Ministers gathering in the Polish city of Krakow said Friday that Europe’s five largest defense powers are collaborating on a multi-million euro project to put low-cost air defense equipment, such as autonomous drones or missiles, into production within a year.
The conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated that autonomous interceptor drones may offer a practical substitute for expensive air defense missiles, and Kyiv’s European allies are eager to take note of this lesson.
As European leaders seek to strengthen defense capabilities in the face of growing skepticism about Washington’s commitment to defending the continent, the European Group of Five Defense Ministers—which includes leading military spenders France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Britain—met.
“It’s a multi-million pound, multi-million euro commitment … to step up this technology,” Britain’s Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard said.
“We’re really hopeful that this will produce an effector that… will be in production within 12 months.”
In military terminology, “effectors” are the components of a system that produce a physical effect, while “autonomous platforms” are unmanned systems capable of independent decision-making.
The ‘Low-Cost Effectors and Autonomous Platforms’ initiative, known as LEAP, involves the development of advanced low-cost air-defence systems – such as autonomous drones or missiles – the first project of which will be delivered by 2027, the UK government said in a separate statement.
“We have just signed a very important commitment on the joint development of drone-based strike capabilities, low-cost, joint production, and joint procurement of low-cost drone effectors and payloads,” Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
“This is the challenge of our times – technologies are changing… and we must respond very quickly.”
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