Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
The European Defence Fund (EDF) is the Commission’s initiative to support collaborative defence research and development, and to foster an innovative and competitive defence industrial base.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
The proposals under this topic must focus on the development of an autonomous and adaptive deployable AI agent.
Detailed Call Description
The main challenge of this topic is to establish an investigative approach on an area of autonomous deployable AI creation, with the intention to broaden artificial intelligence perspective in cyber defence in the EU.
All proposed activities must ultimately support the creation of an AI agent that is able to conduct automated and semi-automated incident management on different cyber defence systems for the entire process of the incident management cycle. The solutions must support human operators, analysts and decision-makers at technical, tactical, operational, strategic and political level. In addition, solutions are expected to contribute to enhanced cyber situational awareness, increased military infrastructure resilience and improved protection against AI-based and other advanced cyber threats.
The work should identify gaps for achieving an autonomous AI agent for military systems. The final result should build on a general-purpose AI agent that can be deployed in different operating environments.
The work should also address the gap of learning data sets through the use of live-fire exercises, data lake concepts and self-learning algorithms. Access to the data sets should be planned in a decentralised way to allow the solution to be deployable. This implies, that new architectures and solutions should be considered in achieving decentralisation, utilising and enhancing for example AI-powered edge computing.
The assessment of the proposed solution must be evaluated during live-fire exercises with a method allowing comparison of the developed AI agent against actual defending teams. This means using learning data from different exercises, but also data feeds from the exercise itself, where the AI agent is competing.
Call Total Budget
Thematic Categories
- Information and Communication Technologies
- Justice - Security
- Other Thematic Category
- Public Administration
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
Eligibility for Participation
- Central Government
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- State-owned Enterprises
Eligibility For Participation Notes
Applications will only be considered eligible if their content corresponds wholly (or at least in part) to the topic description for which it is submitted.
Eligible participants (eligible countries) – In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)
- non-EU countries:
- listed EEA countries (‘EDF associated countries’, see list of participating countries)
- have their executive management structure established in eligible countries
- must not be subject to control by a non-associated third country or nonassociated third-country entity (unless they can provide guarantees – see Annex 2 – approved by the Member State or EDF associated country where they are established).
Associated partners which are not established in one of the eligible countries (or which are subject to control by a non-associated third country or non-associated third-country entity) may however participate exceptionally if certain conditions are fulfilled (not contravene EU and MS security and defence interests; consistent with EDF objectives; results not subject to control or restriction by non-associated third countries or non-associated third-country entities; no unauthorised access to classified information; no potential negative effects over security of supply of inputs which are critical for the project), subject to agreement by the granting authority and without any funding under the grant.
Consortium composition – For all topics under this call, proposals must be submitted by: minimum 3 independent applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities) from 3 different eligible countries.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
National Contact Point(s)
Ministry of Defense
172-174 Strovolos Avenue, 2048 Strovolos, Nicosia,
website: https://mod.gov.cy/
Telephone: 22 807500
Email: defence@mod.gov.cy
Department of Research and Innovation
Phones: 22 807755, 22 807754
Email: research.innovation@mod.gov.cy
EU Contact Point
European Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS): https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/defence-industry-and-space_en
For help related to this call, please contact: DEFIS-EDF-PROPOSALS@ec.europa.eu