Last November 14th to 16th PESCO 4E (Essential Elements of European Escorts) project, lead by Spanish Navy and industrially coordinated by Navantia. The workshop was organised by the European Defence Agency (EDA), which is supporting this PESCO.
Ministries of Defence of Italy, Portugal, Sweden and Greece attended the meeting as participants in the project together with the Spanish MoD as coordinator. Germany participated as observer and representatives of Denmark, Norway and Belgium as interested countries.
Industry was represented by 13 spanish companies and 16 companish from participating, observating and interested countries.
PESCO 4E project aims to collaboratively develop the essential systems for the next generation of European naval vessels, that will be built from 2023 to 2040. The project is distributed in five pillars: combat system, communications, platform management, navigation and System of system, acting the last one as integration pillar.
During the fisrt part of the workshop, Ministries of Defence involved further defined the scope of the project, aiming to select naval capabilities to be developed under PESCO 4E initiative.
Industry joined to the second part of the project to present their view on the state of the art of the capabilities under PESCO 4E. Capabilities and innovation projects related were presented by each company, together with their interests on the project and the feasibility of developing the PESCO 4E capabilities.
Attendants from Navantia were Angelina Cajade, European and NATO programmes director, Fernando Miguélez, Europe and NATO representative of Navantia, Laura García, European programmes coordinator and María Lorenzo, support of Spanish Navy for European programmes and NATO.
As leader on Naval Industry in Spain, Navantia coordinated industrial session of the workshop and presented group conclusions of the participating industries.
PESCO 4E is one of the reference European naval projects, lead by Spain and aiming to define the capabilities for the future European naval vessels. The particiation of Ministries of Defense and industries from all over Europe confirms their interest on the project and the relevance of it in the future of the European naval defence.
Navantia continues reafirming its role as European defence industry of reference with its participaction in the second PESCO 4E international workshop.