Under a European Defence Fund (EDF) initiative, Thales is to co-ordinate the European Interactive Sensor-Based Dynamic Defence Network (EISNET) consortium, involving 23 partners from industry, research centres and universities from 12 EU member states, Thales announced on 20 March 2025.
The project seeks to decisively enhance the responsiveness, resilience and performance of integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) systems to protect the European Union from threats ranging from hyper-saturating drone swarms to hypersonic missiles.
Co-funded by the EDF, member states and industry investments, the strategic EISNET initiative will create a European collaborative architecture to harmonise and aggregate existing as well as future IAMD systems.
Launched at the end of January 2025, the EISNET initiative 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-and-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 also enhance the performance, scalability, responsiveness and resilience of new and legacy IAMD systems to address the most challenging air and missile threat scenarios.
By integrating these various capabilities in a co-ordinated 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 increasingly stealthly threats.
EISNET’s ambition is ultimately to move towards an open standard to enable full interoperability with all IAMD suppliers.
“Air superiority is decisive in today’s warfare in order to protect our countries and citizens, Raphaël Desi, vice president for integrated airspace protection systems at Thales, was quoted as saying in a company press release. “EISNET paves the way for a new generation of integrated air and missile defence. Together, in this Thales-led consortium, we will boost European air defence.”
The EISNET partners are as follows:
- Thales (co-ordinator) – France
- Austrian Institute of Technology – Austria
- BSS – Denmark
- Cafa Tech -Estonia
- Consorzio nazionale interuniversitario per le telecomunicazioni – Italy
- Diehl Defence – Germany
- Elettronica – Italy
- Hensoldt Sensors – Germany
- Indra Sistemas – Spain
- Interoperability Systems International Hellas Single Member Societe Snonyme – Greece
- Leonardo – Italy
- MBDA Italia – Italy
- Nederlandse Organisatie Voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek – the Netherlands
- Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales – France
- Politechnika Warszawska – Poland
- Rheinmetall Electronics – Germany
- Saab Aktiebolag – Sweden
- Spika Tech – Spain
- Stam – Italy
- Thales Edisoft Portugal – Portugal
- Thales Nederland – the Netherlands
- Totalforsvarets Forskningsinstitut – Sweden
- Xysensing Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnoscia – Poland
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A Thales air defence radar being tested at the company’s site in Limours, France, in March 2022. The ultimate ambition of the Thales-led EISNET consortium is ultimately to move towards an open standard to enable full interoperability between all European IAMD systems. (Photo: Thales)
