments) while enhancing mission endurance
from increased manoeuvrability / freedom of action over extended periods of time. Such concepts are
relevant across the maritime, land and air operating domains and address alternative fuels (biofuels,
synthetic fuels, synthetic gas, hydrogen, oxygen, gas) impacts on engines for military uses:
performance in severe conditions, acoustic discretion, logistics issues, lifetime, bacterial and microbial
development issues, and cost-benefit as well as engine and propulsion performance according to fuel
type and blend.
B02.14 – Fission and Fusion
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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B02.15 – Thrust Vectoring
Includes research into all related factors to manoeuvring, command and controls and integration in
aerial platform.
B02.16 – Variable Cycle Engine
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
B02.17 – Hybrid Propulsion
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
B02.18 – Supersonic Propulsion
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
B02.19 – Hypersonic Propulsion
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
B02.20 – Scramjet
Includes research into scramjets and PDE.
B02.21 – Green Naval Power Generation and Propulsion
Research includes low signature energy converters, agile high-energy distribution technologies,
adaptive energy management and control systems, energy efficiency of hybrid system configurations,
system safety in harsh operational environments (e.g. H2 storage and handling, battery-safety), model-
based system architectures on the basis of (Sub-)System models and Simulations, safety and security
aspects of hydrogen based (including PtX, e-fuels, drop-in fuels) energy supply and propulsion systems,
functional and non-functional requirements for stationary/mobile supply infrastructures (land and sea
based), non-technical aspects of defossilization and decarbonization.
B03 – Design Technologies for Platforms and Weapons
B03.01 – Aerodynamic Designs
Research to understand, evaluate, analyse and exploit aerodynamic designs, both steady and
unsteady, using CFD code application in conjunction with experimental data as appropriate, on fluid
dynamic problems, relating to aircraft and engines, stealthy weapon designs, part aircraft
configurations such as intakes, afterbodies, weapons, weapon carriage and release systems, and high
lift systems. Also includes associated predictive modelling and assessments based on wind tunnel
testing. Includes work on applied aerodynamics; prediction and measurement techniques,
development/validation/application of semi-empirical codes. Modelling stores carriage loads and
release trajectories, drag prediction. Also includes work to exploit
experimental and theoretical aerodynamics data generated in research activities in A11.04 – Fluid
Mechanics - Phenomenological and Experimental and A11.05 – Fluid Dynamics Techniques. Also
includes research on relevant parts of aeroelastic and aerothermodynamics disciplines.
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B03.02 – Hydrodynamic Designs
Research to understand impact of hull form and integration of stealth technology on the
hydrodynamic, hydroacoustic, hydrodynamic/hydroacoustic coupling effects, signature-management,
sea-keeping and handling of all types of marine platforms and marine structures. This includes the
hydrodynamic and hydroacoustic aspects of all naval weapons systems, such as the effects of flow
noise on torpedo homing systems or an integrated signature management system. Also includes work
to understand and exploit wake effects.
B03.03 – Structural Design
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse structural design for all platforms and weapons systems,
and for battlefield bridging. Includes the structural aspects of integration with aerodynamic, thermal,
ballistic (in term of protection) and stealth design. Also includes the use of new design approaches and
materials (such as composites, additive manufacturing, etc.) to protect ground vehicles through
innovative armour. Also includes predictive modelling and simulation, and dynamics and acoustic
measurement, and associated test activities. Also includes work to understand and prevent
transmission of noise through structures in military equipment. Also includes research on relevant
parts of the aeroelastic discipline.
B03.04 – Mechanical Designs
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse mechanical engineering design for all platforms and
weapons and their sub-systems. Also includes associated test activities, and predictive modelling. Also
includes work to improve aircraft launch and recovery systems in conditions of low visibility and at
restricted austere sites or on ships. Also includes research on relevant parts of the thermomechanics
and hydromechanics discipline. Includes research on structural health monitoring.
B03.05 – Low Observability and Stealth Designs
Research on analysis of threat stealth design and threat sensor technology leading to improvements
in own reduced signature stealth designs for all platform and weapon applications. Also includes
associated predictive modelling and work on specialised testing facilities to improve stealth design
aspects, and research into problems of co-ordinating the management of all signatures. Research to
understand hull vibration in ships and submarines arising from machinery and fluid flow effects, and
work to relate the results to signature characteristics is also part of this topic. Focus particularly on
vibration and noise transmission from hydraulic circuits is done from the maritime perspective. Focus
on reduced radar signature by any means (e.g. reduce their radar cross-section, skin transparent to the
radar or capable of absorbing the radar waves) is done from the aerial systems perspective.
B03.06 – Ballistic Designs
Research to understand the integration of ballistic design and related design drivers into platform and
weapon systems. Includes work on internal and external ballistics of projectile behaviour and gun and
launcher system designs. Also includes new or disruptive approaches, modular-based integration, and
European standards for ballistic weapons in land, air and naval platforms.
B03.07 – Thermal/Cryogenic/Power Management Designs
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse thermal/cryogenic/power management design factors,
and improve their integration in all platforms and weapon systems. Also includes research on relevant
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parts of the thermomechanics and aerothermodynamic disciplines. Also includes associated test
activities and predictive modelling and simulation and standardization approaches.
B03.08 – Electrical/Electronic Designs
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse electrical/electronic design factors, and improve their
integration in all platforms and weapons systems. Also includes associated test activities and predictive
modelling. Research on the digitization and increasing interconnection of weapon systems and their
sub-systems, taking into account redundancy aspects as well as condition monitoring and status
reporting. Also includes research on all dedicated electrified components, like servomotor,
electromechanical actuator, inverter technology and power management systems related to the
electrical and electrified weapon systems (generic part is covered by A05 – Electronic, Electrical &
Electromechanical Device Technology). Research on safety, reliability and maintainability of electrical
and electrified weapon systems.
B03.09 – Optical Designs
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse optical design factors, and improve their integration in
all platforms and weapon systems. Also includes associated test activities and predictive modelling.
B03.10 – Acoustic Designs
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse acoustic design factors, and improve their integration
in all platforms and weapons systems. Also includes associated test activities and predictive modelling.
B03.11 – Environmental Protection Designs
Research and development of designs aimed at reducing the effects of icing on the performance of
military equipment. Also includes work on designs to combat the effects of thermal extremes on
military equipment. Also includes work to develop improved designs for the protection for all types of
engines from the effects of sand ingestion.
B03.12 – Multidisciplinary Designs
Research to provide best compromises taking into account several disciplines/targets.
B03.13 – Supersonic and Hypersonic Designs
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
B04 – Electronic Warfare and Directed Energy Technologies
B04.01 – Directed Energy Technologies (DET) - RF
Research to understand RF DE systems and their effects on silicon microelectronic components,
circuits and sub-assemblies. Also includes integration aspects of DE into weapon systems. Also includes
work on non-destructive RF DE systems and their integration in the context of anti-ship missile defence
systems.
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B04.02 – Directed Energy Technologies (DET) - Lasers
Research to understand integration of laser DE systems into weapon and counter measure systems
and platforms. Also includes work to exploit high power laser technology.
B04.03 – Directed Energy Technologies (DET) - Other
Research to understand other types of DE, for example, particle beam technology, and their
integration into weapon systems and platforms.
B04.04 – Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) - RF
Research to evaluate and analyse techniques such as generic and specific countermeasure waveforms
to be integrated into ECM systems employed to protect platforms. Includes work on comms.ECM and
non-comms ECM. Also includes work to understand tactical comms.ECM, long range surveillance and
tactical battlefield ECM systems. Also includes novel microwave filter and MMIC design aspects of ECM
systems, and power amplifiers for jammers. Also includes work to understand effects of RF on
microelectronic component survivability. Includes research into micro- and milli-metre wave ECM
techniques.
B04.05 – IR/Visible/UV
Research to evaluate and analyse techniques including generic and specific waveforms to be integrated
into Electro-Optical Countermeasure (EOCM) systems. Also includes work on comms. EOCM, and non-
comms. EOCM. Also includes work exploiting laser technology, stealth materials, novel negative
luminescent device technologies and E-O sensors in the context of ECM systems. Also includes work to
understand sensor design and signature measurement related to EOCM.
B04.06 – Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) - Acoustic
Research to evaluate and analyse design of countermeasures to acoustic homing torpedoes and their
launch platforms. Also includes work to understand acoustic ECM systems integration and the
associated man-machine interface requirements.
B04.07 – Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) - Magnetic and Electrical
Research to evaluate and analyse the design and performance of magnetic and electrical CMs to
incoming torpedoes and their fuzes. Also includes work to understand the M&E threat to spacecraft
systems. Also includes research to understand the integration of ECM systems into combat systems.
B04.08 – Electronic Support Measurement (ESM) - Communications
Research to evaluate and analyse communications ESM techniques and technology. Also includes work
to specify ESM systems capabilities/performance and to integrate ESM with weapon systems and for
tactical employment. Also includes work to understand Information warfare technology, long range
and tactical battlefield communications and counter comms.technology. Also includes evaluations and
analyses of geolocation of interferors and unauthorised users. Also includes research to apply HTS
technology to ESM-Comms.systems.
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B04.09 – Electronic Support Measurement (ESM) - Non-Communications
Research to understand techniques for the high probability of intercept of RF signals, their rapid
identification, and for integration of ESM systems into weapon and combat systems. Also includes
radiographic mapping of electromagnetic sources from satellite observations. Also includes research
to apply HTS technology to ESM-non-Comms.systems.
B04.10 – Electronic Protective measures (EPM) - RF
Research to evaluate and analyse RF EPM and integration of EPM systems with weapon systems. Also
includes work to analyse spread spectrum techniques applied to comms.signals at SHF and EHF. Also
includes work to understand hardening of comms. assets and to set standards for advanced adaptive
EPM for HF comms. Includes research at micro- and millimetre wave frequencies for EPM purposes.
B04.11 – Electro Optical Protective Measures (EOPM) - IR/Visible/UV
Research to evaluate and analyse image processing algorithms for navigation and targeting sensors
employed by threat systems. Also includes understanding EOPM across visible, IR and FIR, for eyes,
imagers and magnifying optics. Also includes work on the integration aspects related to weapon
systems, and on sensor design issues.
B04.12 – Electronic Protective measures (EPM) - Acoustic
Research to evaluate and analyse mine avoidance sonars employed in submarines and surface ships.
Also includes work related to acoustic EPM systems integration at the man-machine interface.
B04.13 – Electronic Protective measures (EPM) - Magnetic and Electrical
Research to understand and reduce the effects of magnetic and electrical stray fields and hazards on
all types of military equipment.
B05 – Signature Control and Signature Reduction
B05.01 – Radar Signatures
This technology covers all used radar frequencies. Research to evaluate, model, analyse and
manipulate platform radar signatures and integration of radar signature control into weapon systems.
Also includes work relating threat radar sensor technology and the environment to own platform
signatures. Also includes work on active stealth measures (in the context of radar signatures).
B05.02 – Laser Signatures
Research to evaluate model, analyse and manipulate platform laser signatures and integration of laser
signature control into weapon systems. Also includes work to understand threat laser sensor
technology, low observable materials technology and operating environment signatures.
B05.03 – Thermal / IR Signatures
Research to evaluate, model, analyse and manipulate platform IR signatures and integration of
signature control into weapon systems. Also includes work to understand the effects of pigments and
other materials on signature control. Also includes issues relating to stealthy missile launch detection
(plumes), threat IR sensor technology, and operating environment signatures. Also includes work to
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understand thermal signature control in the context of gas turbines, reciprocating/rotary engines, and
rockets and ramjets.
B05.04 – Visible/UV Signatures
Research to understand, model and manipulate platform UV/Visible signatures and integration of
signature control with weapon systems. Also includes work to understand threat UV/Vis sensor
technology, missile detection filters and operating environment signatures. Also includes research to
understand the behaviour of coatings and micro-structured surfaces that minimise laser retro-
reflections.
B05.05 – Acoustic Signatures
Research to evaluate, model, analyse and manipulate underwater acoustic signatures of all types of
marine craft, and torpedo decoys. Also includes work to detect and classify targets, mine threat
analysis, and to optimise processing techniques. Also includes work to understand acoustic echo
characteristics of target ships and submarines to be employed in own sonar, torpedo and fuzing
systems. Also includes work to develop and improve measurement techniques for underwater
signatures, both active and passive. Also includes work to understand acoustic signature detection of
helicopters including modelling to predict rotor noise and its propagation through the environment.
Also includes work on land-based systems acoustic signatures, particularly on the application of passive
and active acoustic signature control to land equipment. Also includes work to understand laser
generated acoustic waves. Also includes work to understand acoustic signature control in the context
of gas turbines, and reciprocating/rotary engines.
B05.06 – Electrical and Electrochemical Signatures
Research to understand mine threat to maritime vessels and also to understand and model
mechanisms by which electrical signatures of naval platforms may be reduced or manipulated. Also
includes work to understand electrical signatures for TEMPEST testing, evaluation and certification.
Also includes research to understand and model mechanisms by which electrical and electrochemical
signatures of contaminated areas can be traced and monitored.
B05.07 – Magnetic Signatures
Research to evaluate, model and analyse mine threat for maritime vessels and to understand
mechanisms for reducing or manipulating magnetic signatures of naval platforms. Also includes work
to understand the interaction between torpedo fuzes, targets and countermeasures in the undersea
environment. Also includes work to understand measurement of the magnetic signature content of
equipment and components fitted in mine hunting/mine countermeasure vessels. Also includes work
on magnetic signature ranging and reduction. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse display
technology for operation in environments with magnetic fields. Includes smart systems to manipulate
or compensate magnetic signature for equipment and structures on board (enhanced degaussing
technologies).
B06 – Sensor Systems
B06.01 – RF Sensors/Antennas - Active
This technology covers all used radar frequencies. Research to evaluate and analyse detectability of air
targets, surface targets using active radar. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse DSP, system
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modelling, detectors, antennas, system design, active array technology and advanced processing for
multifunction radar. Also includes work to understand space-based comms. antennas and radar for
surveillance. Research to evaluate and analyse returns from air targets, surface targets and sensor
performance. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse system design, system modelling, integrated
sensor suites, conformal antennas, SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), MTI (Moving Target Indication),
maritime rec., advanced phased arrays, and obstruction avoidance sensors. Also includes work to
understand calibration and metrology advice. Also includes work to enable effective integration of
radomes. Also includes meta-material based low profile radiated panels, Tx & Rx in same module, small
antennas and high datalinks OTM and UCAB for remotely piloted aircraft providing surveillance.
B06.02 – RF Sensors/Antennas - Passive
This technology covers all used radiometric frequencies. Research to evaluate and analyse detectability
of air targets, surface targets using passive radiometric sensors. Also includes work to understand
antenna calibration. Research to evaluate and analyse returns from air targets, surface targets and
sensor performance. Also includes work on systems aspects, temperature sensitivity and resolution,
and passive radar sensors. Also includes work to exploit MMIC design and device packaging technology
for a low cost passive radar imager.
