Land collaborative combat including air-land

The outcome should contribute to:

• Enable agile, secure network- and data-centric operations that can rely on the distributed, timely facilitation of the joint military functions in the land domain among multinational combat systems (C5ISTAR) on all different levels of command and physical platforms throughout a mission coalition.
• Build a credible interoperable fighting force in terms of land combat capability, by introducing, in the shortest possible time, resilient, advanced solutions for collaborative combat within coalitions.
• Introduce new innovative collaborative combat technologies and capabilities that can be adapted to various manned or unmanned platforms.
• Provide a governmental EU agreed framework that industry can use to build state of the art and highly innovative systems dedicated to collaborative/federated land combat for emerging and future capability needs.
• Provide solutions that solve emerging/future capability needs of several EU Member States and EDF Associated Countries with maximum commonality and modularity.
• Increase strategic autonomy of EU concerning technologies and products.

Given the evolution of threats on the battlefield (e.g., high intensity multi-domain warfare, technological dissemination, multiplication of unmanned aircraft systems), which make the environment ever more challenging, complex and contested, collaborative warfare is meant to gain and maintain superiority over the enemy thanks to combat systems and networking. In particular, the elaboration of shared tactical picture, as well as closely coordinated actions at tactical level (up to Corps level or multinational formation), should impose a fast operational tempo on the adversary and enable to understand, decide and act quicker than the enemy.

The objectives of this call topic on Land Collaborative Combat (LCC) including air-land are:

1. To bring existing collaborative functions to a higher level of maturity (TRL>7) and improve operational performance.
2. To develop new collaborative capabilities, through additional studies, prototyping and demonstrations in the operational environment (TRL 7). These capabilities must encompass:

• Collaborative force protection including responsive actions.
• Collaborative Threat Evaluation and Weapon Assignment (TEWA).
• Collaborative engagement.
• Land-based engagement and firing in a multi-domain warfare.

Additionally, these capabilities should encompass:

• Unmanned systems supervision and coordination including Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T).
• Joint Logistics including materiel, transport, and in-theatre tactical movements of forces.
• Dismounted soldiers.

1. To enhance the connectivity and interaction of collaborating platforms from different nations hosting the required technical functions, especially by means of:

• Adaptive concurrent use of robust, hybrid communication systems, e.g. radios in conjunction with 5G and satellite (multipath) considering LPD/LPI.
• Collaborative dynamic service orchestration.
• Automated supervision throughout the global collaborative framework.
• Mission planning supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
• Cybersecurity detection and prevention functions.
• Accurate positioning in a contested or denied environment.

Field demonstrations should provide proof-of-concept based on relevant operational use cases / scenarios and on multiple relevant national and multinational platforms joining in the land collaborative combat framework, which would result in at least a validated system prototype.

Specific objective

Battlefield transparency is still insufficient due to high complexity warfare in a multi-domain environment with increased battle rhythm, deception, and electronic warfare measures.

Deployments should happen mainly in NATO as well as in EU operations and missions and build upon a networking and service infrastructure compliant with Federated Mission Networking (FMN) spiral specifications. Some of them should need pooling and sharing capabilities. Native interoperability up to the enterprise level between all relevant platforms (e.g., command post, vehicular, dismounted) is thus an increasing operational need.

New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence AI, edge computing, cloud-native architectures, and evolving technology-based manufacturing processes such as Dev(Sec)Ops, allowing for continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) of IT services and Software Defined Defence (SDD) need to be adopted in the defence sector as key enablers to provide for improved decision and effect making at the relevance of speed. The distribution of commercially available storage and compute power, however, cannot but adapt to the available communication means to interconnect resources scattered throughout the combat arena and the power made available by the platforms (i.e., vehicles, and dismounted soldiers).

This call topic contributes to the STEP objectives, as defined in STEP Regulation, in the target investment area of deep and digital technologies.

The proposals must address the development and demonstration of innovative multi-national collaborative land combat functional capabilities enhancing military land systems currently in use or under development in different EU Member States and EDF Associated Countries. The relevant collaborative scenario, in which the proposed solutions must perform and prove the suggested enhancements, should include all levels of operation from dismounted soldier up to command post. Here, secure information sharing between every entity on the battlefield through a robust, flexible, and secure communication framework should be ensured. Furthermore, these solutions should cover the joint military functions in the land environment: C2, Intelligence, Manoeuvre, Fires, Information, Civil Military Cooperation (CIMIC), Sustainment and Force Protection.

