Multi-Domain Operations Cloud
Major industrial actors of Defence in Europe are joining efforts in the EDOCC project to develop a disruptive approach for the exchange of multi-domain services. The objective is to provide EU and Member States a virtual platform based on Cloud technologies that will increase the interoperability, efficiency and resiliency of military operations. This initiative will strengthen collaborative services on the battlefield and will support PESCO project ECOWAR.
Airbus, Thales, Leonardo, Rheinmetall, Indra and Saab will closely cooperate on EDOCC federated system together with selected partners complementing their portfolio (such as ATOS, MBDA and platform manufacturers) and several innovative European companies including SME.
EDOCC project phase 1 presented in this offer will last 3 years and will be dedicated to study, design and conceptually validate the virtual platform and develop the first version of a service catalogue while identifying appropriate standards and technologies for high performance and interoperability.
Airbus will coordinate the project in close coordination with the core team partners that are sharing responsibilities of various EDOCC activities across four pillars: OPS, IT, Network and Security.
The deliverable of the project is composed of study results, architecture and functional design, and a proof of concept through test laboratories that will be deployed in different countries.
During the project, we will provide EU and Member States a clear understanding of the federated environment and the technical building blocks to be developed and integrated. Each participating MS will have the property of the complete EDOCC solution and the possibility to customize it for a national implementation or adaptation.
Our intention for phase 1 is to demonstrate the benefit and added value of the virtual platform for multi-domain operations before the end of 2025, in order to prepare phase 2 and a complete EDOCC prototype horizon 2028.
The project is led by Germany and has gathered the direct support through the signature of Initial Common Requirements (ICR) and Letter of Intent (LOI) of a total of seven (7) countries, being: France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Austria and Romania, besides the leading MS. There is presence of a total of twelve (12) MS in the Consortium that will run the Project, including Portugal, Greece, Finland, Estonia and Poland, on top of the listed above.
The participation in terms of European Industrial legal entities and Research Institutes goes up to thirty-four (34) companies and institutes. They have been carefully selected to map all the areas of expertise that the Project demanded. They comprise Large companies, Mid-Caps, a significant number of SMEs (including several Cross-Border ones) and Research Institutes.
The above two paragraphs demonstrate the deep roots that this Project has been able to generate within the European MS and Industrial ecosystem based on an innovative approach to the way the Multi-Domain operations will be run in the future while keeping and safeguarding the European sovereignty and Security of Supply in a technological area that is predominantly occupied by US and Chinese technology.
The partners share the ambition to develop a European federation of clouds for military operations that will meet objectives of EDOCC and related PESCO projects. Under the EDF Work Programme 2021, the project will develop in the first phase under the Capability Window the necessary concepts to deliver a technological demonstration of basic services and capabilities by 2025. The final deliverables and level of ambitions will largely depend on the amount of EU funding allocated to EDOCC and additional national co-funding provided by supporting Member States.
EDOCC federated services will accelerate information collection and processing to improve decision making at strategic, operational and tactical levels, and will optimize the interoperability of joint forces during operations through easier and faster access to services. This will lay the foundations for highly connected multi-domain defence solutions and will accelerate the development of new and disruptive applications for military operations.
It is important to highlight that due to EDOCC concept, the solutions that will be developed within the Project will neither overlap with National specific initiatives nor with Domain specific multi-national initiatives. EDOCC, based on the concept of “federation of clouds” will
- interconnect the already available solutions,
- provide a way, for those that do not have cloud solutions within their own initiatives, to deploy Multi-Domain services
- Provide Multi-Domain services to already deployed single-domain solutions.
Moreover, EDOCC solutions will be designed to ensure compatibility and interoperability with NATO services while maintaining the European foundations.
- Partner: AIRBUS DEFENCE AND SPACE GMBH (Koordinator), INDRA SISTEMAS SA, LEONARDO - SOCIETA PER AZIONI, RHEINMETALL ELECTRONICS GMBH, SAAB AKTIEBOLAG, ATOS IT SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES SRL, MBDA DEUTSCHLAND GMBH, GTS DEUTSCHLAND GMBH, THALES ITALIA SPA, THALES SIX GTS FRANCE SAS, THALES ESPANA SISTEMAS SA, NAVANTIA S.A., GMV AEROSPACE AND DEFENCE SA, CONSORZIO NAZIONALE INTERUNIVERSITARIO PER LE TELECOMUNICAZIONI, TELESPAZIO SPA, E 4 COMPUTER ENGINEERING SPA, SIGHUP SRL, BLACKNED GMBH, MYNARIC LASERCOM GMBH, PROVE&RUN, EXENCE SPOLKA AKCYJNA, DEFSECINTEL SOLUTIONS OU, SISTRADE - SOFTWARE CONSULTING SA, WINGS ICT SOLUTIONS INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IKE, AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH
- Project duration: 12/2022-11/2025
- Funding: EDF-2021-DIGIT-D-MDOC, Military multi-domain operations cloud, Cloud technologies