B06.03 – Imaging Radars
Research on imaging radars (Synthetic Aperture Radars - SAR), either space-based or land-based, focus
on the selection of the appropriate frequency, antenna design, signal processing and image quality.
B06.04 – IR Sensors - Active
Research to evaluate and analyse integrated sensor suites incorporating targeting, navigation, and
terrain and obstruction avoidance sensors. Also includes work to understand optics, system modelling,
detectors, lasers and system design. Also includes work to understand vision systems for AFVs and
WASAD, and to understand intelligent surveillance. Also includes work to understand laser detection
of mines in very shallow water/surf zone, underwater target detection and laser weapon fuzing. Also
includes work to understand laser rangefinders, vibration sensors, laser sources, and CLARA.
B06.05 – IR Sensors - Passive
Research to evaluate and analyse integrated sensor suites incorporating targeting, navigation, terrain
and obstruction avoidance IR sensors. Also includes work to understand optics, system modelling, IR
detectors, lasers and system design. Also includes work to understand vision systems for AFVs and
WASAD, and intelligent surveillance systems. Also includes work to understand IR detection of buoyant
mines on the sea surface, and IR detection of land mines. Also includes work to understand space-
based IR surveillance. Also includes work to understand smart IR sensors. Also includes work to
understand "obsolescence management" of IR sensor systems, including interpretation of national
standards. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse advanced IR detector designs for improved
identification and Counterstealth. Also includes work to understand COTS sensor technology in the
context of defence equipment. Also includes work to enable effective integration of IR domes.
B06.06 – Visible/UV Wave Sensors
Research to understand integrated sensor suites incorporating UV/Visible sensors for targeting, and
other applications. Also includes work to analyse optics, system modelling, UV/Vis detectors, UV/Vis
lasers and system design. Also includes research to exploit organic semiconductors for application in
photon detection and image intensifiers, also to analyse the performance of UV-sensitive missile
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launch detectors. Also includes work to maintain awareness of visual sensors for space-based
surveillance.
B06.07 – Acoustic Sensors - Active
Research to understand airborne ASW systems and maintain technical specifications for active and
sonic processors. Also includes work to understand HF acoustics and propagation and support analysis
of MCM, mine avoidance and MCM reconnaissance systems. Also includes work to evaluate and
analyse design and integration of towed bodies for LF active sonar and the application to underwater
homing and acoustic countermeasures. Also includes work to understand active sonar transducers,
arrays, and associated signal/data processing and display systems. Also includes work to enable
effective integration of sonar domes.
B06.08 – Acoustic Sensors - Passive
Research to understand airborne ASW systems and specifications for passive sonobuoys and service
sonic processors. Also includes work to understand acoustics and propagation for land and airborne
vehicle detection and location of artillery and rockets. Also includes work to understand HF acoustics
for passive mine detection. Also includes evaluations and analyses of underwater weapon passive
sensors in the presence of high levels of flow noise. Also includes the design of towed arrays in terms
of handling and reliability, sonar performance, and other passive sonar systems and passive sonar array
types. Also includes work to exploit ferroelectric liquid crystal polymers for application in compact,
sensitive, directional sonar elements. Also includes work to exploit novel silicon acoustic sensors and
integrated sensors for passive sonar systems. Also includes work to enable effective integration of
sonar domes.
B06.09 – Non-Acoustic Sensors - Underwater
Research to evaluate and analyse non-acoustic sensors for mine detection in very shallow water/surf
zone and for MCM reconnaissance. Also includes work to understand non-acoustic sensor technology
for application to underwater weapon homing and fuzing, and as a nonacoustic UW sensor to
complement acoustic sensors. Also includes work to understand behaviour of non-acoustic sensors in
the military oceanographic environment. Also includes wake detection systems and biodetection
(biologics) techniques for underwater non-acoustic detection systems.
B06.10 – Electrical & Electrochemical Sensors
Research to understand and develop underwater electric potential (UEP) sensor technology. Also
includes research to understand and develop electric and electrochemical sensors for the
determination of pre-defined contaminants.
B06.11 – Magnetic Sensors
Research to understand integration of novel magnetic material with silicon circuitry to provide smart
micro-magnetic sensors. Also includes work to understand magnetic sensor application to weapon
systems and to fuzing systems in all weapons (except underwater) and in land mine detection systems.
B06.12 – CB Sensor Systems
Research to support and maintain expertise in CB sensor systems which monitor the level of the
hazard, identify the agent and identify exposure retrospectively. Also includes work to apply genetic
engineering and amplification, antibody/antigen interactions, gene probes, 3D printed modular point-
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of-care or lab-on-a-chip structures, biosensor and printed biosensors transduction to CB detection
systems.
B06.13 – Explosive Detection Sensors
Research to understand application of EDS to very shallow water/surf zone mine detection and to land
mine detection. Also includes work to enhance detection system performance for explosives.
B06.14 – Microsensor Systems for Active Control of Structures
Research to understand silicon microsystems technology for sensors and transducers and use of fibre
probes using frequency selective RAM. Also includes work to exploit smart/functional material
technology to control the shape of intelligent structures, including sound damping applications.
Includes structural applications of micro-electronic and mechanical systems (MEMS) technology to
active structures.
B06.15 – Motion Sensor systems
Research into new approaches to gyroscopic control systems and other inertial sensors for platforms
and weapons, particularly those based on solid-state devices. Also includes associated work on the
relevant signal processing element of motion sensor systems. Also includes work on techniques to
measure structural vibration.
B06.16 – Environmental Monitoring Systems
Research to support the design of systems to monitor atmosphere quality in submarines and crew
spaces in other military platforms and installations. Also includes work to determine and analyse noise
levels in crew spaces.
B06.17 – Multispectral/Hyperspectral Imaging (VIS/IR/UV)
Research to evaluate and analyse multi-spectral and hyperspectral imaging sensors in all wavebands
(VIS/IR/UV). Also includes work to understand optics, system modelling, hyperspectral detectors,
lasers and system design. Also includes work to understand and process spectral image cubes to DRI
of camouflaged target. Also includes work to understand counter measure systems. Also includes work
to understand space based hyperspectral surveillance systems. Also includes work to understand
smart hyperspectral sensors. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse advanced hyperspectral
detector designs Also includes work to understand COTS and SWAP-C sensor technology in the context
of defence equipment. Also includes work to enable effective integration of hyperspectral systems.
B06.18 – Nanosensors
Research to understand and develop nanosensors for monitoring physical and chemical phenomena
in hard-to-reach regions, detecting biochemicals in cellular organs, measuring nanoscopic particles in
industry and the environment. This topic complements the research done at topic A05.15 – BioMEMS
/ Bio Sensors.
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B07 – Guidance and Control systems for Weapons and Platforms
B07.01 – Navigation systems
Research to understand integration and application of navigation systems to missile seekers, AFV fire
control systems, and MCM and reconnaissance systems. Also includes work to apply silicon
microsystems technology for micro-accelerometers and micro-gyros, including embedded control and
signal processing electronics. Also includes work to understand "obsolescence management" and
technology insertion in the context of navigation systems. Also includes research to evaluate and
analyse autonomous sensing of global maritime and littoral environments for manned / unmanned
marine vehicles and vessels. Also includes autonomy obstacle avoidance architectures.
B07.02 – Weapon Guidance and Control systems
Research to evaluate and analyse use of guidance and control technology to remote guidance
techniques for underwater weapons, and to integrated precision attack techniques, MLRS and other
ballistic systems. Also includes work to understand the application of silicon microsystems technology
to precision G&C systems employed in missiles. Also includes work to understand "obsolescence
management" and technology insertion in the context of G&C systems. Seekers/Homers (both above
and underwater) - Research to evaluate and analyse seeker/homer systems used in both air-launched
and underwater weapon systems and attack platforms. Also includes work to exploit advanced focal
plane arrays and related image processing and data fusion techniques. Also includes work to evaluate
and analyse seeker guidance system tests using dynamic infra-red scene projectors. Also includes work
to understand small RF phased arrays and multispectral (radar & IR) sensors in the seeker context. Also
includes research to exploit acoustic sensor technology for precision homing systems.
B07.03 – Platform Guidance and Control systems
Research to evaluate and analyse G&C systems, including avionics and vetronics (vehicle and
electronics), in the context of platforms, AFV fire control systems, autonomous vehicles, and in relation
to integrated precision attack techniques. Also includes work to exploit HFI technology for control
systems in crew spaces/cockpits. Also includes work on multivariable, discrete, nonlinear control
design methods and relevant image processing and data fusion technology. Also includes work to
understand attitude and orbit control systems employed in satellites.
B07.04 – Dynamic Positioning
Research activities in computer-controlled systems to automatically maintain a vessels position and
heading using propellers and thrusters.
B07.05 – Display systems
Research to understand characteristics of displays and to apply novel display science to military display
systems, to provide operational support to humans and to minimize the human error, used in or for
helmet systems, missile seekers, AFV fire control systems, torpedo track information displays, and
related display information on target/environmental conditions. Also includes work on displays in the
context of "obsolescence management" and technology insertion, haptic screens and devices to
promote and respond touch sensations remotely (reply to touch and provide tactile sensations by
varying the friction between the user’s finger and the screen). Work on digital mirrors allowing to
perform instant interaction through a physical digital twin is also included.
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B08 – Simulators, Trainers and Synthetic Environments
B08.01 – Skills Training systems
Research to understand skills training, and application of synthetic environments to skills training
systems for all service environments. Also includes application of hardware-in-the-loop and PC-based
systems to skills trainers.
B08.02 – Tactical/Crew Training systems
Research to understand synthetic theatre of war (STOW) and the application of synthetic
environments, including virtual reality techniques in simulators to reflect the critical cues provided by
the real platform. Also includes application of hardware-in-the-loop and PC-based systems to
tactical/crew trainers. Also includes research on applications that use Learning Management System
(LMS) technologies and their evolutions on mobile systems and Cloud architectures. Also includes
research areas related to the use of AI, BD and ML technologies in individual and group training
systems. Also includes research on the use of MSaaS and TaaS architectures for distributed training.
B08.03 – Command & Staff Training Systems
Research to understand command level training systems, STOW and the use of speech for interactive
training. Also includes work to understand the application of synthetic environments to command level
training systems and computer assisted staff training systems. Also includes application of hardware-
in-the-loop and PC-based systems to command and staff trainers. Also includes research and training
support applications for decision making of military personnel (commanders and staff) using AI, ML
and BDAA technologies.
B08.04 – Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Research to evaluate and analyse virtual crew stations as a tool for procurement and training. Also
includes work to understand integration of 3-D imaging and display technology in the fields of remote
telepresence/remote (MRO) support, and cognitive aspects of operator performance. Also includes
the overlaying of digital information onto the physical world (augmented reality - AR). Also includes
unambiguous representation of the environment feature data can be achieved when 3D models in the
virtual world match real-world ones, in particular extracting information from internet available data.
Also includes work to assess the physiological impact imposed by man, the task, and the environment.
Also includes the multimodal integration and multisensory inputs connected to direct visualization.
Also includes work to understand techniques for measuring performance in VR & AR environments.
Also includes work to understand the nature of physiological and psychological interactions between
humans and VR & AR, and the value of VR & AR in design and training systems. Also includes the
influence of visual, proprioceptive, and vestibular information on self-motion perception and the
related problem mitigation (motion/cyber-sickness). Also includes research on the evaluation of
Human Factors integration.
B08.05 – Synthetic Environments - Synthetic Force Generation
Research to understand synthetic environments for such purposes as; training, OA, procurement,
requirements capture process, platform and weapons systems, sensor systems and relevant
countermeasure systems. Also includes work to understand the use of stimulators and simulators,
system performance, design, testing, validation, acceptance and use, and environments. Also includes
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work to understand the nature of physiological and psychological interactions between humans and
SEs. Also includes work to assess the value of SEs in design, selection and training activities. It also
includes research for the design and development of synthetic force components with cognitive
abilities deriving from the use of Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms.
B08.06 – Synthetic Environments - Natural Environment Generation
Research to understand SEs for natural environment generation. Includes work to facilitate the rapid
generation of geotypical terrain and feature/cultural data. Includes work to understand Variable
Representation in support to simulation systems. Also includes research on the application of models
to generate internal wave wake for the prediction of surface wave modulations.
B08.07 – Synthetic Environments - Management systems
Research to include the management of databases covering terrain, environment, dynamic models,
and other relevant databases. Also work on the configuration management and maintenance of
models and software for SEs. Also includes work to exploit HLA, languages and AI for SEs.
B09 – Integrated Systems Technology
B09.01 – Systems Engineering and Integrated Systems Design
Research to understand systems engineering aspects of future weapon systems designs, including
system architecture (architecture models), integrated and platform systems, systems integration
processes, requirement engineering and management. First, this includes EW systems integration,
Sensor integration, work to evaluate and analyse combat systems, software system designs, display
technology, system architectures, flight trials techniques, work to understand multiple vehicle
installations, thermal management of platform and weapon systems. Second, this includes work to
understand definition and integration of user requirements into specifications for manned systems
including Human Factors Integration, MANPRINT procedures and design standards for the
procurement of future manned systems. Third, this includes work to integrate disparate information
systems, computer systems and communications systems and improve systems performance analysis
at the systems level.
B09.02 – Interoperability Standards
Research to evaluate and analyse UKAD airborne early warning systems, including combat
identification and operating environment. Also includes work to interpret national and international
standards for all technologies in a defence context. Also includes work to understand weapon system
interoperability issues, including interoperability of small arms ammunition. Also includes work to
understand standards for cable and connectors, including specification writing. For CIS: Research to
understand communications methods and networks, including network management techniques, to
support end-to-end connectivity via the integration of terrestrial bearers with HF and Satcom systems.
Also includes work to evaluate non-proprietary system concepts and open standard solutions for
military applications, civil networks and relevant testing methods. Also includes work to understand
system interoperability across the digitized battle space, particularly for comms. systems, protocols,
software and COTS issues. Also includes work to enhance and adopt simulation interoperability
standards (DIS, HLA, …) for demonstrators, test beds and training systems.
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B09.03 – Radiation Hardening
Research to understand integrated system design, particularly weapon system vulnerabilities against
EMP. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse integrated hardening, reconfiguration and electronic
monitoring techniques. Also includes work to understand protection against space radiation, and
radiation hardening of ICs (see also B09.10 – Electromagnetic Compatibility).
B09.04 – Robotics and Automated/Autonomous systems in Operational Systems
Research to understand automated and autonomous systems for remote operations and engineering
systems. Research to evaluate the potential for multi-robot systems (MRS) in military domains to
provide cost savings by automating, protect operators and enable new missions. Also includes
intensive analysis and characterisation of possible applications, operation environments and
interoperability and evaluation of future advances for MRS which must be taken into consideration for
oncoming system design and implementation. Also includes work to understand applications of various
technologies to remotely controlled sea, land, air and space equipment. Also include research on the
integration of robotic and automated/autonomous systems into legacy and future vehicles (air, sea,
land and space domains), as well as embedded computing, internal data network, communications,
sensor fusion (cameras, LiDAR, Radar, etc.) and data exploitation even by teaming with manned
vehicles. Research on autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance and manned-unmanned swarming.
