Thales-led consortium EISNET to boost European air defence
- Under the European Defence Fund (EDF), Thales is to coordinate the EISNET (European Interactive Sensor-Based Dynamic Defence Network) consortium, involving 23 partners from industry, research centres and universities from twelve Member States.
- The project seeks to decisively enhance the responsiveness, resilience and performance of Integrated Air Missile Defence (IAMD) systems to protect the European Union from threats ranging from hyper-saturating drone swarms to hypersonic missiles.
- Co-funded by the European Defence Fund, member states and industry investments, this strategic initiative will create a European collaborative architecture to harmonise and aggregate existing as well as future IAMD systems.
Officially launched on the 1st December 2024, the EISNET consortium met at the end of January 2025 in the presence of 65 high-level representatives from European industry, research centres, universities, the European Commission and Member States. The project will establish a set of common standards, as well as create prototypes and develop demonstration scenarios.
EISNET will define, develop and demonstrate next-generation real-time networks protocols – called the EISNET Architecture Framework Tool (EAFT) – that will allow European radars, passive sensors, and command & control systems from different suppliers and countries to communicate in real-time and exchange data and services between systems dynamically. EISNET’s smart dynamic management will enhance the performance, scalability, responsiveness and resilience of new and legacy IAMD systems for the most challenging air and missile threat scenarios.
By integrating these various capabilities in a coordinated manner and enhancing communication speed, the project aims to reduce the command chain latency in the face of new-generation threats, high velocity attacks, massive fire saturation, and the stealth of these threats. EISNET’s ambition is to move towards an open standard to enable full interoperability with all IAMD suppliers.
Raphaël Desi, Vice-President Integrated Airspace-protection Systems, Thales said: “Air superiority is decisive in today’s warfare in order to protect our countries and citizens. EISNET paves the way for a new generation of Integrated Air Missile Defence. Together, in this Thales-led consortium, we will boost European air defence”.
About EISNET
The EISNET Architecture Framework Tool (EAFT) that will consist in a set of common concepts, rules and
functions which will permit the scalability of heterogeneous weapon systems, sensors and Fire Control Centres (FCC) with different architectures or configurations cooperating in a network centric solution.
The partners are:
- THALES LAS FRANCE SAS (Coordinator) France
- AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH Austria
- BSS aps Denmark
- CAFA TECH OU Estonia
- CONSORZIO NAZIONALE INTERUNIVERSITARIO PER LE TELECOMUNICAZIONI Italy
- DIEHL DEFENCE GMBH & CO. KG Germany
- ELETTRONICA SPA Italy
- HENSOLDT SENSORS GMBH Germany
- INDRA SISTEMAS SA Spain
- INTEROPERABILITY SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL HELLAS SINGLE MEMBER SOCIETE ANONYME Greece
- LEONARDO - SOCIETA PER AZIONI Italy
- MBDA ITALIA SPA Italy
- NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO The Netherlands
- OFFICE NATIONAL D'ETUDES ET DE RECHERCHES AEROSPATIALES France
- POLITECHNIKA WARSZAWSKA Poland
- RHEINMETALL ELECTRONICS GmbH Germany
- SAAB AKTIEBOLAG Sweden
- SPIKA TECH SL Spain
- STAM SRL Italy
- THALES EDISOFT PORTUGAL, S.A. Portugal
- THALES NEDERLAND BV The Netherlands
- TOTALFORSVARETS FORSKNINGSINSTITUT SwedenXYSENSING SPOLKA Z OGRANICZONA ODPOWIEDZIALNOSCIA Poland
About Thales
Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global leader in advanced technologies for the Defence, Aerospace, and Cyber & Digital sectors. Its portfolio of innovative products and services addresses several major challenges: sovereignty, security, sustainability and inclusion.
The Group invests more than €4 billion per year in Research & Development in key areas, particularly for critical environments, such as Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum and cloud technologies.
Thales has more than 83,000 employees in 68 countries. In 2024, the Group generated sales of €20.6 billion.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Defence Fund. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
