Spanish and German missile manufacturers are leading an effort to develop a new hypersonic defense interceptor as part of the European Defence Fund (EDF) initial batch of sponsored projects DefenceNews.com reports.
In July, the European Union announced the awardees of its first slate of EDF-funded projects, which included 61 research-and-development projects and over €1.2 billion in fundING.
Among the awards is the European Hypersonic Defence Interceptor (EU HYDEF) program, which will cover the concept phase to develop an endo-atmospheric interceptor, according to EDF documents. The program will run for 36 months and is expected to cost nearly €110 million. In August of this year it was reported that the European Commission had approved €100 million euros for the project concept phase.
The EU HYDEF project involves 13 companies and organisations from seven nations to develop an interceptor by 2035.
Spain’s Sener Aerospacial Sociedad Anonima is coordinating the EU HYDEF program, while Germany’s Diehl Defence is serving as the overall technical lead, company officials said.
The goal is to build a “European interceptor targeting the 2035+ threats, along with weapon and sensor systems,” per the EU fact sheet. Sener, Diehl, and their partners will work to develop and demonstrate the HYDEF interceptor.
At this point, the EU HYDEF program remains in a negotiation phase with the European Commission and participating member states, said Fernando Quintana, Sener’s weapon systems director.
Those negotiations will eventually lead to a grant agreement to transfer the pre-allocated funds to the industry team, he told Defense News. The program management body remains to be determined, he added – either the European Commission itself would oversee the effort, or else the intergovernmental Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR).
The end goal of the interceptor program is to field a countermeasure that could eventually be integrated into an air defence system of systems capable of early warning, tracking, and interception of high-performance airborne threats, including ballistic missile defense (BMD) and hypersonic vehicles. “This system of systems is precisely what several European countries, including Spain, under the leadership of France, are developing in TWISTER,” Quintana noted.
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