Also includes research on open architectures to optimize interoperability between systems with
autonomous functions (SAF) employing a concept of modularity. Also includes work on standardization
and certification. Also includes research into on-orbit satellite servicing which refers to actions
performed in orbit, such as refuelling or repairing satellites, deploy or assemble large structures from
separate parts, capture, hold and manipulate objects using robotic systems. This Space application will
benefit from the decreasing cost of commercial launches, thus offerings a large business potential for
on-orbit servicing. Research on this topic should be done in close connection with B08.04 - Virtual
Reality. Looking at unmanned vehicles, all operations and actions should be transmitted bi-directional,
with the aim of improved control of autonomous systems and better understanding of the shared
decision-making process.
B09.05 – Manned and Unmanned Teaming
Research to understand the framework of cooperation between manned and unmanned systems
(manned-unmanned teaming). Research to understand natural modes of interaction, dynamically
changing levels of autonomy, prediction of behaviours of large numbers of unmanned systems, task
allocation/assignment, planning, coordination and control for heterogeneous systems. From the
aerials system perspective, manned-unmanned-teaming is expected to increase the mission efficiency
of future airborne systems in many ways. Equipped with sensors, the swarm of unmanned systems can
provide situational awareness to a mission group commander located a safe distance away aboard the
manned aircraft.
B09.06 – Reliability and Maintainability of Systems
Research to understand probabilistic structural analysis on reliability of aerial, ground and naval
systems This includes work to monitor and predict all types of platform reliability and durability issues.
Furthermore, this includes work to understand configuration control and identifying alternative
components, the reliability of PC boards within systems under systems conditions, cost-effectiveness,
fitness for purpose and environmental impact of military packaging.
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B09.07 – Health Monitoring systems
Research to understand integrated systems for health monitoring of all engineering systems. Research
on big data techniques and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) for health monitoring and
maintenance forecasting. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse electronic monitoring
techniques.
B09.08 – Safety systems
Research to understand all engineering systems characteristics and unsafe system testing procedures,
based on physical or electronic interfaces, particularly of weapon systems. Also includes work to
evaluate and analyse reliable fire detection (early stages particularly), and chemical products released
during overheating/early stages using robust sensors (i.e. nanosensors, biosensors and others)
providing unambiguous indications.
B09.09 – System Repair Technologies
Research to understand the consequences of repair schemes and procedures on system performance
and system durability. Also includes work on logistic standardisation and on the modelling and
simulation for the evaluation of logistic performances. Includes research on design for robotic repair
architectures adapted to orbital spacecraft.
B09.10 – Electromagnetic Compatibility
Research to understand EMC issues in integrated system design, particularly in weapon system.
Includes research into experimental methods to quantify electromagnetic phenomena in military
systems including material property measurement, and antenna measurement. Includes work to
identify and overcome electromagnetic hazards, and improved designs to allow equipment to function
in the presence of lightning strikes and to survive nuclear electromagnetic pulses (NEMP). Also includes
research to understand the consequences of lightning strikes and nuclear electromagnetic pulses on
all defence equipment. Also includes associated predictive modelling and simulation both for emission
and susceptibility. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse EMC interference and failure. Also
includes holistic innovative approaches to redefine classic EMC specification methods for vehicle-
integrated devices (e.g., power electronics), with a particular focus on increasingly electrified vehicles
(including hybrid systems) and the need to minimize device weight and volume. Also includes the
research on EMC design of vehicle systems and other ground systems especially in system
environments with higher voltage levels (see also A05.08 – Other Electrical Power Systems & Devices
and B03.08 – Electrical/Electronic Designs).
B09.11 – In-Service Data Capture systems
Research to improve techniques for the capture and analysis of in-service operational data including
cloud and secure access technologies. Also includes research for the acquisition of data from
heterogeneous operating systems and their real-time processing carried out thanks to BDAA and AI
algorithms.
B09.12 – Integrated System Testing and Evaluation
Research to develop improved cost-effective whole-system tests and evaluation methods. Also
includes work to use M&S technologies to support whole-system tests.
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B09.13 – Middleware systems
Research to ensure that the most appropriate forms of middleware are fully exploited in data
warehousing activities and message-oriented applications relevant to defence applications.
B09.14 – Co-operative Systems Technologies
Research to understand new cooperative engagement capabilities that allows combat systems to share
unfiltered sensor measurements data associated with tracks with rapid timing and precision to enable
the battlegroup units to operate as one. Also includes research on critical technologies like MMIC,
integrated circuit technologies, new generation of microprocessors, etc. Also include cooperating
systems. Also includes to research on capabilities for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, and
managing information on demand to war fighters, policy makers, and support personnel. Also includes
social media based co-operative environment
B10 – Communications and CIS-related Technologies
B10.01 – Communications Systems - Below Microwave Frequencies
Research to understand the requirements for, and design of architectures for tactical communications
systems below microwave frequencies. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse design of systems
working at frequencies from ELF through HF to SHF and EHF. Also includes work to understand
operations, environment and the transmission media. Also includes work to understand the
vulnerability of systems at the RF modulation, coding and protocol level. Also understand systems
management issues in the context of threat and countermeasures. Also includes work to understand
the requirements for tactical and trunk management systems and the interaction at network and
systems level. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse EHF for satellite payloads and ground
stations. Also includes research to understand and optimise long haul communications systems in the
context of SATCOM and STRATCOM.
B10.02 – Communications Systems - Micro and Millimetre Wave
Research to understand low-cost phased array technology for communications links. Also includes
work to design architectures for tactical and strategic communications systems including antenna
subsystems. Also includes work to understand supporting generic technology like MMICs and solid-
state microwave sources in the context of communication system design. Also includes work to
evaluate and analyse designs for high power microwave tubes for transmitter systems. Also includes
work relevant to SATCOM.
B10.03 – Optical Wireless Communications - IR/Visible/UV
Research to evaluate and analyse miniature laser device technology in the context of understanding
novel optical communications systems. Research on wireless IR communications refers to the use of
free-space propagation of light waves in the near infrared band as a transmission medium for
communication. Research on transmission / communications systems used for short-medium-long
range communications including IR laser systems. Also includes research on optical vortex beams like
an optical communication.
B10.03.01 – IR/Visible/UV
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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B10.03.02 – RF Submilimetric
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
B10.04 – Communications Systems - Acoustic
Research to understand acoustic communications system design for UUV to submarine
communications, and for off-platform sensors, also for multi-static operations design, underwater
navigation design, and for speech and signal intelligibility system design. Also includes work on
communications systems for interacting with man in airborne systems.
B10.05 – Mission Type - Consequence Management
The Consequence Management (CM) mission type consists of activities to maintain or restore essential
services and to manage and mitigate problems resulting from disasters and catastrophes, including
natural, man-made, or terrorist incidents. Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield
explosives (CBRNE) CM activities are specifically conducted to alleviate the effects of deliberate and
inadvertent releases of CBRNE which have the potential to cause high casualties and large levels of
destruction.
B10.06 – Communications & CIS Security Systems
Research to understand system vulnerabilities, INFOSEC, information warfare techniques and security
systems refers to processes and methodologies involved with keeping information confidential,
available and assuring its integrity. Research to understand the general principles of systemic
intervention, disruption and infection in highly interconnected systems of systems. Also includes novel
concepts, tools and mechanisms for containment (avoid spreading of attacks) and to assist the affected
entities with eradication. Also includes work to model degraded systems and to gain an understanding
of security policy and architectures. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse COMSEC.
B10.07 – Command & Information Systems Integration
Research to evaluate and analyse combat management systems C2, surveillance and satcoms systems,
and intelligence systems and their integration at all levels. Also includes work to study CIS concepts
development, prototyping and CIS systems definition. Also includes work to exploit data fusion, speech
and special systems CIS. Also includes work to understand efficiency, vulnerability and survivability of
communications networks. Also includes work to understand open systems, JCSI architecture and test
bed processes, information management and infosec. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse
distributed systems. Also includes research to improve modelling capabilities in the context of
communications systems.
B10.08 – Distributed Networks
Research to understand and evaluate automated network technologies. Includes wireless sensor
networks. Also includes networks of many tiny microelectromechanical systems (smart dust). Also
includes virtualization management systems and deployment that provides novel solutions. Also
includes cognitive radio networks capable of identifying spectrum opportunity in their environment
based on emerging technologies (Nano radio, LED radio). Also includes improving co-ordination in ad
hoc networks by means of research and development novel algorithms. Also includes specknet
architecture (networking protocols) and speckled computing as an enabler technology
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B10.09 – Non-Cooperative Target Recognition
Research to exploit novel technologies for thermal imaging systems and secure communication
systems. Also includes work to understand combat ID systems (IFF), and radar systems for Non-
Cooperative Target Recognition (NCTR) systems, and for NATO identification systems.
B10.10 – Intelligent Technologies for Complex Systems
Research to understand the emergent behaviour, self-organization, and cooperation among complex
systems. Research to understand, identify, and predict the behaviour of complex systems, especially
as systems grow in size, inter-connection between components, the number of component attributes
and their distribution. Also includes complex learning systems in terms of non-functional
requirements, like scalability, flexibility, security, availability, integration and interoperability of
different systems.
B10.11 – Geographic Information Systems
Research to develop expertise in geographic information systems, particularly using digital map
processing facilities. Also work to optimise the use of imaging satellites data in GIS.
B10.12 – Optimisation, Planning & Decision Support Systems
Research to support a Battlespace Spectrum Management System. Includes work to aid the tactical
decision-making process to contribute to improved survivability and operational effectiveness using
approaches which derive "measures of effectiveness". Also work to demonstrate that decision support
systems can be used to formulate Staff Targets/Requirements. Also work to investigate the provision
of a global optimisation for service to all users across the JBD environment. Also includes work to
develop and improve mission support systems. It also includes research and development of new
applications and procedures that integrate technologies such as AI, ML and the use of BDAAs in support
processes for decision making. Also includes research and development of new applications and
network architectures based on MSaaS, TaaS, cloud and virtualized environments that allow the
training of military personnel in a more pervasive and effective way. The development of these
research areas can be applied to the training phases, to the operations planning phase and also to the
debriefing and rehearsal phases. Also includes research and development on support systems for the
management of the operational phase of planned missions.
B10.13 – Infrastructure to Support Information Management & Dissemination
Research to aid the validation of the UCS concept using the Integrated CIS Infrastructure
Demonstrator. Also work to integrate BISA with CIBIS and UCS concept research. Also includes work to
get existing information sources to appropriate users taking advantage of advanced dissemination
management systems. Also includes work to model the behaviour of complex network-based systems.
B10.14 – Network Management Systems
Research to improve the understanding of network management requirements and techniques,
including data links to all potential users.
B10.15 – Air Traffic Management Systems
Research to gain knowledge of airspace management issues applicable to all defence air platforms
including UAVs. Also includes work to improve air traffic control and management systems and
concepts. This topic includes the ATM’s main pillars, namely: Air traffic Services (ATS); Air Traffic Flow
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Management (ATFM) and Airspace Management (ASM). Military integration into civil airspace,
cooperative ATM and UTM are also considered in this domain.
B10.16 – Communication Systems - CBRN Applications
The Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Applications enable users to collect, process,
present and distribute information that supports the major functions of CBRN Defence operations.
CBRN Defence is the set of military activities that are conducted by forces to protect the NATO
populations, territory or forces against attacks with CBRN weapons or agents, and to minimize the
effects of these attacks. CBRN Applications provide decisions makers with accurately display of the
CBRN environment in order to execute a comprehensive threat and risk analysis, which include
information on own forces' CBRN capabilities and information on hostile capabilities and threats,
allowing the creation of CBRN estimates and the CBRN annex to the operational plan.
B10.17 – Communication Systems - Casualty Rate Estimation Services
The Casualty Rate Estimation Services provide functionality to estimate casualty rates based on various
scenarios (e.g. conventional, CBRN). These services will evaluate risk probabilities as well as provide
confidence levels for these estimates.
B10.18 – Space Traffic Management
Research on Space Traffic Management (STM) aims to enable safe, scalable, routine, high-tempo space
for all users in outer space. It prevents the collision risk with other platforms including nanosatellites
and orbital debris. STM systems could be organized to provide the following functions: Traffic
Management and Concepts (safety analysis, procedures), Architecture and Infrastructures (scalable
integration in space), Range Tracking, Surveillance (deconfliction, debris tracking), Characterization
(characterization of space objects) and Integrated modelling, Simulation and Testing.
B11 – Personnel Protection Systems
B11.01 – Physical Protection systems - Threat
Research to understand the issues involved in the design, selection and evaluation of specialist clothing
and equipment to protect individuals and groups operating in military threat situations. Also includes
work to understand human protection and survival systems in environmental extremes including
radiological, thermal, and sensory threat conditions. Also includes work to understand Electro-Optical
Protection Measures (EOPM) for bare eyes. Also includes work on body armour systems and related
behind-armour protective clothing systems. Also includes work to achieve lighter and modular ballistic
protections. Also includes work on human and physical resources protection against directed-energy
weapons (DEW). Also includes work on concealment and threat deception technologies, including
smart, adaptive (meta) materials for stealth coatings, adaptive camouflage and signature reduction.
Also includes research into, and development of designs aimed to integrate the ballistic protection in
the vehicle chassis and weapon system hull. Also includes work to understand protection for Mine
Countermeasure (MCM) diving, safety and support systems and decompression tables.
B11.02 – Physical Protection systems - Environment
Research to understand the short- and long-term effects of exposure to high altitude and other
extreme environments on human physiology in applications like aircrew escape systems, diving
systems, and submarine escape systems. Also includes work to understand maintenance of physical
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and visual performance with effective communication in high ambient noise environments. Also
includes work to design, select and evaluate specialist clothing and individual equipment, and
investigations of the degradation in individual and collective performance when exposed
simultaneously to diverse agents/contaminants. Also includes work on on-board oxygen generating
systems, breathing regulator technology, anti-G systems, air conditioning for humans and equipment,
and internal noise control for habitability purposes.
B11.03 – CBR & N Protection systems - Physical
Research to understand the construction, performance and utilisation of individual and collective
protection equipment (IPE & COLPRO), decontamination systems and contamination management,
and chemical hardening processes. Also includes work to exploit surface chemistry technology and
airflow cleaning and management systems. Also includes work to optimise the handling of supertoxic
chemicals. Also includes work to understand the Human Factors Integration (HFI) issues associated
with the design, selection and evaluation of NBC protective systems. Also includes work to understand
integration of COLPRO systems onto land vehicles. Also includes work to exploit auto decontamination
systems requiring no filter cartridge replacement and self-cleaning, reusable NBC clothing. Also
includes work to understand how to integrate sensors in the garments for early contamination
detection. Also includes work to investigate the potential of electrospun nanofibers particularly
regarding filtration, sensor integration and energy storage. Also includes work to evaluate and analyse
the statutory requirements regarding ionising radiation environments.
