Defence`s Feeds

EDA is part of a new EU research project launched today by the European Commission under the HORIZON 2020 programme which aims to develop secure satellite communications for EU governments and institutions. Called ENTRUSTED (‘European Networking for satellite Telecommunication Roadmap for the governmental Users requiring Secure, inTeroperable, innovativE and standardiseD services’), the project will run until February 2023.

Under the leadership of the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) and with a budget of €3 million, ENTRUSTED will identify needs and requirements of secure satellite communication end-users. The project will contribute to the formulation of assumptions and guidelines, in terms of user-orientated activities, for the future EU GOVSATCOM programme aimed at creating independent, autonomous and secure satellite communication system for EU Member States and agencies. 

With its wide SatCom expertise based on two SatCom services delivering projects and a Project Team Satellite Communication, EDA has been called to be part of the consortium of EU Member States and EU Agencies implementing the project. The Agency will contribute to all work packages with a focus on user needs, requirements and use cases definition, surveying the state-of-the-art of existing secure SatCom user technologies and definition of a research and development (R&D) roadmap.

Over the coming 30 months, ENTRUSTED will develop a common understanding of governmental user needs for secure SATCOM systems, elaborate a set of user requirements for the future EU GOVSATCOM programme and analyse available and planned secure SATCOM capabilities and solutions offered by commercial operators and governments. It will also assess the need for European standardisation for secure SATCOM user equipment and services and identify the main research and innovation actions to be taken at national and EU levels with regard to secure SATCOM user technologies. A set of recommendations to the European Commission will be issued at the end of the project.  
 

More information:

• ENTRUSTED project
• EDA GovSatCom factsheet
• EDA video on GovSatCom

 

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Mission accomplished for EDA’s ‘Enhanced RPAS Automation’ (ERA) project launched in 2016 by EDA on behalf of Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Sweden. The project aimed at standardising a set of key technical enablers for the operation of both civil and military RPAS in Europe and was formally closed at today’s 4th online stakeholder workshop, where its results were reviewed. 

ERA has contributed to setting industry standards that provide the technical and procedural baseline for the certification in Europe of automatic take-off and landing, autotaxi and automation and emergency recovery functionalities. The validation activities required for standardization purposes were successfully carried out and nearly all performance and functional requirements were validated by the simulations, review, analysis, and flight tests. 

The relevant information for standardisation has been provided to the European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE). Finally, ERA’s consortium has led the standards’ development, following EUROCAE’s standardisation process and involving a broader stakeholder community, including the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). In the safety context, ERA has proposed the bow-tie methodology for the Operational Safety Assessment, as requested by the current EUROCAE guidelines. This methodology offers the advantage to get a complete picture of the hazards relevant to the whole operation, which include, but are not limited to, system failures.

These standards will be published by EUROCAE towards the end of 2020, once the open consultation, the last step in EUROCAE’s standardisation process, is accomplished. This would enable both Civil and Military Aviation Authorities to recognize these EUROCAE standards and include them in their certification basis for RPAS operations in Europe.
Follow on activities

The project originally involved a test campaign with an ultra-light manned aircraft that could not be accomplished due to several technical issues with the test aircraft in the final phases of the project. These problems together with the COVID-19 crisis during this period, forced the cancellation of the ‘Automatic Take-off and Landing’ and ‘Autotaxi’ demonstrations. These tests to be performed with a representative RPAS are now proposed as a follow-on activity.

Furthermore, regarding the Operational Safety Assessment, supporting EASA on the definition of Safety Assessment guidelines for RPAS in the certified category could be also envisaged for a potential next phase of the ERA project.
 

Background

The ERA industrial consortium was led by Airbus Defence and Space, and composed of sixteen partners from five EDA Member States: Airbus Defence and Space and ESG Elektroniksystem- und Logistik-GmbH  from Germany; Safran, Thales and ONERA from France; Saab from Sweden; Leonardo from Italy; and nine partners from Poland: Air Force Institute of Technology (leadership Polish consortium), Institute of Aviation, Hertz Systems Ltd., EUROTECH, PIAP (Przemysłowy Instytut Automatyki i Pomiarów), Eskadra Grzegorz Trzeciak, Politechnika Rzeszowska (Rzeszow University of Technology - RUT), WB Electronics S.A., Asseco Poland S.A.

 

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