Today, the Commission announced the results of the 2022 calls for proposals under the European Defence Fund (EDF) amounting to €832 million of EU funding in support of 41 joint defence research and development projects across the EU.

The selected projects will help further develop EU's high-end defence capabilities in critical areas such as, naval, ground, air combat, space-based early warning and cyber. For example, in the Naval field, the E-NACSOS project will focus on a new collaborative standard for anti-air and missile defence. In the Air category, the project REACTII will improve the resilience and management for electronic warfare. Another project in the space domain, ODIN'S EYE II, will build on the progress on space-based missile early warning and will gather industry from 14 EU Member States and Norway to increase European capability in this area. The EDF will also directly contribute to Cyber defence in three specific research and development projects.

For the first time, the EDF will launch a €25 million technological challenge under the EU Defence Innovation Scheme (EUDIS). In this technological challenge teams will compete to bring forward the best solution to detect hidden threats through unmanned systems and allow military and civilian personnel to operate safer in conflict environments.

The outcome of the 2022 calls reaffirms that the EDF contributes to the EU's strategic autonomy and to creating a more competitive and integrated European defence technological and industrial base. The 2022 call results also confirm the strong interest and active engagement of the EU defence industry in all call topics and demonstrate their strong commitment to the ambition pursued through the programme. Selected consortia bring together 550 entities from across the EU and Norway and strongly involve SMEs, which represent 39% of all entities.