Alongside the FDI frigates’ program development, Naval Group has developed a strong relationship with many high-skilled companies within the Hellenic defence industry, research and academic partners, ready to partner into innovation programs. Through these programs, Naval Group seeks to widen its scope of innovative activities in Greece and to support the development of the future Hellenic naval warfare capabilities. The R&D Partners Day is, every year, the opportunity to meet with current and new partners, and discuss on-going and future projects.
A new step to focus on European projects and broaden the scope of cooperation
Taking place at the Demokritos congress Centre, this fourth edition of the “R&D Partner's day" provided new opportunities to identify future cooperation projects between Naval Group and Hellenic partners on the upcoming European Union Calls for proposal, and exchange on several technological fields such as new energies, artificial intelligence and Quantum.
Emphasis was also placed on integrating technological innovations from Hellenic start-ups into future projects, benefiting from their flexibility and ability to accelerate research on various fields, considering the NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), and the European HEDI (Hub for European Defense Innovation).
On this occasion, the new Director of the General Directorate for Defense investment and Armement (GDDIA), Major General Ioannis Bouras, did the opening speech and stressed the importance of innovations and R&T cooperation to support the development of Hellenic naval warfare capabilities. He confirmed his support to this Naval Group initiative to trigger fruitful cooperation.
Cooperations to develop the European defence innovations strategy
Several projects developed in the frame of the European Union and involving Naval Group and Hellenic companies have already given successful results, which pave the way for future collaboration (PANDORA, ECHO, EFFECTOR, MIRICLE, SEA NICE). Today, many other projects are on-going: the DTHOR project on Structure monitoring architecture, FARADAI on frugal AI systems, SIMTRAIN on simulation tools, E-NACSOS on collaborative surveillance, Swat shoal on unmanned teaming and swarm, Federates on simulation, etc.
Three new projects involving Naval Group and Hellenic companies have just been selected by the European Commission as part of the 2023 call of the European Defense Fund: the second call on European patrol corvette, the project Seacure on unmanned submarine and seabed warfare, and the project Calipso on Innovative Propulsion Systems, coordinated by our partner Demokritos, the largest multidisciplinary research centre in Greece.
The selection of the Calipso project for the European Defense Fund call 2023 shows the success of the partnership between Naval Group and Demokritos. Both parties decided to strengthen their partnership since the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation (MoU) in November 2023, aiming at developing and sharing know-how and best practices, as well as fostering the development of joint projects in relation with naval technology.
Beyond European projects, very fruitful academics bilateral cooperations are also on-going with the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) on Composites, with the University of Patras and BT-Composite, and with the Hellenic Naval Academy through a very inspiring wargame on unmanned system launched last April in Athens with Cadets, officers, professors and experts.
Press contacts:
Bénédicte Mano
Mob. +33 (0)6 76 46 17 77
benedicte.mano@naval-group.com