About The European Defence Fund ACHILE and BSS
27 July 2022
The Odense-based technology company, Bionic System Solutions, has teamed up with several leading European defence companies in a large innovative project “ACHILE – which is focused on new disruptive technologies that will ensure better survival, mobility, etc.”
The project has been selected in sharp competition with other projects in Europe and has the participation of several European defence companies.
The Defense Fund
To increase cooperation across member states and actors in the European defence industry, the EU Commission has taken the initiative to establish the European Defence Fund.
In the period 2021-2027, the Defence Fund will provide support for research into and development of defence equipment and technology. The Defence Fund shall thereby contribute to increasing the European defence industry’s competitiveness, efficiency, and innovation capacity.
The defence fund thus represents a new and great opportunity for Danish companies, research institutions, and the armed forces to enter closer defence industrial cooperation with other European players on research into and development of new concrete defence products and technologies, for which co-financing can be obtained from the fund.
With their highly specialized skills, Danish companies have good prerequisites for entering development collaborations under the fund, thereby strengthening their integration into important supply chains in the European defence industry.
The European Defence Fund 2021 Calls for proposals - and results
Following calls for proposals under the European Defence Fund (EDF), 61 collaborative defence research and development projects with a total EU support of almost 1.2 billion euros have been selected for funding, including the project and consortium with the participation of Bionic System Solutions (BSS ApS) ACHILE selected in the protection and mobility group.
In connection with the selection (ref. Commission’s press release), Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager states: “The selected high-quality projects have shown that defence industrial cooperation in Europe can really be achieved, and even on a broad scale. The nearly 700 companies that will research and develop the next generation of innovative defence technologies through EU funding, will foster a robust and competitive industrial base With SMEs accounting for 43% of entities participating in selected projects, this shows that the European Defence Fund program involves the entire EU industrial value chain.”
The ACHILE PROJECT
The project is planned to run over 48 months starting in early 2023, and participation from a majority of countries in Europe and with BSS as Danish representative, over this period the project cost is budgeted at approx. 45 million euros.
The ACHILE project will focus on
”The project “AUGMENTED CAPABILITY FOR HIGH END SOLDIERS”(ACHILE) aims to develop highly innovative solutions in view of the next generation Dismounted Soldier System by specifying, designing and demonstrating the benefits of open system architecture based on GOSSRA and promising disruptive technologies improving survivability, sustainability, mobility, lethality, observation.”
(ref. Factsheet EDF 2021)
The upcoming project will give BSS great opportunities to continue and increase its efforts in research and development, as a leading company within several advanced data collection and processing techniques, etc. The project will in isolation increase the international impact on BSS and will ensure new jobs and growth to support the accompanying activities.
The new cooperation under the European Defence Fund under the auspices of the ACHILE project will open up new opportunities for cooperation across Europe for BSS – and will provide BSS with new knowledge, and conversely use knowledge from BSS in different parts of the project. This, in a research and development context, will ensure new growth and collaboration opportunities for BSS.