LATACC involves a consortium led by Thales, which includes 34 entities overall, such as Rheinmetall, Leonardo, Elettronica SPA, MBDA Italia, Saab, SAFRAN Electronics & Defense

The European Commission has signed a Grant Agreement to launch LATACC (Land Tactical Collaborative Combat), a project to be carried out by a consortium coordinated by Thales to improve the collaborative capabilities of European coalition forces.

The project brings together 34 industry players and research institutes (including Rheinmetall, Leonardo, Elettronica SPA, MBDA Italia, Indra, Saab, and Safran Electronics & Defense) from 13 European countries. The project is funded through €49 million of the Commission’s European Defence Fund.

With the return of high-intensity conflict, the project aims to develop a solution to optimise and accelerate allied decision-making and response to guarantee operational superiority on the battlefield. indeed, it aims to enable each member state’s different land combat systems (such as the Scorpion programme in France, CAMO in Belgium, DLBO in Germany, BMS-ET in Spain, FNEC in Italy, Ledningsstödsystem Mark (LSS Mark) in Sweden, and MIME in Norway) to coordinate their actions in coalition with very short response times, while interfacing with other domains (air, space, cyber) as well as civil systems such as 5G. It will improve armed forces’ collaborative capabilities from Brigade command posts to combat vehicles, dismounted soldiers, and unmanned assets.

A team of experts with proven experience in complex land systems will lead the project, which will also benefit from the partners’ innovation capacities in critical areas. These include cloud technologies, communications, sensors, integration of complex systems, robotics, effectors, AI and system resilience in constrained environments.

Over the next three years, the LATACC consortium will analyse the requirements of European users and conduct a series of studies to identify common operational scenarios, define interoperable open architectures compatible with current and future standards, and develop the critical technological ‘building bricks’ needed to produce advanced technology demonstrators.

Trials will be conducted under realistic operational conditions and during large-scale demonstrations to confirm the tactical benefits of land collaborative combat in European coalition operations.

A second phase of the LATACC project could follow to develop additional functionalities and bring to maturity the components designed in the first phase.

This initiative will define a European framework and tactical-level collaboration services to speed up innovation, enhancing interoperability between national programs as well as cooperations such as the future European tanks project. It will help safeguard the sovereignty of European industry in collaborative combat and the critical technologies required to make the concept a reality, in line with the recent EU objectives.

LATACC is a good illustration of the federation of a large number of industry players (Primes and SMEs), institutional partners, and government agencies to tackle a complex topic with ground-breaking implications and strategic importance for the European defence community.

EDF’s winning projects, such as LATACC, were first announced last summer. The LATACC project is linked and in line with the EU PESCO project EU Collaborative Warfare Capabilities (ECOWAR), whose outcome is expected to allow the EU armed forces to engage together in actions requiring close interactions and interconnections between diverse current and future warfare platforms.