EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities of the EDF Call “Land Collaborative Combat including air-land” (EDF-2025-DA-GROUND-LCC-STEP)

1. Single EU Market Access

• Pan-European demand pull – 27 Member States + Norway lie behind the Capability Development Plan (CDP) priority on Collaborative Combat, creating an addressable market of >€35 bn in planned land C4ISR and robotic programmes to 2035.

• Defence Procurement Directive 2009/81/EC exemptions can be jointly triggered for cooperative R&D, allowing participating companies to be referenced directly in follow-on acquisition contracts across borders without separate tenders.

• Fast-track export within the EU – once a system is qualified under this action, the EU Transfer Directive 2009/43/EC simplifies intra-EU transfers of defence-related products, accelerating roll-out to the 450 m-consumer internal market and associated EDF countries.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Industrial Integration

• Consortium requirement (>3 entities from ≥3 Member/associated states) ensures genuine multinational teaming, fostering technology diffusion and burden-sharing for costly TRL-7 demonstrations.

• Opens doors for tier-2/SME niche suppliers (AI/ML, 5G tactical, edge-cloud orchestration) to integrate into prime contractors’ supply chains in multiple countries.

• Defence ministries gain an interoperable reference architecture co-written by industry and validated in field trials, reducing sovereign development costs by up to 30 % (EDA estimates).

3. Alignment with Flagship EU Strategies

| EU strategy | Direct linkage created by the call |

|-------------|------------------------------------|

| Digital Europe / Path to the Digital Decade | AI/ML decision-support, cloud-native Dev(Sec)Ops, LEO-satcom & 5G for tactical edge |

| Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) | Call is labelled STEP; contributes to deep & digital tech investment area |

| EU Cybersecurity Strategy | Embedded Zero-Trust/ICAM, cyber-resilient comms, quantum-safe crypto pilots |

| European Green Deal / Fit-for-55 | Reduced logistics footprint via collaborative route optimisation; power-aware edge computing lowers battlefield energy demand by >20 % |

| Action Plan on Synergies between Civil, Defence & Space | Dual-use 5G/6G, GNSS-denied positioning, cloud orchestration benefiting civil first-responder markets |

4. Regulatory Harmonisation & Standards Leadership

• EDSTAR, FMN, NATO STANAG 4754/4822, ESSOR are mandated; the project positions the consortium to shape next editions of these standards and lock-in design choices favourable to EU industry.

• Early compliance facilitates certification & accreditation reuse across Member States, cutting redundant test campaigns (up to €5 m savings per platform type).

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Key research infrastructures: cyber-ranges (CRATE, CYBER-MiL), 5G testbeds (Hexa-X, 5G-IND-EU), and AI DIHs can be tapped for low-cost experimentation.

• Talent pipeline: linking with Erasmus Mundus programmes on Autonomous Systems and EIT Digital nodes enables secondees and PhD placements, mitigating skills shortages in secure DevOps, edge AI and robotics.

6. Funding Synergies & Blending Instruments

• CEF-Digital & Connecting Europe Facility for dual-use 5G corridors and cross-border fibre along military mobility routes.

• Horizon Europe Cluster 3 (Civil Security for Society) projects (e.g., MARSEUS, AI-EDGE) offer datasets & algorithms that can be militarised under the EDF call (per Article 8(7), Intellectual Property cross-licensing possible).

• InvestEU Defence Equity Facility (2024) provides follow-on scale-up capital post-prototype; blending can raise TRL-9 system integration funding without national budget caps.

7. Scale & Impact at EU Level

• Interoperable combat cloud validated on at least three national platforms → immediate replicability to 10+ other Member States using the same FMN spiral-spec baseline.

• Shared logistics & MUM-T orchestration can cut EU operational expenditure in CSDP missions by an estimated €120 m per decade (EDA logistic cost model).

• Enhances EU strategic autonomy by indigenising critical enablers (secure radios, AI chips, space connectivity), reducing dependency on non-EU vendors.

8. Strategic Industrial & Geopolitical Value

1. Strengthens European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) against US/Israeli competition in C5ISTAR.

2. Offers a collective negotiating lever for spectrum and 5G Mil-spec within 3GPP, benefitting all EU telecom vendors.

3. Demonstrates EU-NATO complementarity: solutions aligned with NATO FMN but owned, governed and export-controlled under EU rules.

9. Actionable Recommendations for Applicants

• Map each work package to concrete policy KPIs – e.g., carbon-reduction metric or EU Cybersecurity Act assurance level.

• Build a balanced consortium: at least one SME (<€50 m turnover) from an EU-13 country to maximise evaluation points on EU value-added & geographical balance.

• Leverage existing Horizon/HERA datasets for AI model training to save time and justify civil-mil dual-use synergies.

• Reserve budget (≈5 % of total) for standardisation participation in CEN/TC 456, ETSI ISG ENI, and NIAG-SG, demonstrating leadership in harmonisation.

• Design open APIs & reference OSS components under EUPL to comply with article 20(3) EDF IP provisions and enable downstream uptake by other EU programmes.

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By exploiting these EU-specific advantages, proposers can not only secure up to 50-65 % EDF co-funding but also unlock scalable, standard-setting solutions that give European land forces a decisive collaborative-combat edge while reinforcing the EU’s technological sovereignty.