B11.04 – CBR & N Countermeasures - Medical
Research to understand the identification, efficacy, licensing and military acceptability of NBC medical
countermeasures. Also includes work to analyse effectiveness of pre-treatments (drugs and vaccines)
and therapy (drugs and procedures) for all materials that comprise the CB threat spectrum. Also
includes work on anti-emetic drugs used to combat deleterious effects of radiation. Also includes work
which exploits biotechnology, pharmacology, toxicology and pathology for the protection of military
personnel from CB threats. Work on drugs based on genetically modified organisms (such as
recombinant DNA (rDNA) or DNA molecules derived from different sources) with many applications,
ranging from pharmaceutical, regenerative medicine, human performance enhancement and treating
certain complex medical conditions is also included.
B11.05 – Protection Systems – Architecture
Research to understand the requirements and the design of open architectures for modular, integrated
personal protection systems (MIPPS). Also includes work to integrate threat and environment
protections into MIPPS. Also includes work to investigate the potential of new technologies (e.g.
electrospun nanofibers) to integrate filtration, sensors and energy storage into MIPPS. without
handicapping comfort and customizing the protection requirement of the different body areas,
adapting it to the mission's risk level and to the vital body organs. Also includes work to understand
how to integrate MIPPS with other systems (e.g. soldier systems). Also includes work to define
common requirements for testing and validating MIPPS. Also includes work to define mathematical
modelling and digital twins of the MIPPS to predict the possible expected risks under different
scenarios.
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Chapter C. System-level Technologies
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Chapter C. Table of Contents
C01 – Integrated Platforms ............................................................................................................... 71
C01.01 – Undersea Platforms ........................................................................................................ 71
C01.02 – Fighting Land Vehicles .................................................................................................... 71
C01.03 – Logistic, Command and Surveillance Land Vehicles ....................................................... 71
C01.04 – Combat Fixed Wing Aircraft ........................................................................................... 71
C01.05 – Tactical and Strategic Fixed Wing Transport Aircraft ..................................................... 71
C01.06 – Surveillance Fixed Wing Aircraft .................................................................................... 71
C01.07 – Training Fixed Wing Aircraft ........................................................................................... 71
C01.08 – Remote Carrier Aircraft .................................................................................................. 71
C01.09 – Helicopters/Rotorcraft ................................................................................................... 71
C01.10 – Unmanned Vehicles........................................................................................................ 72
C01.11 – High-Altitude Platform Systems ..................................................................................... 72
C01.12 – Lighter-Than-Air Platforms ............................................................................................. 72
C01.13 – Communications Satellites ............................................................................................. 73
C01.14 – Reconnaissance/Observation and Navigation Satellites ................................................ 73
C01.15 – Navigation and Other Satellites ..................................................................................... 73
C01.16 – Space Launchers ............................................................................................................. 73
C01.17 – Fighting Sea Surface Platforms ....................................................................................... 73
C01.18 – Logistic and Support Sea Surface Platforms ................................................................... 74
C01.19 – Amphibious Operations Platforms and Systems ............................................................ 74
C01.20 – Stores and Weapons Release/Discharge Systems ......................................................... 74
C01.21 – Space Debris Management and Deorbiting Systems ..................................................... 74
C01.22 – Onboard Aircraft Take-Off and Landing Systems ........................................................... 74
C01.23 – Launch and Recovery of Vehicles at Sea ........................................................................ 74
C02 – Weapons and Effectors ........................................................................................................... 74
C02.01 – Mines - Land ................................................................................................................... 74
C02.02 – Missiles - Anti Air ............................................................................................................ 74
C02.03 – Missiles - Anti Surface (Sea) ........................................................................................... 75
C02.04 – Gun Systems - Platform Mounted .................................................................................. 75
C02.05 – Gun Systems - Hand Held ............................................................................................... 75
C02.06 – Directed Energy Weapons .............................................................................................. 75
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C02.07 – Non-Lethal Weapons ...................................................................................................... 75
C02.08 – Weapons Systems Security ............................................................................................ 75
C02.09 – Mines - Sea ..................................................................................................................... 75
C02.10 – Missiles - Anti Ground (Land) ......................................................................................... 75
C02.11 – Torpedoes ....................................................................................................................... 75
C02.12 – Hypersonic Missiles ........................................................................................................ 75
C02.13 – Hypersonic Projectile...................................................................................................... 76
C02.14 – Counter UxV Systems ..................................................................................................... 76
C02.15 – Counter Hypervelocity Systems ..................................................................................... 76
C02.16 – Space-Based Weapons ................................................................................................... 76
C02.17 – Electromagnetic Railguns ............................................................................................... 76
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C01 – Integrated Platforms
C01.01 – Undersea Platforms
Research to investigate conceptual designs of modularity for underwater platforms related to
improved operational and navigational performance in response to future threats. These aspects will
be related to hydrodynamic and structural properties, functionality, stealth, manoeuvrability,
autonomy, resistance to impacts, leaks and fire. Evaluation of deep-sea threats and environmental
conditions and their impact on design and modularity. Also includes investigations requiring
autonomous AI based mission execution capabilities and communications.
C01.02 – Fighting Land Vehicles
Research and technologies for weaponized military vehicles used for combat operations, considering
the following categories: mobility (wheeled, tracked, other), power system and management (electric
battery, fuel cell, internal combustion engine using fossil fuels, internal combustion engine using
regenerative fuels, such as hydrogen and e-fuels, hybrid drive system by combination of internal
combustion engine and electrified components), weapon system (direct fire, lethal/non-lethal, indirect
fire), survivability (active protection, passive protection), architecture (digital, analogic), automation
(manned, optionally unmanned, optionally manned, unmanned), driver assistance systems and
interoperability.
C01.03 – Logistic, Command and Surveillance Land Vehicles
Research and technologies for vehicles providing logistic, command and reconnaissance support to the
fighting units, having regard to their reduced protection and firepower compared to the to the combat
vehicles.
C01.04 – Combat Fixed Wing Aircraft
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C01.05 – Tactical and Strategic Fixed Wing Transport Aircraft
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C01.06 – Surveillance Fixed Wing Aircraft
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C01.07 – Training Fixed Wing Aircraft
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C01.08 – Remote Carrier Aircraft
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C01.09 – Helicopters/Rotorcraft
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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C01.10 – Unmanned Vehicles
Research and technologies for UxVs (Unmanned Air/Ground/Surface/Underwater Vehicles), varying in
size and shape, including those operated remotely (via satellite, radio, or line-of-sight) by a human
operator, those highly automated and those controlled by an autopilot, as well as manned vehicles
that can optionally be operated unmanned and vehicles that are designed as purely unmanned
systems to autonomously perform tasks. Research of technologies, sensors, payloads, command and
control systems, propulsion, positioning and on-board power generation/control, navigation and
communications systems associated with UxVs. Also research activities to convert existing military
vehicles (land, sea and air) into unmanned platforms so that they can be operated remotely or
autonomously . Research on drive-by-wire capabilities. Research on unmanned vehicles applied to a
specific domain, such as:
C01.10.01 – Unmanned Land Vehicles
Research and technologies for all kind of UGV applications, such as mule systems, logistic transport
vehicles, command and control vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, main
battle tanks and other fully autonomous ground systems.
C01.10.02 – Unmanned Maritime Vehicles
Research on all aspects of unmanned surface and underwater vehicles either remotely operated or
with differing levels of autonomy. Also includes research on launch and recovery systems.
C01.10.03 – Unmanned Air Vehicles
Research on all aspects of unmanned air systems and vehicles (fix and rotary wings) either remotely
operated or with differing levels of autonomy. Research on launch and recovery systems is not
included in this topic but in the taxonomy item C01.08 – Remote Carrier Aircraft.
C01.11 – High-Altitude Platform Systems
Research to develop high-flying aircraft or airships, which will operate from altitudes of 17 to 24 km
benefiting from favourable atmospheric conditions in the stratosphere. HAPS include lighter-than-air
and heavier-than-air systems (UAVs) with high autonomy and persistence. The main use is as a
communications station, having been recognised by the ITU as a separate category of radio station and
has assigned the 2, 31/28, and 47/48 GHz frequency ranges for its operation. Compared to LEO/GEO
satellites, HAPS perform better in terms of latency and dispersion losses, as well as quick deployment.
In military use, in addition to communications stations, HAPS have applications in ISR, with a higher
resolution capability.
C01.12 – Lighter-Than-Air Platforms
Research includes lighter-than-air manned and unmanned platforms (blimps, balloons, airplanes) that
operate in the atmosphere at high altitudes benefiting from favourable atmospheric conditions in the
stratosphere for extended periods of time in order to provide services conventionally provided by
an artificial satellite orbiting in space. Proposed applications include border security, maritime traffic
monitoring, anti-piracy operations, disaster response, agricultural observation, atmospheric
observation, weather monitoring, communications relay, oceanographic research, Earth imaging and
telecommunications.
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C01.13 – Communications Satellites
Communication satellites can belong to 3 main categories: Geostationary satellites (GEO), Low Earth
Orbit satellites (LEO) including multiple satellites constellation configurations, Highly Elliptical Orbits
satellites (HEO) to better serve the polar regions. Typical research areas related to communication
satellites concern communication payload design, on-board signal processing, active antennas design,
on-board reconfiguration, etc.
C01.14 – Reconnaissance/Observation and Navigation Satellites
Research on reconnaissance/observation satellites include at least three classes of satellites: Low Earth
orbiting satellites operating in the optical domain (visible and IR), Low Earth orbiting satellites carrying
a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Satellites operating in the geostationary orbit (observation and early
warning). Typical research areas concern optical instrument design, SAR design, on-board signal
processing, on board storage memory, very high data rate transmission to ground stations, etc.
C01.15 – Navigation and Other Satellites
Navigation satellites such as GPS or Galileo are in fact positioning and time-synchronization satellites.
They operate in the Medium Earth Orbits (MEO) around 20 000 km altitude on a series of inclined
orbital planes. Research concerning these satellites mostly concern the on-board atomic clocks and
signal generation to reduce the sensitivity to jamming or spoofing. Other satellites that relate to
navigation are those that pickup AIS signal from sea vessels and relay them to ground stations. They
are mostly micro-, nanosatellites, CubeSats and or other minisatellites operating in LEO. Other
satellites of interest to defence are electronic intelligence satellites that pick up and analyse signals
from ground-based radars and other transmitters.
C01.16 – Space Launchers
Space launchers can be categorized according to their payload capacity:
- Large launchers which can put several tons (typically 5 to 6 tons) on a GEO Transfer orbit (e.g.
Ariane 5 and Ariane 64, Atlas V);
- Medium sized launchers such as the Soyuz and Ariane 62 which can launch 2 to 4 tons in the
GEO Transfer orbit;
- Small launchers which do not aim to the GEO satellites market but rather focus on Low Earth
Orbiting satellites, which include medium-size spacecraft (typically 500 Kg (as well as sets of
microsatellites and nanosatellites. Many such launchers are available today such as Vega in
Europe, Rocketlab in the US, Electron in Japan and many more are being developed by a series
of small start-up industries.
Typical research associated with space Launchers focus on advanced propulsion system, guidance
systems, launcher recovery design and associated systems, lightweight dispenser systems, etc.
New space launchers could be composed of a part of reusable components (e.g. SpaceX Falcon 9
launcher).
C01.17 – Fighting Sea Surface Platforms
Research to evaluate and analyse the design of fighting sea surface platforms from different aspects,
namely operational capabilities, survivability, operability, maintainability, and interaction with the
marine environment.
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C01.18 – Logistic and Support Sea Surface Platforms
Research to investigate the impact of the development of primary energy sources in the civilian sector
(e.g. hydrogen, methanol, synthetic fuels) on availability, standardisation of infrastructure/systems
and their costs in military use. Develop conceptual approaches for the preparation of a common
situation picture across all logistics concepts within the EU and for all military sections.
C01.19 – Amphibious Operations Platforms and Systems
Research into systems able to support operations launched from the sea by an amphibious force to
conduct landing force operations within the littorals. Landing Platform Dock (LPD), Landing Helicopter
Dock (LHD).
C01.20 – Stores and Weapons Release/Discharge Systems
Research to understand, evaluate and analyse the factors involved in release/discharge of stores and
weapons from land, sea and air platforms. Includes model and full-scale experiments and predictive
modelling.
C01.21 – Space Debris Management and Deorbiting Systems
Research on technologies for deorbiting satellites aims at designing various systems that can help
speed up a spacecraft descent into the Earth's atmosphere where it will burn up after its mission is
over. This reduces the chance that it will be involved in a collision and frees up the useful orbit for
another satellite. A rapid reliable deorbiting of satellites with critical military payloads after their end-
of-life is a specific requirement. Another class of deorbiting technologies regards specifically the orbital
debris, with the objective to reduce their number and dangerousness for the active satellites.
C01.22 – Onboard Aircraft Take-Off and Landing Systems
Research on EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System), UAV launching systems and landing
system and onboard aircraft landing systems. Also includes research on helicopter operation and
landing systems and (VTOL) Vertical Take-Off and Landing onboard operations.
C01.23 – Launch and Recovery of Vehicles at Sea
Research to study and improve L&R in adverse conditions of manned/unmanned marine vehicles from
naval platforms, implementation of tools for the prediction of ship motions suitable for real time
decision support systems. Also includes tools for the integration of stability actuator into design and
(autonomous) launch and recovery system design.
C02 – Weapons and Effectors
C02.01 – Mines - Land
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.02 – Missiles - Anti Air
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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C02.03 – Missiles - Anti Surface (Sea)
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.04 – Gun Systems - Platform Mounted
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.05 – Gun Systems - Hand Held
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.06 – Directed Energy Weapons
Research to develop and implement directed energy weapons into air, land, and naval platforms.
Includes research on microwave guns, High Energy Laser (HEL) weapons and Electromagnetic Pulse
(EMP) weapons. Research on directed energy weapon systems to understand new capabilities and
limitations.
C02.07 – Non-Lethal Weapons
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.08 – Weapons Systems Security
Research on advanced weapon systems & security. Also includes weapons storage and security system
including electronic controls and vaults. Also includes research on new standards, adequacy of physical
protection in storage. Also includes analyses asset value, potential threats and vulnerabilities, and
proposes countermeasures to mitigate risk of unauthorized access, sabotage and theft. Also includes
potential countermeasures and recommendations to mitigate risks.
C02.09 – Mines - Sea
Research to understand self-contained explosive devices placed in water to damage or destroy surface
ships, submarines and maritime infrastructure including port access. Research includes mine types,
damage caused by mines, countermeasures and mind laying tools and systems.
C02.10 – Missiles - Anti Ground (Land)
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.11 – Torpedoes
Research to understand underwater weapons that are fired above or below the water surface, are self-
propelled and self-guided, and are equipped with an explosive warhead that detonates either on
contact with or near the target (anti surface, anti submarine warfare). Major research areas include
power sources, propulsion, guidance systems, warhead, hydrodynamics, handling devices, and launch
systems. Conventional torpedoes. Torpedo guiding systems. Hypercavitating torpedoes. Searching
torpedoes. Torpedo storage systems. Torpedo Launching systems.