Types of activities

The following types of activities are eligible for this topic:

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

• Develop key enabling technologies.
• Implement a coordinated approach concerning architecture frameworks for land collaborative combat.
• Analyse applicable standards as well as evolution of new proposals.
• Analyse current defence and industrial Test and Evaluation (T&E) capabilities in the EU related to the scope of this call and identification of those aspects whose development may represent a potential challenge for the EU in terms of T&E.
• Specify and realise incremental real-world key demonstrations including definition of operational scenarios consistent with the participating EU Member States’ and EDF Associated Countries’ needs and field demonstration.

The proposals must substantiate synergies and complementarity with activities in the field of land collaborative combat, notably those described in the call topic EDF-2022-DA-GROUND-CGC on collaborative combat for ground combat, which aimed at a first common EU vision of land tactical collaborative combat in a coalition relevant environment (TRL 5 and 6).

Functional requirements

Functional requirements should range from basic information sharing via the combination of information through data fusion to collaborative decision support and finally allowing common action.

• Information sharing in order to build collective capabilities (and extend national resources while keeping full control on them):
  • Map sharing: to benefit from a common and possibly extended digitised representation of the area of operation (with the same geographic characteristics: same typology, same grid references, etc.) seems to be a necessity for data exploitation to facilitate a common understanding of tactical situations:
    • in 2 dimensions.
    • in 2.5 dimensions.
    • in 3 dimensions.
  • Sharing of all relevant geospatial data and meteorological data to enhance situational awareness and help in mission planning.
• Collaborative situation awareness
  • Collaborative blue force tracking: geolocalisation extended to multiple friendly platforms with aggregations to present the localisation of units of different sizes, as for instance:
    • Collaborative tasking of sensor and exploitation assets.
    • Mobility information (e.g., to allow coordination of manoeuvres).
    • Information concerning specialised support chains (e.g., combat engineering, resupply, logistics, maintenance).
    • Exchange of combat status of own and neighbouring units (e.g., operative readiness, energy).
    • Information exchange with civil organisations possibly by using hybrid applications.

These above-listed capabilities should encompass data filtering in order to send the adequate information to the adequate EU partners’ elements on the battlefield. They should also take into account such collective capabilities in any Navigation Warfare (NavWar) environment, (e.g., Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), denied environment or contested electromagnetic spectrum).

• • Data fusion (using more seamless data exchange, data fusion and possibly collective data processing) in order to share and improve a common situational awareness (and thus increase national resources) and allow coordinated manoeuvres:
    • Enhanced collaborative blue force tracking: geolocalisation can be refined through data fusion (for instance, through triangulation between multiple observations or sensors).
    • Collaborative environment modelling: refine and extend environment models through data fusion. This function could also include coordination to map the environment (observation can also apply more broadly to quickly explore a larger area with different platforms from several countries) or to define the best observation sectors for battlefield surveillance, potentially using remote sensors such as UAVs.
    • Collaborative scene analysis (including for instance change analysis or detection of abnormal events).
    • Tactical situation sharing (such as a Recognised Ground Picture (RGP)).
    • Collaborative engagement.
    • C2 coordination tools: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loops can be coordinated to achieve collaborative manoeuvres within the coalition and, if it is enhanced by AI, to help plan itineraries and analyse the situation.
  • Recognised intelligence picture
    • Sharing information related to the target and disseminate the battle damage assessment.
    • Collaborative observation / intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) (sharing of pictures, videos, plots/tracks) at the tactical level (brigade and lower).
    • Sharing enemy observations, including detection, recognition, identification, location and tracking.
    • Collaborative detection – reconnaissance – identification – localisation and tracking: refine enemy force understanding through data fusion.
    • Enemy tactical picture: to be refined through automated data fusion.

