Leonardo and Italian railway infrastructure manager Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) have signed a partnership agreement to implement a joint Military Mobility project, the two companies announced on 15 April 2024.
The project, which is an EU initiative, will add to existing infrastructure and digital capabilities, facilitating the swift and large-scale movement of military personnel within and beyond Europe, even at short notice and on a large scale, ensuring safe, sustainable, and resilient transportation capacity.
Leonardo and RFI plan to identify the architecture and functions of the integrated digital platform for managing Military Mobility traffic to transport military material, both in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances, using dual-use infrastructure. The platform will incorporate innovative solutions for accessing heterogeneous data sources and optimising their use through automated processes.
The European Commission and High Representative put forward an Action Plan on Military Mobility 2.0 on 10 November 2022 to address the deteriorating security environment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Action Plan on Military Mobility, which builds on a previous action plan launched in 2018, is designed to help European armed forces to respond better, more rapidly and at sufficient scale to crises erupting at the EU’s external borders and beyond while reinforcing co-operation with NATO.
Under the partnership agreement with RFI Leonardo will leverage its expertise in global security and monitoring, supported by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, in several areas: surveying and monitoring dual-use infrastructure, modelling complex infrastructures and services, and simulating and optimising complex networks. Leonardo’s Global Security Operation Centre will also ensure high data protection standards by employing proprietary threat intelligence solutions (characterising and analysing potential cyber threats through the collection and analysis of data from open sources) and live endpoint security (for the management and security of devices connected with the information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) networks).
High-performance computing (HPC) with davinci-1 – one of the most powerful supercomputers in the aerospace, defence and security sectors – will enable the management of vast amounts of data. The platform will also incorporate advanced features based on satellite services, including those provided by the Italian COSMO-SkyMed constellation, and will use a secure communication infrastructure. This infrastructure will be interoperable with various network types, such as TETRA, LTE and 4G/5G to ensure high levels of service and security.
The agreement, which entails using specialised expertise in security and railway transport, “involves integrating RFI’s railway traffic management application components with the other air and land mobility platforms required to generate a context of technological interoperability based on principles of highly robust security” according to a Leonardo press release.