C02.12 – Hypersonic Missiles
Research into Hypersonic cruise missiles, Advanced Hypersonic Weapons (AHW) and Hypersonic glide
vehicles (HGV).
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C02.13 – Hypersonic Projectile
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.14 – Counter UxV Systems
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.15 – Counter Hypervelocity Systems
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.16 – Space-Based Weapons
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
C02.17 – Electromagnetic Railguns
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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Chapter D. Supplementary Technology Areas
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Chapter D. Table of Contents
D01 – Operating Environment Technology ....................................................................................... 81
D01.01 – Oceanography ................................................................................................................ 81
D01.02 – Terrain Science ............................................................................................................... 81
D01.03 – Meteorology................................................................................................................... 81
D01.04 – Upper Atmosphere & Space Environment ..................................................................... 81
D01.05 – Acoustic Propagation in Air & Water ............................................................................. 81
D01.06 – Electromagnetic Propagation in Air & Water ................................................................ 81
D01.07 – Optical propagation in Air and Water ............................................................................ 81
D02 – Manufacturing Processes, Design Tools and Techniques ....................................................... 82
D02.01 – Design for Improved Reliability & Maintainability ......................................................... 82
D02.02 – Cost Engineering ............................................................................................................ 82
D02.03 – Concurrent Engineering and Reduced Design Cycle ...................................................... 82
D02.04 – Advanced Prototyping.................................................................................................... 82
D02.05 – Techniques and Systems for Production Manufacturing ............................................... 82
D02.06 – Project Management and Control ................................................................................. 82
D02.07 – Manufacturing Process Simulation ................................................................................ 82
D02.08 – Lean Manufacturing ....................................................................................................... 83
D02.09 – Process Control Technology ........................................................................................... 83
D02.10 – Environmentally Friendly Factory Processes ................................................................. 83
D02.11 – Knowledge-based Engineering ....................................................................................... 83
D02.12 – Digital Twin .................................................................................................................... 83
D02.13 – Bio-Inspired Systems ...................................................................................................... 83
D02.14 – Multi-Disciplinary Design and Analysis Framework ....................................................... 83
D02.15 – Requirement Definition Studies ..................................................................................... 83
D03 – Defence analysis ...................................................................................................................... 84
D03.01 – Policy, Force Development and Balance of Investment Studies.................................... 84
D03.02 – Combined Operational Effectiveness and Investment Appraisals ................................. 84
D03.03 – Platform and System Concept Studies ........................................................................... 84
D03.04 – Scenario Generation ...................................................................................................... 84
D03.05 – Tactical Development and Support to Operations and Training ................................... 84
D03.06 – Other Effectiveness and Performance Studies .............................................................. 84
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D03.07 – Military Doctrine Analysis .............................................................................................. 84
D03.08 – Wargaming and Combat Simulation .............................................................................. 84
D04 – Installations and Facilities ....................................................................................................... 85
D04.01 – Ground Stations ............................................................................................................. 85
D04.02 – Fortifications / Defences ................................................................................................ 85
D04.03 – Battlefield Engineering ................................................................................................... 85
D04.04 – T&E Facilities .................................................................................................................. 85
D04.05 – Site Decontamination .................................................................................................... 85
D04.06 – Maintenance and Repair Facilities (MRO) ..................................................................... 85
D05 – Personnel Equipment, Processes and Health Aspects ............................................................ 85
D05.01 – Equipped Personnel ....................................................................................................... 85
D05.02 – Recruitment, Selection and Allocation .......................................................................... 85
D05.03 – Training and Education .................................................................................................. 85
D05.04 – Health and Well-being ................................................................................................... 85
D06 – Defence Functions and Policy Support ................................................................................... 86
D06.01 – Access to Critical Raw Materials outside EU .................................................................. 86
D06.02 – International Security .................................................................................................... 86
D06.03 – Ethics - Rules of Engagement ......................................................................................... 86
D06.04 – Equipment Disposal and Circular Economy ................................................................... 86
D06.05 – Non-Proliferation ........................................................................................................... 86
D06.06 – Hazard Assessment ........................................................................................................ 86
D06.07 – Logistics, Integrated Life-Cycle Support ......................................................................... 86
D06.08 – Counter Stealth .............................................................................................................. 86
D07 – Battlespace Information ......................................................................................................... 86
D07.01 – Information Infrastructure ............................................................................................. 86
D07.02 – Information Warfare ...................................................................................................... 86
D07.03 – Command & Control ...................................................................................................... 87
D07.04 – Digitization of the Battlespace ....................................................................................... 87
D07.05 – Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance (ISTAR) ..................... 87
D07.06 – Military Intelligence and Industry Intelligence .............................................................. 87
D08 – Business Process ..................................................................................................................... 87
D08.01 – Requirements Capture ................................................................................................... 87
D08.02 – Concepts and Product Definition ................................................................................... 87
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D08.03 – Product Supportability ................................................................................................... 87
D08.04 – Whole-life Cycle Improvement ...................................................................................... 88
D08.05 – Business Process Simulation .......................................................................................... 88
D08.06 – Benchmarking and Best Practice ................................................................................... 88
D08.07 – Lean Enterprise Models ................................................................................................. 88
D08.08 – R&T Management .......................................................................................................... 88
D08.09 – Design in the Extended Enterprise ................................................................................. 88
D08.10 – Procurement and Contracting Processes ....................................................................... 88
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D01 – Operating Environment Technology
D01.01 – Oceanography
Research to understand military oceanography and develop expertise in water column and seafloor
and ocean bed imaging. Also includes work to understand the underwater environment in terms of its
effect on underwater weapon homing algorithms. Also includes research to understand HF acoustics
propagation for applications like MCM sonars.
D01.02 – Terrain Science
Research to understand terrain for representation in models and synthetic environments. Work to
develop expertise in digital map processing facilities. Also includes work to understand land mapping
from space imagery.
D01.03 – Meteorology
Research to understand representation of weather systems in models and synthetic environments to
preview the potential impact of the meteorology conditions in the spread of an agents or
contaminants. Also includes work to understand ocean-atmosphere coupling for underwater
propagation modelling, and effect of meteorological conditions on long range radar propagation at
sea. Also includes work to sense remote air movements using optical techniques. Also includes
research to analyse and develop fully coupled (ocean-atmosphere-wave-ice) global, regional and local
models and prediction tools for operational planning.
D01.04 – Upper Atmosphere & Space Environment
Research to understand ionospheric and exo-atmospherics space environment and its effects on
military spacecraft. Includes work to measure and model space radiation and to assess the orbital
debris population and its characteristics. Also includes research to understand effect of ionospheric
environment on EHF satcomms, sensors for BMD, HF and space-based radar and precision time
systems like GPS.
D01.05 – Acoustic Propagation in Air & Water
Research to develop mathematic models and relevant simulators aiming at describing the behaviour
of sound waveforms in air and underwater taking into account all potential variables, such as the
effects of reverberations, reflections, changes in the speed of the sound source and changes in the
peculiar characteristics of the element into which the propagation is taking place.
D01.06 – Electromagnetic Propagation in Air & Water
Research to develop mathematic models and relevant simulators aiming at describing the behaviour
of electromagnetic waveforms in air and underwater taking into account all potential contingency
variables, such as the effects of reverberations, reflections, effects of meteorological variations on
long-range transmissions and changes in the peculiar characteristics of the element into which the
propagation is taking place.
D01.07 – Optical propagation in Air and Water
Research to understand and model propagation of optical waves in air and/or in water to take into
account its effect on optical system performance and image modelling and imaging systems.
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D02 – Manufacturing Processes, Design Tools and Techniques
D02.01 – Design for Improved Reliability & Maintainability
Research to understand interface requirements and applicability of data employed in system
engineering to the industrial process. Also includes work to understand reliability modelling of land
vehicles and equipment, satcom systems, and aircraft and helicopter structures and systems where
dynamic characteristics under vibration conditions is important. Also includes work to understand
open systems, high integrity systems and device reliability design concepts. Also includes work to
evaluate, analyse and produce Asics, interconnects and packaging for cryptographic ICs.
D02.02 – Cost Engineering
Research to understand the integration of structural, aerodynamic, signature and control techniques
for cost optimisation at the design stage. Also includes work on structural design and materials
requirements in the context of cost reductions. Also includes work on cost modelling and analysis for
land vehicles, equipment, and for space surveillance and satcom systems. Also includes work to
understand minimisation of cost in instances where there are technology obsolescence implications.
Also includes design for improved affordability.
D02.03 – Concurrent Engineering and Reduced Design Cycle
Research to understand the implications of configuration control at all levels from IC board to platform.
Also includes work to understand concurrent engineering design tools
D02.04 – Advanced Prototyping
Research to understand device prototyping and of rapid prototyping tools for software developments.
Also includes work to understand the implications of a virtual manufacturing approach. Also includes
rapid prototyping in an air system context.
D02.05 – Techniques and Systems for Production Manufacturing
Research to understand, analyse and evaluate techniques and systems for production manufacturing
of defence equipment. Examples include, flexible assembly,
robotics/automation, IT systems, "just-in-time" provision of components and subsystems, reduced
emissions manufacture, etc. Includes work to minimise systems installation problems during the later
stages of assembly. Examples include use of robotics, modular systems, multiplexing, improved
interfaces/connectors, operator support tools for installation and remedial functions, and visualisation
tools.
D02.06 – Project Management and Control
Research to understand, analyse and evaluate improved project management and control techniques
and associated factors. Also includes human resource management, cultural issues, IT applications to
communication and programme control, error budget management, etc.
D02.07 – Manufacturing Process Simulation
Research into all aspects of the manufacturing process that are amenable to advanced simulation
techniques in order to identify potential problem areas and cost-effective remedial solutions. Also
includes relevant aspects of material behaviour modelling.
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D02.08 – Lean Manufacturing
Research to evaluate techniques which minimise delays in component supply and insertion into the
manufacturing and assembly processes.
D02.09 – Process Control Technology
Research on methods of real time process control applied to manufacture of all defence products.
Examples are cure monitoring of composites, weld process monitoring, and on-line tolerance
measurement and control. Also includes relevant aspects of material behaviour modelling.
D02.10 – Environmentally Friendly Factory Processes
Research to understand and aid implementation of environmentally friendly (EF) materials and
processes wherever possible in the manufacturing cycle, so that adverse human effects caused by
chemical effluent sources or noise transmission are minimised. Also includes work to meet the
requirements of the Montreal Protocol and other international agreements in the context of EF factory
processes and product behaviour.
D02.11 – Knowledge-based Engineering
Research to maximise the effective use of existing data and know-how contained in libraries of past
experience.
D02.12 – Digital Twin
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a system and spans its lifecycle. It is updated from real time
data and uses simulation and machine learning to assist in decision making. Research in digital twin
can lead to increases in efficiency and productivity.
D02.13 – Bio-Inspired Systems
Research activities that focus on the design, development and understanding of systems that mimic
the behaviours or processes of biological entities (i.e. during the diverse CBRN mitigation actions). Also
includes work on bio-inspired sensors and networks, biochips and biosensors able to diagnose cheaply
and rapidly diseases, physiological states and genetic features of organisms. Research activities in the
development of nanorobots (nanobots) and bio-nanobots in the health promotion, and to the use of
molecular knowledge to maintain and improve health at a molecular scale should be considered
Research activities in biorobotics to develop artificial limbs (i.e. robotic arms/legs and or “robotic
mules”) and exoskeletons to augment limb functions (i.e. reinforce their mobility and/or increase their
strength) is also included
D02.14 – Multi-Disciplinary Design and Analysis Framework
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D02.15 – Requirement Definition Studies
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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D03 – Defence analysis
D03.01 – Policy, Force Development and Balance of Investment Studies
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D03.02 – Combined Operational Effectiveness and Investment Appraisals
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D03.03 – Platform and System Concept Studies
Research to understand the Concept of Use (CONUSE) and Concept of Employment (CONEMP) of
platform and system, including weapon systems. Also includes work for Concept Development &
Experimentation (CD&E) using Modelling & Simulation (M&S).
D03.04 – Scenario Generation
Research on generation, modelling and simulation of possible scenarios for evaluations and forecasting
on symmetric, asymmetric and hybrid operations and related training, also through wargaming. Also
include work on Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to scenario generation. Also includes research to
define the tools and languages to describe a scenario for CONUSE, CONEMP, demonstration, OA, test
and training. Also includes description of components of military scenarios that can be shared across
a variety of Modelling & Simulation systems. Also includes development of tools and threat models.
D03.05 – Tactical Development and Support to Operations and Training
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D03.06 – Other Effectiveness and Performance Studies
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D03.07 – Military Doctrine Analysis
It includes the research sectors that deal with the analysis of the doctrines adopted by the various
countries (for example in supporting Decision Making), their comparison and the search for solutions
and applications that improve their effectiveness, efficiency and application in operational theatres.
Also includes research aimed at integrating, in applications and procedures based on military
doctrines, state-of-the-art solutions that use innovative technologies such as AI, ML and BDAA. It
includes research for advanced training of military doctrine, using applications and architectures based
on, for example, LMS, MSaaS, and TaaS.
D03.08 – Wargaming and Combat Simulation
Research on modelling and simulation of wargaming for the training and evaluation of techniques,
tactics and procedures, analysis on the wargaming effects on the combat capability development. Also
include work on the definition and standardisation of training methodologies. Research on Artificial
Intelligence for the simulation of virtual dynamically changeable environments.
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D04 – Installations and Facilities
D04.01 – Ground Stations
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D04.02 – Fortifications / Defences
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D04.03 – Battlefield Engineering
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D04.04 – T&E Facilities
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D04.05 – Site Decontamination
Tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) for planning and executing decontamination operations in a
CBRN environment.
D04.06 – Maintenance and Repair Facilities and Organizations (MRO)
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D05 – Personnel Equipment, Processes and Health Aspects
D05.01 – Equipped Personnel
Technologies that make military actions easier and more connected, providing tactical awareness,
allowing soldiers to see beyond their personal sight using GPS, smartphones, tablets, and even helmet-
mounted screens. Further relevant advances in technology that produced better and lighter body
armour, exoskeletons, better weapon optics and imaging devices, and a host of other specialized
protective and offensive gear.
D05.02 – Recruitment, Selection and Allocation
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D05.03 – Training and Education
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D05.04 – Health and Well-being
Health and well-being are important aspects for quality of life. The self-reported EQ5D questionnaire
determines health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and may be used to assess well-being and treatment
effects. This topic includes nutrition, training, prevention of stress-related disorders, and staff work-
life balance. Research on psychophysical state monitoring system inbuilt in uniform and integrated
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with C4I systems. Analysis of medical parameters controllable on battlefield with low error probability
decision making process for soldier state evaluation.