Technical solutions should be based on:

• • A common set of meta data that can be utilised for a data-centric approach for both information and physical entities (Standard Bill of Material (SBOM) and user identities) to provide for system-wide data-centric interoperability and security, information exchange gateways.
  • An agile architecture for various levels of integration of multinational forces within combined network-enabled, data-centric operations including an efficient (e.g., seamless, flexible, cyber resilient) communication infrastructure combined with a unified battle management system to be progressively integrated into a framework of a secured combat cloud.
  • AI as integrated support and situational awareness service distributed across the various land platforms with collaborative access to various data resources.
  • Measures for identifying, validating and creating valid training data in order to reassure the augmenting effect of AI support of functional services.
  • Scalable architecture to adapt to the several missions and working levels.
  • A system able to control the electromagnetic and data signature of the unit.
  • Standard interfaces to guarantee the interoperability with the existing and new platforms. A robust and open on-board platform network.
  • Automated data fusion (e.g., image processing, sensor fusion, multi-criteria optimisation, meta data management, simultaneous multi sensor usage) and Human-Machine Interface (HMI).
  • Modern and innovative HMI
    • Supporting the representation, evaluation and handling of data coming from various kinds of sensors (e.g., optronics, warning systems, navigation sensors) and going to various kinds of effectors.
    • Augmenting user interactions by means of intelligent speech recognition and processing.
• • Standards
    • Standardisation should be considered as an integral part of the management function of the solution. It is recommended to use EDSTAR platform to facilitate the development of the solution with “Best-Practice” Standards selected for interoperability, capability development and procurement of defence activities.
    • The specific solution should consider the various EDSTAR technical domains: ammunitions technologies, Information technologies, Armoured Land vehicle technologies, camouflage, system architecture, painting and coatings, CBRN defence, and military clothes.
    • Furthermore, if standardisation gaps are identified during the implementation of the solution, the development of new standards should be proposed to the appropriate standard developing organisations (NATO, CEN, CENELEC, ETSI, OASIS, other multilateral standards developing organisations).
    • Additionally, the LCC system should be compatible with all other systems meeting the current FMN spiral specification implementation (NATO ADatP-34 NISP).
    • Additional enabling standards should be included, like:
• • • NATO STANAG 4754 Generic Vehicle Architecture (NGVA) and associated Allied Engineering Publications,
    • European Secure Software defined Radio (ESSOR) coalition waveforms for software defined radios.
    • NATO STANAG 4822 Land DAS Architectures for sharing of sensor data within and among platforms architecture for sensor systems.
• • • The proposal should implement coalition services identified for land collaborative combat in a sustainable fashion ensuring agile implementation updates/upgrades as these service descriptions evolve.
    • Mandatory legal / ethical considerations: Relevant national regulations regarding the sharing of information/software and algorithms.
    • Furthermore, it is necessary to keep in consideration the ethical implication concerning the employment of, inter alia, AI and Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS), and legislation used for military application.
• Collaborative actions should include:
  • • Handover of ISR robotic assets, including semi-autonomous coordination of multi-national UxV for information collection purpose.
    • Integration of the most mature functions into target platforms (e.g., vehicles or UxV associated with specific battlefield management systems and radios), which would be defined by the participant EU Member States and EDF Associated Countries (pMS).
    • Study of new functions dedicated to new use cases for common collaborative action beyond information sharing and observation (e.g., collaborative fires, engagement, and protection).

Proposed solutions should ensure:

• Automated management of joint Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) introducing adequate AI support to all stages of combat. Those unmanned vehicles should contribute to a Common Operational Picture (COP).
• Collaborative observation and protection, TEWA introducing adequate AI support.
• Use of Speech recognition and C2 by voice implementing Large Language Model (LMM).
• Interoperability cyber capabilities embedded in all platforms throughout the land collaborative combat framework (e.g., command post, vehicle, dismounted soldier) implementing for instance, ICAM, Smart probes.
• Safety in all systems, taking into account co-hosted critical and non-critical capacities and needs of autonomous platforms.
• Availability of Time Deterministic Hardware and Software for real-time collaborative capabilities.
• Interoperability with cloud-based open virtual platforms and with the latest NATO and FMN approaches. In fact, for some operations, with the development in the other subgroups (air, maritime, multi-domain), it is expected to develop some joint capabilities for specific use-cases and interoperability with joint C2 Systems for collaborative warfare .