This project has received funding from the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) under grant agreement no. EDIDP-ACC-SPS-2020-069-CARMENTA.
ABOUT CARMENTA SPS
The future operational scenario is often characterized by unprecedented level of rapidly changing risks and uncertainty which in turn requires European detection and countermeasure capabilities, growing in their level of sophistication and variety of the response type, agility, and preparation to face different types of threats.
The CARMENTA SPS project “Future European Self Protection System for Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing airborne platforms” will design a next generation self-protection system (SPS) for aerial platforms able to face a wide and heterogeneous spectrum of current and evolving threats in the operational area. It will be based on Open Architecture and International Standards to enable an easy integration into legacy and future platforms and implementation of new technologies, making use of Artificial Intelligence and cognitive behaviour to support sensor operation in a complex environment.
Ministries of Defence representing the five different Consortium countries (Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark) have confirmed their involvement in the project by signing Letter of Intent. They will contribute in the final assessment of operational needs to be translated into requirements and final validation of the system concept.
OBJECTIVES
1. Elaborate the Preliminary Design Review documentation for the SPS based on European manufacturing capabilities to continue future developments.
CARMENTA SPS will follow a project life cycle in which a set of very high-level user requirements are extracted from the Call "Air combat capabilities” (id: EDIDP-ACC-SPS-2020) and end-users needs (European Union and Member States). Then a design phase (CARMENTA SPS project) will define the concept of operations (CONOPS), system requirements, system concept and the design of an SPS to give response to the call.
After the design phase is successfully completed, the development phase will take place in the future step.
3. Contribute to the development and competitiveness of EU industries worldwide and ensure European autonomy in the survivability domain.
CARMENTA SPS will have a common view to design a modular and scalable SPS architecture which will support future development and upgrades as needs for that arise. It will also increase opportunities for cooperation between the member states and the industries, which will contribute to the development and competitiveness of EU industries worldwide, including SMEs. This initiative will also reduce the design and development efforts that would need to be dedicated separately by EU industries and, consequently, to allow these industries to sooner reach the market and satisfy the requirements of Member State armed forces in the field of Self Protection.
5. System shall be able to be installed on legacy platforms as an upgrade and on new platforms.
The capability to be installed on legacy platform is a mandatory requirement for CARMENTA SPS. This will enable SPS to support MLU of exiting rotary wings platforms and transport fixed wings platforms. To achieve this goal, CARMENTA SPS will employ military standard interfaces already in use and provide flexibility to adapt to the new ones.
Provisions will also be done to ensure interoperability between on-board mission systems.
2. SPS design based on state-of-the-art existing European technology for increasing the autonomy of Europe reducing the dependence on non-European countries.
CARMENTA SPS will address the design of an SPS based on state-of-the-art existing European components/technology. CARMENTA SPS will assess the main critical technologies and their availability in EU. For those components whose dependence from third countries cannot be resolved along CARMENTA SPS, it will be defined, in collaboration with European Defence Agency and Member State authorities, an EU supply chain assessment for their R&D.
4. Design of a European SPS of systems based on modular concept, SWAP-C solution and state-of-the-art existing European technology.
CARMENTA SPS will design a modular and scalable SPS, able to be installed on combat and transport rotary wings platforms and transport fixed wing platforms. Specific requirements from Member States will be taken into consideration associated to each of the specific air vehicle platforms, to perform a design compatible with them, up to the maximum extent possible.
Specific technical objectives to cover by the SPS are to:
- operate in hostile contested and congested EM environments, supporting different type of missions;
- able to have a full spatial and spectrum domain coverage;
- be able to fast identification, geo-localization of threats;
- be able to face simultaneous multiple threats, also in autonomous way;
- be able to interact with a C4I asset to exchange data in order to share Situation Awareness by means of a Tactical datalink;
- be able to be resilient to Cyber-attacks;
- be able to be resilient/aware to direct energy attack (DEW);
- be reconfigurable, in order to be installed on different platform, potentially also UAV.