New partnerships and projects for BPTI - INTERACT PADR Project

On June 21, 2021 nineteen project partners from eleven European countries (i.e. Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Denmark, Lithuania, Romania, Poland) got together virtually to launch the INTERACT ( INTERoperability Standards for Unmanned Armed ForCes SysTems) project and outline the actions to be carried out per work package during the upcoming period. The INTERACT project is funded under the Preparatory Action on Defence Research (PADR) with 24 months of lifecycle and it is led by the Fraunhofer Institut für Optronik, Systemtechnik und Bildauswertung IOSB (Germany).

INTERACT aims to create a basis for a future European interoperability standard for military unmanned systems. It will be achieved by integrating the technical knowledge and operational experience available in Europe on control, monitoring, and application of unmanned systems for the concept definition of a future European cross-industry interoperability standard for military unmanned systems.

This standard will allow unmanned assets to be deployed flexible in different configurations, such as singular deployment, in manned-unmanned teaming, in hand over modes or as autonomous swarms, all this independent of organizational or national provenance. For this an INTERACT EXPERT GROUP containing all dominant European manufacturers of unmanned systems (air, ground, surface and underwater) accompanied by a number of leading organisations from all over Europe in specific expert fields has been created. The interchangeability of assets will increase responsiveness and flexibility and hence the warfighting capability of European armed forces, individually and in international joint operations.