Leonardo ranks as the second-largest European participant in the 2023 European Defence Fund (EDF) work programme. The European Commission has recently announced the selection of 13 projects involving Leonardo — 11 focused on capacity development and two on research. These projects are part of a total of 54, with participation from 581 companies and entities across 26 European countries, plus Norway.
In line with the Commission’s direction, the successful approach of Leonardo was oriented towards a strong involvement of SMEs, together with the strategic choice of focussing on inclusiveness in the structuring of consortia and teams. In particular, Leonardo will lead two of the main initiatives in the space and air defence categories: Emissary (European Military Integrated Space Situational Awareness and Recognition capability) and E-CUAS (European Counter UAS), featured a strong innovative component for the technologies that will be developed and are among the projects with the highest European funding.
Also noteworthy is Leonardo’s participation in some flagship programmes for the Commission, for its contribution to the strategic autonomy of the continent. Among these are: the EPC2 (European Patrol Corvette 2), for prototype development of a new European corvette; ESOCA (European eco-System for Outsized Cargo Airlift), which will build a strategic air transport capacity; NG-MIMA (Next Generation Military Integrated Modular Avionics), dedicated to the design and demonstration of key technologies for future combat aircraft; and MARTE (Main ARmoured Tank of Europe), for the study and design of future land platforms.
The overall EDF budget in 2023 was over 1 billion euros, with funding divided into 265 million for 28 research projects and 766 million for 26 development projects.
Italy ranked first in terms of number of winning projects (35), with eight coordinated initiatives of which Leonardo leads the two most relevant, EMISSARY and E-CUAS, this contributed significantly to Italy’s overall result.