D06 – Defence Functions and Policy Support
D06.01 – Access to Critical Raw Materials outside EU
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D06.02 – International Security
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D06.03 – Ethics - Rules of Engagement
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D06.04 – Equipment Disposal and Circular Economy
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D06.05 – Non-Proliferation
Research on preventing the spread of CBRN weapons and their technology, promoting cooperation in
the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and CBRN knowledge, and to further the goal of achieving CBRN
disarmament and general disarmament.
D06.06 – Hazard Assessment
Includes studies on detecting, identifying, assessing, previewing, controlling, monitoring and
eliminating all of the potential hazards on human, equipment, property or environment.
D06.07 – Logistics, Integrated Life-Cycle Support
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D06.08 – Counter Stealth
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D07 – Battlespace Information
D07.01 – Information Infrastructure
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D07.02 – Information Warfare
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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D07.03 – Command & Control
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D07.04 – Digitization of the Battlespace
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D07.05 – Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance (ISTAR)
ISTAR stands for information, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance, which is a practice
that links several battlefield functions together to assist a combat force in employing its sensors and
managing the information they gather. ISTAR is the process of integrating the intelligence process with
surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance tasks to improve a commander’s situational
awareness and consequently their decision making. The inclusion of the “I” is important as it recognizes
the importance of taking the information from all the sensors and processing it into useful knowledge.
D07.06 – Military Intelligence and Industry Intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to
provide guidance, share good practices on CBRN security and direction to commanders in support of
their decisions. This is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a range of sources, directed
towards the commanders’ mission requirements, or responding to questions as part of operational or
campaign planning, or the development of an Early Warning System for CBRN risks
1
. Areas of study
may include the operational environment, hostile, friendly and neutral forces, the civilian population
in an area of combat operations, and other broader areas of interest, supported by advanced
modelling techniques from artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics. Intelligence
activities are conducted at all levels, from tactical to strategic, in peacetime, the period of transition to
war, and during a war itself.
D08 – Business Process
D08.01 – Requirements Capture
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D08.02 – Concepts and Product Definition
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D08.03 – Product Supportability
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
1
CBRN Glossary. European Commission, Directorate-General Home Affairs. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/home-
affairs/sites/default/files/what-we-do/policies/crisis-and-terrorism/securing-dangerous-material/docs/cbrn_glossary_en.pdf
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D08.04 – Whole-life Cycle Improvement
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D08.05 – Business Process Simulation
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D08.06 – Benchmarking and Best Practice
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D08.07 – Lean Enterprise Models
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D08.08 – R&T Management
Includes research, analysis, design, modelling and evaluation studies of research and technology
management. Also includes studies on technology roadmapping, technology monitoring, technology
foresight, technology inventory and technology portfolio.
D08.09 – Design in the Extended Enterprise
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
D08.10 – Procurement and Contracting Processes
Full description planned for the next update cycle.
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Chapter E. Specialized Technology Taxonomies
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Chapter E. Table of Contents
E01 – Artificial Intelligence .................................................................................................................... 91
E01.01 – Algorithms and Strategies for Decision Making ............................................................. 91
E01.01.01 – Symbolic, Logic-based and Knowledge-based ....................................................... 91
E01.01.02 - Connectionist - Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) .................................................. 92
E01.01.03 – Decision Trees, Probabilistic, and Meta-Heuristics Search Algorithms ................. 94
E01.02 – Functions Provided by AI Algorithms ............................................................................. 98
E01.02.01 – Human Language Technologies (HLT) ................................................................... 98
E01.02.02 – Computer Vision .................................................................................................. 100
E01.02.03 – Situational Awareness ......................................................................................... 101
E01.02.04 – Navigation ............................................................................................................ 101
E01.02.05 – Analytics .............................................................................................................. 102
E01.02.06 – Other Functions Provided by AI ........................................................................... 103
E01.03 – Features, Characteristics and Related Concepts .......................................................... 103
E01.03.01 – Perception, Conditioning and Data Format ......................................................... 103
E01.03.02 – Machine Learning (ML) ........................................................................................ 104
E01.03.03 – Computing Infrastructure - HW Implementation ................................................ 105
E01.03.04 – Man to Machine Interaction................................................................................ 106
E01.03.05 – Machine to Machine (M2M) ............................................................................... 107
E01.03.06 – Distributed AI (DAI) .............................................................................................. 107
E01.03.07 – Embodied Intelligence ......................................................................................... 107
E01.03.08 – AI Ethics ............................................................................................................... 107
E01.03.09 – Modelling and Simulation (M&S) ........................................................................ 107
E01.03.10 – Other Features, Characteristics and Related Concepts ....................................... 107
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E01 – Artificial Intelligence
E01.01 – Algorithms and Strategies for Decision Making
E01.01.01 – Symbolic, Logic-based and Knowledge-based
Approach based in expression of concepts and processes by sets of symbols according to a limited set
of logically defined rules and the use of background knowledge and constraints to define the search
space. By the combination of different symbols following certain rules, complex ideas are formed and
reasoning is possible.
E01.01.01.01 – Logic Programming
Learning hypothesis comprising a set of rules, given background knowledge and constraints for the
search space and based on formal logic. Examples of classical tools are Prolog, Lisp and Foil.
E01.01.01.01.01 – Inductive Logic Programming
Finds hypothesis from a set of positive and negative examples with the ability to provide declarative
background knowledge to the learning engine.
E01.01.01.01.02 – Deductive Logic Programming
Starting out with a general hypothesis, the possibilities to reach a specific and logical conclusion are
analysed. A theory is held and predictions of its results are made, going from the general to the specific
observations. The inference engine is directed by data.
E01.01.01.01.03 – Abductive Logic Programming
Through an incomplete set of observations and using the best information available, it provides the
likeliest possible explanation based on making and testing hypotheses. It often entails making an
educated guess after observing a phenomenon for which there is no clear explanation.
E01.01.01.01.04 – Probabilistic or Statistical Logic Programming
Automatic reasoning that takes into account uncertainty and chance.
E01.01.01.01.05 – Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP)
It represents information in the form of weak declarative rules and a defeasible argumentation
inference mechanism for warranting the entailed conclusion. Argumentation formalism is used for
deciding between contradictory goals where queries are supported by arguments that could be
defeated by other arguments.
E01.01.01.01.06 – Other Logic Programming
E01.01.01.02 - Expert Systems
Systems based on knowledge and expertise providing reasoning capabilities for a specific area
represented by ontologies, rules and information databases. The core components of expert systems
are the knowledge base and the reasoning engine. They were the first operative form of AI algorithms.
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E01.01.01.02.01 – Rule Based Reasoning (RBR)
The expert knowledge of the system is expressed manually by human experts in the form of simple
logical tests that establish a set of rules often implying causality. Learning often done by re-weighting
of rules via reinforcement learning.
E01.01.01.02.02 – Case Based Reasoning (CBR)
Problems are solved by finding solutions from similar cases experienced in the past. CBR allows for
sustained learning, since experiences from new cases are registered when new problems are solved,
being added to the knowledge database. Learning often done by re-weighting of features and the
adaptation heuristics as well as identifying case utility via reinforcement learning.
E01.01.01.02.03 – Fuzzy Expert Systems
Collection of membership functions and rules that are used to reason about data allowing a better
management of the uncertainty in comparison with Boolean logic and oriented towards numerical
processing.
E01.01.01.02.04 – Multilingual Knowledge Base
The knowledge base used by the expert system supports different languages.
E01.01.01.02.05 – Knowledge Graphs
Type of knowledge base to enhance search engine's results with information gathered from a variety
of sources connected by different relationships. Represents a collection of interlinked descriptions of
entities like real-world objects, events, situations or abstract concepts. In some contexts, the term
knowledge graph is used to refer to any knowledge base represented as a graph.
E01.01.01.02.06 – Other Expert Systems
E01.01.02 - Connectionist - Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)
ANN are interconnected assemblies of simple processing elements, units or nodes whose functionality
is loosely based on the animal neuron. The processing ability of the network is stored in the inter-unit
connection strengths, or weights, obtained by a process of adaptation to, or learning from, a set of
training patterns.
E01.01.02.01 – Hebbian Nets
Neural networks providing unsupervised learning based in the concept that two connected neurons
activated simultaneously strengthen their connection, facilitating their activation in the future.
E01.01.02.02 – McCulloch-Pitts Neuron and Perceptron
Algorithms for supervised learning of binary classifiers based on a linear predictor function combining
a set of weights with the feature vector.
E01.01.02.03 – Adaline and Madaline
The adaptive linear neuron (or element) is an early single linear unit artificial neural network based on
the McCulloch–Pitts neuron. It consists on weight, bias and summation function and it is trained by
the delta rule. Madaline is an extension to multiple layers.
E01.01.02.04 – Hetero-Associative Nets – Memories
Single-layer networks in which the weights are determined to store a set of pattern associations.
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E01.01.02.05 – Auto-Associative Nets – Memories: Hopfield Nets
Single layer of processing elements where each unit is connected to every other unit other than itself
and compute its output recursively in time until the system becomes stable.
E01.01.02.06 – Competition-Based Nets: Kohonen Nets
Also called Self-organizing maps. These networks are based in competition for activation across the
layers. The network evolves via competitive dynamics and self-organize by unsupervised learning.
E01.01.02.07 – Boltzmann Machines
Networks of symmetrically connected, neuron-like units that make stochastic decisions about whether
to be on or off. One subclass is restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) that can be seen as a stacked DBM
as it has several layers of hidden units.
E01.01.02.08 – Autoencoders (AE)
Unsupervised ANN that learns how to efficiently compress and encode data. They are capable of
reconstructing as close as possible the original input from the reduced encoded model. They are used
for dimensionality reduction and information retrieval.
E01.01.02.09 – Deep Neural Networks (DNN)
DNN or Deep Learning Architectures (DLA). Multilayer neural networks addressing complicated
notions by breaking it down into simplified characteristics through multiple layers. Computes
hierarchical features or representations of the observational data, where the higher-level features or
factors are defined from lower-level ones.
E01.01.02.09.01 – Deep Autoencoders (DAE)
Algorithms whose output target is the data input itself, often trained previously with DBN or using
distorted training data to regularize the learning. There should be more than one hidden layer to be
considered as deep.
E01.01.02.09.02 – Deep Boltzmann Machines (DBM)
The deep Boltzmann machine (DBM) is a special BM where the hidden units are organized in a deep
layered manner, only adjacent layers are connected, and there are no visible-visible or hidden-hidden
connections within the same layer.
E01.01.02.09.03 – Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN)
Also named as CNN (without the prefix) or convnets, the architecture consists of three types of layers,
namely convolutional, pooling, and fully connected. Oriented to process data that have a grid-like
topology like images but as well to several others including text.
E01.01.02.09.04 – Deep Recurrent Neural Networks (DRNN)
They can keep memory on past states of the network thanks to a feedback capability. They provide
memory to neurons allowing to capture information about what have been calculated so far.
E01.01.02.09.05 – Deep Belief Networks (DBN)
Probabilistic generative models composed of multiple layers of stochastic, hidden variables. The top
two layers have undirected, symmetric connections between them. The lower layers receive top-
down, directed connections from the layer above.
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E01.01.02.10 – Graph-Based Neural Networks
Neural networks that operate directly on arbitrarily structured graphs and which do not have an
underlying Euclidean or grid-like structure, represented by graphs and manifolds or surfaces and not
showing typical properties as global parameterization, common system of coordinates, vector space
structure or shift-invariance.
E01.01.02.10.01 – Graph Attention Networks
Neural network architectures that operate on graph-structured data, leveraging masked self-
attentional layers to address the shortcomings of prior methods based on graph convolutions or their
approximations.
E01.01.02.10.02 – Graph Auto-encoder
This model makes use of latent variables and is capable of learning interpretable latent representations
for undirected graphs.
E01.01.02.10.03 – Graph Generative Networks
Neural networks capable of generating graphs.
E01.01.02.10.04 – Spatial-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks
Spatial-temporal graph convolutional networks (ST-GCN) move beyond the limitations of previous
methods by automatically learning both the spatial and temporal patterns from data.
E01.01.02.10.05 – Geometric Deep Learning
Umbrella term for emerging techniques attempting to generalize (structured) deep neural models to
non-Euclidean domains such as graphs and manifolds.
E01.01.02.11 – Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN)
Framework for estimating generative models via an adversarial process simultaneously training two
models: a generative model G that captures the data distribution, and a discriminative model D that
estimates the probability that a sample came from the training data rather than G. The training
procedure for G is to maximize the probability of D making a mistake.
E01.01.02.12 – Other Neural Networks
E01.01.03 – Decision Trees, Probabilistic, and Meta-Heuristics Search Algorithms
These algorithms take a problem as input and return a solution from the search space which is the set
of all possible solutions.
E01.01.03.01 – Decision Trees
Non-parametric supervised learning methods used for classification or regression suffering normally
from bias (for simple trees) and variance (for complex trees). Use of graphical representations of the
possible options that can be selected in the resolution of a problem or a case, where internal nodes
represent actions, arcs represent outcomes of an action, and leaves represent final outcomes.
Construction of an optimal decision tree is an NP-complete problem and metaheuristics are normally
used to solve them.
E01.01.03.01.01 – Classification or Binary Tree – Discrete
It builds classification models in the form of a tree structure by breaking down a dataset into smaller
and smaller subsets by learning a series of explicit if-then rules on feature values that results in
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predicting a target value. A classification tree consists of the decision nodes with two or more branches
and the leaf node which represents a classification as final node of any branch.
E01.01.03.01.02 – Regression Trees – Continuous
Performs regression function where the predicted outcome is a real number, performing a regression
function.
E01.01.03.01.03 – Random Decision Trees
Decision trees formed by stochastic processes.
E01.01.03.01.04 – Random Forests
Machine learning algorithm that operates by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time
and providing as output the class that is the mode of the classes (classification) or mean prediction
(regression) of the individual trees.
E01.01.03.01.05 – Bagged Decision Trees
Consists of trees trained independently on data that is bootstrapped from the input data, bag being
bootstrap aggregation, used to reduce the variance of a decision tree. They create several subsets of
data from training sample chosen randomly with replacement.
E01.01.03.01.06 – Boosted Decision Trees
Create a strong learner by iteratively adding “weak” learners and adjusting the weight of each weak
learner to focus on misclassified examples. Creates a collection of predictors learning sequentially with
early learners fitting simple models to the data and then analysing data for errors. Fit consecutive trees
(random sample) and at every step, the goal is to solve for net error from the prior tree.
E01.01.03.01.07 – Behaviour Trees
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) formed by hierarchically organizing behaviour sub-trees consisting of
nodes. Visiting a node, respectively the sub-tree it roots, means running it according to its semantics.
Execution of a node or a sub behaviour tree result in an aggregated return state. The first time they
are evaluated or reset, they start from the root, parent nodes act like selectors, and each child is
evaluated from left to right. The child nodes are ordered based on their priority.
E01.01.03.01.08 – Other Decision Trees
E01.01.03.02 – Probabilistic Methods
Methods based on statistics and randomness rather than deterministic analytics.
