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  17 décembre 2020 | International, Terrestre

  European Union awards grant to forge unmanned ground vehicle standard

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The European Commission has awarded Estonia and the country's robotics company Milrem a grant to lead the way on a standard architecture for military unmanned ground vehicles, the company announced. The deal, worth close to $40 million and signed Dec. 11, formally kicks off a pan-European development for a new generation of battlefield ground robots. Named Integrated Modular Unmanned Ground System, or iMUGS, the project uses Milrem's THeMIS vehicle as a reference platform for creating a “standardized European-wide ecosystem for aerial and ground platforms,” according to the company. Also covered by the project is relevant technology in the fields of command and control, communications, sensors, payloads, and algorithms. The connection to the European Union's coffers comes through the bloc's European Defence Industrial Development Programme. Besides Estonia as the lead, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia and Spain also are part of the iMUGS group, adding a combined €2 million (U.S. $2.4 million) to the effort. The countries each bring their relevant national companies to the table, including Safran Electronics & Defense, Nexter Systems, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Diehl Defence, and Bittium Wireless. “Estonia has the honor and a great responsibility taking the lead in this project as nothing on a similar scale has been conducted before,” said Martin Jõesaar, chief of the project office in the Estonian Centre for Defence Investment. “Our goal is not only making iMUGS a one-time effort, but to build it into a base project for future developments. Our long-term goal is that each of the modular systems built will pave a way for further innovation in its field.” While the sums involved in iMUGS are relatively small in the world of defense programs, the effort has the potential to shape the European market for military robotic vehicles. The initiative is a prime example of defense companies like Milrem, some of them years ago, sensing a chance to position their own offerings firmly in the thicket of European defense priorities. But the THeMIS robot is not the only game in town. Rheinmetall is equally trying to position its unmanned portfolio in the European market, even without EU backing. In the case of its Mission Master vehicle, the intellectual property belongs to the company's Canadian division, which makes support through EU channels tricky. Still, the vehicle is being tried by the land forces of several countries on the European continent. According to Milrem, European countries are expected to need thousands of ground robots during the next 10-15 years, creating a market valued in the billions of euros. “With seven participating nations and key industrial players, the unmanned ground system developed during iMUGS is expected to become the preferred European solution for integrating into armed units,” the company claims. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/12/16/european-union-awards-grant-to-forge-unmanned-ground-vehicle-standard/

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  20 novembre 2020 | International, C4ISR

  Les "success-stories" des pépites EarthCube et Kalray se poursuivent à très grande vitesse

  Deux pépites technologiques françaises, deux parcours incroyables. Earthcube et Kalray vont pouvoir poursuivre leur aventure gr'ce à deux opérations de levée de fonds réussies. Ce sont deux pépites françaises extrêmement prometteuses, qui pourraient devenir un jour des licornes françaises. Earthcube, qui change de nom en devenant Preligens, et Kalray ont réussi leur levée de fonds. La première, spécialisée dans l'imagerie spatiale au moyen de techniques d'intelligence artificielle notamment, a réussi à lever 20 millions d'euros ; la seconde, pionnier des processeurs dédiés aux nouveaux systèmes intelligents, a annoncé jeudi dans un communiqué le succès d'une augmentation de capital d'un montant de 5,2 millions d'euros. Dénominateur commun pour ces deux start-up, la présence du ministère des Armées dans leur tour de table, qui surveille ces deux pépites technologique comme le lait sur le feu pour des raisons de souveraineté et d'autonomie stratégique. C'est le fonds Definvest, doté de 100 millions d'euros et opéré par Bpifrance, qui est techniquement dans le capital de Preligens et Kalray. Depuis sa création, huit entreprises ont bénéficié... https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/les-success-stories-des-pepites-earthcube-et-kalray-se-poursuivent-a-tres-grande-vitesse-862726.html

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  26 juin 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  Big reveal of UK modernization plan expected in Brussels

  Andrew Chuter LONDON ― The British Ministry of Defence's Modernising Defence Programme, essentially a review of spending and capabilities, should start to see the light of day around the time of the July 11-12 NATO summit in Brussels. British Prime Minister Theresa May could unveil the headline conclusions of the program at the summit, with the details to follow sometime in the future. The fear is that without the government handing the military more money over the next decade, capabilities will be lost and procurement programs abandoned or delayed ― and in some instances, that is already happening. The MoD has been battling for additional cash from the Treasury for months, but with the British government announcing June 18 plans to spend billions of pounds more on health over the next few years, the chances of defense getting any significant boost appears increasingly remote. Instead the MoD will likely have to persevere with efficiency and other cuts to reduce a black hole in the 10-year equipment plan that the National Audit Office, the government's financial watchdog, said earlier this year could be unaffordable to the tune of between £4.9 billion and £20.8 billion (U.S. $5.7 billion and U.S. $24.1 billion). The parliamentary Defence and Public Accounts committees are so worried about “severe“ budgetary pressures that they took the unusual step of jointly writing to the prime minister in early June to voice their concerns. A June 18 report by the Defence Committee said that if the government wants to have the resources to keep the country safe, it “must begin moving the level of defence expenditure back towards 3% [from the current level of 2 percent] of GDP, as it was in the mid-1990s.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nato-priorities/2018/06/25/big-reveal-of-uk-modernization-plan-expected-in-brussels/