Bittium develops capabilities for autonomous systems in European Defence Industrial Development Programme.

Bittium is part of the iMUGS (integrated Modular Unmanned Ground System) project that is operating under the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP). The iMUGS project is developing new capabilities for European defence forces based on autonomous systems.
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he iMUGS project is developing new capabilities for European defence forces based on autonomous systems (Picture source: Bittium)

The goal of the project is to develop a modular and scalable architecture for hybrid manned-unmanned systems in order to address a large range of missions and to enable easy update or modification of assets and functionalities within the system: aerial and ground platforms, command, control and communication equipment, sensors, payloads and algorithms. The project will also develop a prototype for demonstrating the features of the implementation.

In the project, Bittium is responsible for the execution of resilient and networked data transfer, including both tactical communications and data transfer over commercial 4G and 5G cellular networks. The iMUGS project will begin in 2021 and the duration of the project is approximately 30 months. The participating countries in the project are Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia and Spain. The total value of the project is approximately EUR 32 million of which Bittium's share is approximately EUR 3.5 million. The project does not change Bittium's financial outlook for the year 2020.

"The project is a significant first step towards a new type of performance. Autonomous systems are an extremely important new domain in both civilian and tactical applications. We are proud to have been selected to this project based on our high-quality competences," says Jari Sankala, Senior Vice President, Defense & Security, Bittium.

European Defence Industrial Development Programme

The European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) is the second pre-phase prepared by the European Defence Fund which is used to test the practices related to the fund's performance for the purposes of the actual programme. The budget of the Development Programme is EUR 500 million. The Programme is being carried out according to its multiannual work programme. The first calls for proposals were executed in 2019.

The goal of the EDIDP is to foster competitiveness and innovation capacity of the defence industry throughout the European Union by supporting the activities during the development phase of defence materiel. Another goal of the Programme is to foster better exploitation of the results of defence research. The beneficiaries of the Programme are industrial companies based in the European Union, and the aim is to increase the cross-border co-operation between the companies. Also, third-country owned companies that are located in the area of European Union can take part in the activities within the Programme if it can be ensured that it does not threaten the security interests of the EU or its Member States.