E01.01.03.02.01 – Monte Carlo
Probabilistic method of analysis based on repeated random sampling to solve problems that might be
deterministic in principle. Monte Carlo simulation produces distributions of possible outcome values.
E01.01.03.02.02 – Fuzzy Logic
Approach to computing based on "degrees of truth" rather than Boolean logic (true or false-1 or 0) in
order to better deal with uncertainty.
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E01.01.03.02.03 – Markov Processes
Probabilistic process where the future depends only on the present and not on the past and used to
model changes in probability distribution over time. Through Markov chains, the probability of a
variable for any time in the future can be determined.
E01.01.03.02.04 – Kalman Filters
Algorithms using multiple sequential measurements to produce estimates of unknown variables by
calculating each timeframe a joint probability distribution over them.
E01.01.03.02.05 – State Machines
Mathematical model defined by a list of states, its initial state, and the conditions for each transition
from one state to another in response to defined external inputs.
E01.01.03.02.06 – Bayesian Networks
Or: ‘Belief Networks’, describes systems by a directed acyclic graph, specifying relationships (arcs) of
conditional dependence between its variables (nodes). A model is created by the graph, together with
a joint probability distribution for the variables that can be used to make the inferences. Probability
estimates are encoded for a large number of different competing hypotheses, with respective belief
probabilities updated as new information becomes available.
E01.01.03.02.06.01 – Pure Bayesian
Application of Bayes' theorem by direct estimation of the parameters of the conditional distribution
from the training sample by maximizing the conditional likelihood.
E01.01.03.02.06.02 – Naive Bayesian
Application of Bayes' theorem assuming that the value of a particular feature is independent of the
value of any other feature.
E01.01.03.02.06.03 – Semi-Naive Bayesian
Algorithms that seek to retain the numerous strengths of naive Bayesian while reducing error by
alleviating the attribute interdependence estimation problem.
E01.01.03.02.07 – Classifiers.
Process of predicting the class of the data points given
E01.01.03.02.07.01 – Logistic Regression
Analyses data to explain the relationship between one dependent binary variable and one or more
nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio-level independent variables. Estimates the probability of an
occurrence of an event based on one or more inputs.
E01.01.03.02.07.02 – K-Nearest Neighbour (kNN)
Simple, supervised machine learning algorithm that can be used to solve both classification and
regression problems. KNN captures the idea of similarity (sometimes called distance, proximity, or
closeness) calculating the distance between points on a graph.
E01.01.03.02.07.03 – Support Vector Machine (SVM)
Support vectors are the data points that lie closest to the decision surface (or hyperplane). SVMs
maximize the margin around the separating hyperplane.
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E01.01.03.02.07.04 – Discriminant Analysis
Statistical analysis using a discriminant function to assign data to one of two or more groups.
E01.01.03.02.08 – Other Probabilistic Methods
E01.01.03.03 – Metaheuristics
Higher-level procedures or generalized heuristics aimed to generate or choose a heuristic providing a
sufficiently good solution to an optimization or search problem when there is incomplete, defective
information, limited computation or time capacity. Heuristic is any approach to problem solving or
self-discovery that employs a practical method, not guaranteed as optimal or perfect but sufficient to
reach an immediate goal.
E01.01.03.03.01. – Evolutive
Algorithms inspired in biological evolution.
E01.01.03.03.01.01 – Genetic Algorithms (GA)
Mimic genetic evolution mechanisms to better adapt decisions to new problems and new data. At each
step selects individuals at random from the current population to be parents and uses them to produce
the children for the next generation. Over successive generations, the population "evolves" toward an
optimal solution. The evolution comes from external factors.
E01.01.03.03.01.02 – Differential Evolution (DE)
Optimizes a problem by iteratively trying to improve a population of candidate solutions with regard
to a given measure of quality by combining existing ones and keeping the best. The evolution comes
from internal and external factors.
E01.01.03.03.02 – Artificial Immune Systems (AIS)
Algorithms mimicking biological immunology that apply immune principles, functions and models to
problem solving.
E01.01.03.03.03 – Swarm Intelligence
Algorithms that resolve problems based in the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized
systems.
E01.01.03.03.03.01 – Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)
Population-based optimization technique based on a cooperative searching strategy particularly
devised to prevent the particles from being trapped into the local optimal solutions and locating the
global optimal solution efficiently.
E01.01.03.03.03.02 – Artificial Bee Colony (ABC)
ABC provides a population-based search procedure in which individuals called foods positions are
modified by the artificial bees with time and the bee’s aim is to discover the places of food sources
with high nectar amount and finally the one with the highest nectar.
E01.01.03.03.03.03 – Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA)
This algorithm includes three operators to simulate the search for prey, encircling prey, and bubble-
net foraging behaviour of humpback whales. It mimics the social behaviour of humpback whales.
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E01.01.03.03.03.04 – Firefly Algorithm (FA)
Inspired by the flashing behaviour of fireflies and the phenomenon of bioluminescent communication,
the algorithm is used to optimize the machining parameters (feed rate, depth of cut, and spindle
speed).
E01.01.03.03.04 – Physics Based
Algorithms that solve problems imitating laws of physics.
E01.01.03.03.04.01 – Harmony Search Algorithm
It tries to mimic the improvisation process of musicians in finding a pleasing harmony.
E01.01.03.03.04.02 – Electromagnetic Modelling Optimization (EMO)
Optimization algorithm based in the principles of electromagnetism.
E01.01.03.03.04.03 – Simulated Annealing (SA)
Probabilistic technique for approximating the global optimum of a given function. The simulation of
annealing can be used to find an approximation of a global minimum for a function with a large number
of variables.
E01.01.03.03.04.04 – Photosynthetic Algorithms (PA)
Utilizes the dark reaction rules governing the transfer of carbon molecules from one substance into
another in the Calvin–Benson cycle and photorespiration.
E01.01.03.03.05 – Enzyme Algorithms (EA)
Algorithm based on the fundamental mechanism of enzyme reactions.
E01.01.03.03.06 – Multimodal Optimization
Algorithms that optimize an objective function with at least two global optimizers.
E01.01.03.03.07 - Pathfinding Algorithms
Algorithms that identify the optimal or good enough path meeting some criteria (distance, cost, speed,
etc.) between two points.
E01.01.03.03.08 – Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation
Simulation of computational models invoking the dynamic actions, reactions and intercommunication
protocols among agents in a shared environment, in order to enhance the analysis of systems’
behaviour and to assess strategies for its functioning in the descriptive or predictive modes.
E01.01.03.03.09 – Other Metaheuristics
E01.02 – Functions Provided by AI Algorithms
E01.02.01 – Human Language Technologies (HLT)
The processing of human language by a computer program. It does not refer to computer languages.
HLT tasks include text translation, sentiment analysis and speech recognition and generation.
E01.02.01.01 – Text Analytics
The process of drawing meaning out of written communication.
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E01.02.01.01.01 – Vector Space Mode (VSM)
Algebraic model for representing text documents (and any objects, in general) as vectors of identifiers,
such as, for example, index terms.
E01.02.01.01.02 – Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA)
Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a theory and method for extracting and representing the contextual
usage meaning of words by statistical computations applied to a large corpus of text.
E01.02.01.01.03 – Lexical Databases
A lexical database contains nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs grouped into sets of cognitive
synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by means of
conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. A wide known example is Wordnet.
E01.02.01.02 – Term Extraction
Term extraction or terminology extraction is an automatic method of analysing text in order to identify
phrases which fulfil the criteria for terms.
E01.02.01.02.01 – Tokenizing and Stop-Word Removal
In natural language processing, useless words in data are referred to as stop words. Tokenizing is the
process of removing all the stop words in a string, and thereafter selecting all the words in that string
that may pertain to the topic or subject matter.
E01.02.01.02.02 – Part of Speech (POS) Tagging
Process of marking up a word in a corpus to a corresponding part of a speech tag, based on its context
and definition.
E01.02.01.02.03 – Stemming and Lemmatization
Converting tokens into morphological stems by reducing inflectional forms and sometimes
derivationally related forms of a word to a common base form.
E01.02.01.03 – Term Weighing
Procedure that takes place during the text indexing process in order to assess the value of each term
to the document. It is the assignment of numerical values to terms that represent their importance in
a document in order to improve retrieval effectiveness.
E01.02.01.03.01 – Raw
The weight of a term is computed as the number of times that the term occurs in the text.
E01.02.01.03.02 – Binary
Assigns a weight of 0 in case the term does not occur and 1 vice versa.
E01.02.01.03.03 – Term Frequency (TF)
Assigns a weight proportional to the frequency of the term occurrences in the given text fragments.
E01.02.01.03.04 – Inverse Document Frequency (IDF)
Assigns a weight depending on the number of given texts that include the term rated to the total
number of texts.
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E01.02.01.03.05 – TF – IDF
Computes the weight as the multiplication of TF and IDF with the aim of achieving the benefits from
both.
E01.02.01.04 – Similarity Metric
Ways to compute the distance of two vectors.
E01.02.01.05 – Sentiment Analysis
Identification, extraction, analysis and categorization of affective state or opinion from text, social
media activity, audio, video or biometric sensors information.
E01.02.01.06 – Geotagging
The process of creation of geospatial metadata by adding geographical identification metadata to
different sets of data existing in very different formats.
E01.02.01.07 – Document Categorization
Automatically categorizing documents into pre-defined topic hierarchies or taxonomies.
E01.02.01.07.01 – Machine Learning Categorization
Categorization models are automatically created from training data representing each category.
E01.02.01.07.02 – Topic Tagging Categorization
Uses a variety of different concept tagging rules and it is most suitable when the target categories can
be defined using a combination of relatively unambiguous terms and phrases. Concepts can be defined
in several different ways.
E01.02.01.07.03 – Semantic Extraction Categorization
Categorize documents in target categories based in semantic entities or events.
E01.02.01.08 – Speech Production
Relates to the processes responsible for the production of speech sounds and possible processes for
fluent speech with respective models.
E01.02.01.09 – Speech Recognition
Speech recognition is the ability of a machine or program to identify words and phrases in spoken
language and convert them to a machine-readable format.
E01.02.01.10 – Other HLT Functions
E01.02.02 – Computer Vision
Interdisciplinary field dealing with the way in which computers see and understand digital images and
videos, spanning all tasks performed by biological vision systems, including sensing visual stimulus,
understanding what is being seen, and extracting complex information into a form that can be used in
other processes
E01.02.02.01 – Image Acquisition
Process of obtaining images.
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E01.02.02.02 – Image Pre-Processing
Operations aiming to improve the image provided by the sensor by suppressing distortions or
enhancing its features to facilitate the following steps of processing.
E01.02.02.03 – Feature Extraction
Process of dimensionality reduction by which an initial set of raw image data is reduced to more
manageable information sets for processing.
E01.02.02.04 – Detection – Segmentation
Division or partition the image into various parts called segments in order to make use of the most
important segments for processing the image.
E01.02.02.05 – High-Level Processing
Related to image and video understanding, it studies how to reconstruct, interpret and understand
images based in the properties of the structures present in the scene.
E01.02.03 – Situational Awareness
Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and
events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their
future status.
E01.02.03.01 – Detection
Process performed in order to know if a particular object or condition is present by comparing the
acquired data against a threshold.
E01.02.03.02 – Classification
Systematic arrangement in groups or categories according to established criteria.
E01.02.03.03 – Pattern Recognition
Classification of data based on knowledge already gained or on statistical information extracted from
patterns and/or their representation.
E01.02.03.04 – Clustering
The task of grouping a set of objects in such a way that objects in the same group are more similar to
each other than to those in other groups or clusters.
E01.02.03.05 – Identification
Establish the absolute sameness with one of a number of possible individual members of a class of
known elements.
E01.02.03.06 – Data Fusion
The process of combining data from multiple sources to improve the information and inferences
achieved by using a single data source.
E01.02.04 – Navigation
Support of AI algorithms to navigation related functions.
E01.02.04.01 – Pathfinding or Path Planning
Consists in finding the shortest route between two points.
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E01.02.04.02 – Search and Optimization
A search algorithm is the step-by-step procedure used to locate specific data among a collection of
data. Optimization is the procedure which is executed iteratively by comparing various solutions until
an optimum or a satisfactory solution is found.
E01.02.04.03 – Fault Detection, Identification and Recovery (FDIR)
The fast detection and identification of faults enables the choice of an appropriate recovery strategy,
potentially mitigating the consequences of an out-of-control vehicle and recovering performance.
E01.02.04.04 – Task Allocation
Process of ensuring that tasks to be done have been assigned to a team or resource, and the workload
has been distributed properly to balance the load among them.
E01.02.05 – Analytics
Application of statistics, computer programming and operations research in order to quantify and gain
insight to the meanings of data. Especially useful in areas recording huge amounts of data or
information.
E01.02.05.01 – Identity Analytics
Process of ascribing a user identifier (ID) to a human being or to another computer or network
component.
E01.02.05.02 – Predictive Analytics
Describes a range of analytical and statistical techniques used for developing models that may be used
to predict future events or behaviours.
E01.02.05.03 – Behavioural Analytics
Subset of business analytics focusing on finding out how and why people behave the way they do when
using digital technologies applications.
E01.02.05.04 – Big Data Analytics
Strategy of analysing large volumes of data. This big data is gathered from a wide variety of sources,
including social networks, videos, digital images, sensors, and sales transaction records. The aim in
analysing all this data is to uncover patterns and connections that might otherwise be invisible, and
that might provide valuable insights about the users who created it.
E01.02.05.05 – Serious Gaming
Games designed for industries like defence, engineering, health care or security with several purposes
other than entertainment like training, analysis or support to decision making.
E01.02.05.06 – Regression
Function consisting in fitting a curve to a set of data.
E01.02.05.06.01 – Linear Regression
Linear regression is the problem of fitting a linear function to a set of input-output pairs given a set of
training examples, in which the input and output features are numeric.
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E01.02.05.06.02 – Nonlinear Regression
Nonlinear regression models are those that are not linear in the parameters they use. An example is
the Levenberg-Marquardt nonlinear least squares algorithm.
E01.02.05.06.03 – Gaussian Process Regression Model
Gaussian process regression (GPR) is a nonparametric, Bayesian approach to regression included in the
area of machine learning. the Bayesian approach infers a probability distribution over all possible
values.
E01.02.05.06.04 – SVM Regression
Support vectors are the data points that lie closest to the decision surface (or hyperplane). SVMs
maximize the margin around the separating hyperplane.
E01.02.05.06.05 – Generalized Linear Model
Generalized linear models (GLM) extend the concept of the well understood linear regression model.
A generalized linear model introduces a link function around the linear combination of the explanatory
variables. That way also non-normal and discrete distributions of Y can be fitted within this model
class.
E01.02.05.06.06 – Regression Tree
Work basically the same way as classification trees with the large difference that the target feature
values can now take on an infinite number of continuously scaled values.
E01.02.06 – Other Functions Provided by AI
E01.03 – Features, Characteristics and Related Concepts
E01.03.01 – Perception, Conditioning and Data Format
E01.03.01.01 – Text data
Data in written form.
E01.03.01.02 – Voice data
Data in the form of sound produced by human speech.
E01.03.01.03 – Image data
Data in graphic representation.
E01.03.01.04 – Sensor Raw data
Data from sensors provided without further processing.
E01.03.01.05 – Data Conditioning and Cleaning
Work to be done to ensure the quality of the data as it is directly related to the quality of the results
of the analysis. Also referred as data curation.
E01.03.01.06 – Data Compression – Dimensionality Reduction
Techniques to reduce the data dimension. They can be lossless, recovering exactly the data
compressed, or lossy with some loss of accuracy. The use of principal component analysis (PCA) is very
extended as a linear dimensionality reduction technique for extracting information from a high-
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dimensional space by projecting it into a lower-dimensional sub-space. But there are other techniques
like linear discriminant analysis (LDA), non-negative matrix factorization or even the autoencoder.
E01.03.01.07 – Data Structure
Differentiates the data based in its structure.
E01.03.01.07.01 – Unstructured Data
Unpredictable structure where the content lacks metadata and cannot readily be indexed or mapped
onto standard database fields. Examples are e-mails, instant messages, images, videos, satellite
imagery, documents or social media posting.
E01.03.01.07.02 – Semi-Structured Data
Semi-structured data is information that does not reside in a rational database but that has some
organizational properties that make it easier to analyse.
E01.03.01.07.03 – Structured – Data bases
Data whose elements are addressable for effective analysis. It has been organised into a formatted
repository that is typically a database.
E01.03.01.08 – Other Format or Data Conditioning
E01.03.02 – Machine Learning (ML)
Refers to the ability of algorithms to learn from data by modelling the systems that produce those data
without being explicitly programmed to do so. These models identify and extract patterns, acquiring
their own knowledge and are inferred from data and predict the outcome of new inputs.
E01.03.02.01 – Supervised Learning (SL)
Models are created by training with labelled or annotated data. During training, the output associated
with every input is known and the system learns these associations.
E01.03.02.02 – Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL)
A portion of the training data is not labelled or annotated.
E01.03.02.03 – Unsupervised Learning (UL)
Data sets are not labelled. They are sorted according to similarities or differences allowing to cluster
the data in similar groups.
E01.03.02.04 – Reinforcement Learning (RL)
Type of learning through data sets not labelled. After data processing, the system improves its
outcome through feedback.
E01.03.02.05 – Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)
Learning technique using only the input, reward and terminal signals together with the set of possible
actions in a similar way as humans do.
E01.03.02.06 – Multiagent Learning and Planning
The objective is to learn action models for multi-agent planning systems from a set of input plan
directives. For multi-agent planning, each agent requires an action model as input that takes into
account the possible prerequisites and outcomes, as well as interactions with other agents.
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E01.03.02.07 – Transfer Learning (TL)
Train high-performance learners with data obtained from different domains. This goes against the
assumption of traditional machine learning methodologies where training data and testing data are
taken from the same domain, such that the input feature space and data distribution characteristics
are the same.
E01.03.02.08 – Deep Learning (DL)
Machine learning models applied to ANN with multiple layers of nonlinear processing units. Deep
learning is a subset of machine learning done mainly by CNN or RNN but as well with other ANN like
A02.09.01. DAE as autoencoders with more than one hidden layer.
E01.03.02.09 – Adversarial Learning (AL)
It aims at enabling the safe adoption of machine learning techniques in adversarial settings. Tries to
improve the system security that may be compromised by exploiting specific vulnerabilities of learning
algorithms through a careful manipulation of the input data.
E01.03.02.10 – Other Learning Strategies
E01.03.03 – Computing Infrastructure - HW Implementation
The AI algorithms can be implemented in different hardware and with certain specific settings that
condition their performance.
E01.03.03.01 – Real Time Technologies
A real-time system has been described as one which "controls an environment by receiving data,
processing them, and returning the results sufficiently quickly to affect the environment at that
time". Depending on the deadline time after a triggering event by which a response has to be
completed there are different categories.
E01.03.03.01.01 – Hard Real-Time Systems
An overrun in response time leads to potential loss of life and/or big financial damage. Many of these
systems are considered to be safety critical.
E01.03.03.01.02 – Soft Real-Time Systems
Deadline overruns are tolerable, but not desired with no catastrophic consequences.
E01.03.03.01.03 – Firm Real-Time Systems
The computation is obsolete if the job is not finished on time.
E01.03.03.01.04 – Weakly Hard Real-Time
Systems where only a percentage of deadlines have to be met.
E01.03.03.02 – Non-Real Time Technologies
No deadlines of time in their computation.
E01.03.03.03 – Cloud Computing
The on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing
power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data
centres available to many users over the Internet.
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E01.03.03.04 – Edge Computing
Systems that process data very close to where they were created, at the edge of the network. The
advantage is that it reduces the amount of information to be transmitted over the network, reducing
network traffic and related costs.
E01.03.03.05 – Fog Computing
Decentralized computing structure where resources, including the data and applications, get placed in
logical locations between the data source and the cloud, also known as ‘fogging’ and ‘fog networking’.
Pushes intelligence down to the local area network level of network architecture, processing data in a
fog node or IoT gateway.
E01.03.03.06 – Data Warehouses
Central repository of information that can be analysed to make better informed decisions. Data flows
to a data warehouse from transactional systems, relational databases and other sources. Decision
makers gain access to data through business intelligence (BI) tools and other analytical applications.
E01.03.03.07 – Data Lakes
Holds data in an unstructured way and there is no hierarchy or organization among the individual
pieces of data. It holds raw data or only slightly processed or analysed.
E01.03.03.08 – Big Data Technologies
Different kind of technologies supporting the big data concept like those included in the Hadoop
Ecosystem, Apache Spark, R, NoSQL Databases, etc.
E01.03.03.09 – Distributed Processing
Distributed data processing is a computer networking method in which multiple computers across
different locations share computer processing capability. Distributed data processing considerably
lowers the cost of data sharing and networking across an organization by comprising several
minicomputers with a significant lower cost.
E01.03.03.10 – System on Chip (SoC)
An integrated circuit (IC) integrating multiple components of a system on a single chip.
E01.03.03.11 – Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS)
Electronic units equipped with sensors monitoring the ageing-effects on materials. Provide the health
status of materials and how their properties change over time.
E01.03.03.12 – Neuromorphic Computing
Emulation of the neural structure of the human brain matching its flexibility and the ability to learn
efficiently from unstructured stimuli.
E01.03.03.13 – Other Processing
E01.03.04 – Man to Machine Interaction
Interdisciplinary field covering many aspects of science and technology focused on a human and a
machine in conjunction. The final goal is the development of an intuitive, natural and multimodal way
of interaction between the operator and machines.
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E01.03.04.01 – Planning and Decision Support for Human Machine Teams
Specificities of the organization and structure of teams between humans and machines supported by
AI.
E01.03.04.02 – Trustable and Explainable AI
The adoption of AI techniques by humans generally requires an understanding of its functions and
reliability in its actions.
E01.03.04.03 – Human Agent Negotiation
Analysis and design of automated agents that proficiently negotiate with humans considering different
environments and constraints.
E01.03.04.04 – Human Machine Interface (HMI)
Refers to the exchange of information between users and devices. Typically, information is displayed
in graphic format through the graphical user interface or GUI but several developments exist to
produce new means of connexion between humans and machines.
E01.03.04.05 – Other Man to Machine Interaction
E01.03.05 – Machine to Machine (M2M)
Describes any technology that enables networked devices to exchange information and perform
actions without the assistance of humans. AI facilitates the communication between systems, allowing
them to make their own autonomous choices.
E01.03.06 – Distributed AI (DAI)
Subfield of AI dealing with interactions of intelligent agents. DAI attempts to develop intelligent agents
that make decisions allowing them to achieve specific goals in a world populated by other intelligent
agents with their own specific goals.
E01.03.07 – Embodied Intelligence
Analysis, design and understanding of the behaviour of intelligent agents considering the interaction
between the agent and the environment, taking into account the limitations caused by the specific
characteristics of the agent.
E01.03.08 – AI Ethics
Domain covering the ethical quality of an AI prediction, the outcomes it produces in the end and the
impact on humans of the application of AI to the defence domain.
E01.03.09 – Modelling and Simulation (M&S)
Through the modelling of systems and behaviours, and their execution through simulations, it is
possible to provide data for the machine learning (ML) training process. In order to make ML work
properly, models with the adequate quality are requested. Additionally, ML provides models of the
systems by training with the data produced by those systems.
E01.03.10 – Other Features, Characteristics and Related Concepts
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Annex i. Main changes from v1 (2008) to v2 (2021).
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New taxonomy items included in v2 (2021)
The following items have been included in the OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy v2.0. For more
details refer to the specific chapters.
▪ 1D & 2D Materials
▪ Access to Critical Raw Materials outside
EU
▪ Adhesive Joints
▪ Aeroacoustics Techniques
▪ Alternative Propulsion Systems
▪ Amphibious Operations Platforms and
Systems
▪ Bio-Inspired Systems
▪ BioMEMS / Bio Sensors
▪ Bolted Joints
▪ Brazing/Soldering
▪ C4ISR
▪ Casualty Rate Estimation Services
▪ CBRN and nanotechnology developments
▪ CBRN Applications
▪ Characterization of Energetic Materials
▪ Chromic/Tunable Materials
▪ Cockpit Automation
▪ Cognitive Systems Computing
▪ Combat Management Systems
▪ Co-operative Systems Technologies
▪ Corrosion resistant
▪ Counter Hypervelocity Systems
▪ Counter UxV Systems
▪ Cyber Defence
▪ Digital Twin
▪ Distributed Networks
▪ Electromagnetic Launch
▪ Electromagnetic Railguns
▪ Energetic Materials Production Technique
▪ Energy Efficient Technologies
▪ Energy Storage
▪ Ethics – Rules of Engagement
▪ Explosive Joining
▪ Fission and Fusion
▪ Flow Control Technologies
▪ Green Naval Power Generation and
Propulsion
▪ High Power Computing
▪ Human Machine Teaming
▪ Hybrid Propulsion
▪ Hypersonic Missiles
▪ Hypersonic Projectile
▪ Hypersonic Propulsion
▪ IED Detection and Defeat Techniques
▪ Ignition Techniques
▪ Intelligent Technologies for Complex
Systems
▪ IR/Visible/UV
▪ Launch and Recovery of Vehicles at Sea
▪ Maintenance and Repair Facilities and
Organizations
▪ Manned and Unmanned Teaming
▪ Medical Research and MedTech
▪ Metamaterials and Metasurfaces
▪ Mission Type - Consequence
Management
▪ Multicore Systems
▪ Multi-Disciplinary Design and Analysis
Framework
▪ Multidisciplinary Designs
▪ Multispectral/Hyperspectral Imaging
(VIS/IR/UV)
▪ Nanosensors
▪ Neuroscience
▪ Non-Conventional Fuels Novel Energetic
Materials
▪ On Board High Energy Storage and
Distribution System
▪ Onboard Aircraft Take-Off and Landing
Systems
▪ Optical propagation in Air and Water
▪ Painting
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▪ Protection Systems – Architecture
▪ Quantum Computing Technologies
▪ Quantum Optics
▪ RF Submilimetric
▪ Scramjet
▪ Space Debris Management and
Deorbiting Systems
▪ Space Traffic Management
▪ Space-Based Weapons
▪ Supersonic Propulsion
▪ Sustainable and Synthetic Fuels
▪ Synthetic Biology Technologies
▪ Telemedicine
▪ Textiles and Woven Materials
▪ Thermal barrier
▪ Thrust Vectoring
▪ Unmanned Air Vehicles
▪ Unmanned Land Vehicles
▪ Unmanned Maritime Vehicles
▪ Variable Cycle Engine
▪ Weapons Systems Security
▪ Wear Resistant Surface Protection
Technologies
▪ Welding
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Taxonomy items in v1 (2008) with relevant changes
The following items, already included in the OSRA Defence Technology Taxonomy v1.0 (2008), have
been notably updated in the v2.0 (2021). For more details refer to the specific chapters.
▪ Acoustic Power Sources & Devices
▪ Acoustic Propagation in Air & Water
▪ Advanced Propulsors and Propellers
▪ Air Traffic Management Systems
▪ Architectures
▪ Communications & CIS Security Systems
▪ Communications Satellites
▪ Conventional Fuels
▪ Corrosion and Wear Control Technology
▪ COTS and OSS Assessment
▪ Device Packaging
▪ Display Materials & Devices
▪ Dynamic Positioning
▪ Electric Machines and Actuators
▪ Electrical/Electronic Designs
▪ Electrochemical Energy Conversion Fuel
Cells
▪ Electrochemical Energy Storage -
Batteries
▪ Electromagnetic Compatibility
▪ Electromagnetic Propagation in Air &
Water
▪ Encryption / Crypto Technologies
▪ Equipped Personnel
▪ Explosives
▪ Explosives Detection Techniques
▪ Fighting Land Vehicles
▪ Fighting Sea Surface Platforms
▪ Gas Turbines
▪ Hazard Assessment
▪ Health and Well-being
▪ High-Altitude Platform Systems
▪ III-V Compounds
▪ Image/Pattern Processing Technology
▪ Information & Data Fusion Technology
▪ IR/Visible/UV
▪ IR/Visible/UV Detector Materials &
Devices ISTAR (= Intelligence,
Surveillance, Target Acquisition &
Reconnaissance)
▪ Laser Signatures
▪ Lasers -all Types
▪ Lighter-Than-Air Platforms
▪ Logistic and Support Sea Surface
Platforms
▪ Logistic, Command and Surveillance Land
Vehicles
▪ Low Observability and Stealth Designs
▪ Medical sciences and capabilities
▪ Military Doctrine Analysis
▪ Military Intelligence and Industry
Intelligence
▪ Mines - Sea
▪ Molecular Biology Technologies
▪ Navigation and Other Satellites
▪ Non-Laser Devices
▪ Non-Proliferation
▪ Optical Designs
▪ Optical Signal Processing Technology
▪ Optical Wireless Communications -
IR/Visible/UV
▪ Optimisation, Planning & Decision
Support Systems
▪ Other Electrical Power Systems & Devices
▪ Other Platform Protection Measures
▪ Physical Protection systems - Threat
▪ Plasma Techniques
▪ Platform and System Concept Studies
▪ Pyrotechnics
▪ R&T Management
▪ Reciprocating and Rotary IC Engines
▪ Reconnaissance/observation and
Navigation Satellites
▪ RF Power Sources & Devices
▪ Robotics and Automated/Autonomous
systems in Operational Systems
▪ Robotics in Medicine
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▪ Scenario Generation
▪ Software Engineering
▪ Space Launchers
▪ Tactical/Crew Training systems
▪ Torpedoes
▪ Transmissions and Powertrains
▪ Transparent Materials
▪ Undersea Platforms
▪ Unmanned Vehicles
▪ Wargaming and Combat Simulation
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