About
Background
The digitalisation of European armed forces is gradually changing the way in which EU member states plan and respond to foreign challenges and conflicts. Thrived by the principle “Driven by global threats, shaped by civil high-tech” the Remote weAPon condition-based moniTORing system (RAPTOR) project enables Condition Monitoring (CM) for military defence applications. CM is a widely used industrial technique that involves the monitoring of specific parameters in critical machinery, which can be used in Predictive Maintenance 4.0 through extrapolation of those parameters for the prediction of their condition in future time.
This approach allows the technological shift from reactive maintenance (i.e., allowing the machine to break in order to service it) to predictive maintenance (i.e., optimise service based on forecasting through monitoring specific parameters). It is of paramount importance to the EU to ensure its technological advantage in the military field, including in high-intensity threat environments. RAPTOR aligns with the motive described in the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, a set of specific and comprehensive objectives that will guide Member States to adopt a shared strategic vision for the EU’s involvement in security and defence over the next five to ten years.
Readiness and Reliability
Strengthening the EU’s Defence Capabilities
The focus in the Land Domain is to modernise Soldiers Systems as the core of individual force protection and operational effectiveness across all types of operations. The ability of military forces to engage in combat and carry out their assigned missions is of utmost importance to fulfil a country’s national military strategy, especially in a period of dramatic geopolitical shifts. This is also important on a European level. In order to defend the security of its citizens and to respond to crises that threaten the EU’s values and interests, the EU must become a stronger and more effective actor in security and defence. Military readiness and reliability encapsulate the procedures employed to create and maintain ready armed forces, which heavily depend on the state of military personnel, training and the safety of the equipment.
Readiness is equally focused on producing and sustaining both war-fighters (i.e., people) and weapons or weapon systems, i.e., with all related equipment, materials, services, personnel, and means of delivery and deployment (if applicable) required for self-sufficiency. Therefore, readiness, reliability, safety and interoperability are crucial elements of our response to threats and strategic competition.
RAPTOR addresses the above requirements and challenges by digitising military personnel’s firearms and, in particular, by printing innovative, robust and bespoke miniature sensors and electronics directly on the weapon/weapon system and leveraging the existing weapon design to host electronic control and edge processing devices, along with secured encrypted wireless communication. Measurements are case/weapon-specific and include temperature, vibration, and acceleration. Real-time assessment of the functional health of critical weapons machinery is extremely useful for predicting faults in components and their operation, thereby improving their reliability, safety, performance and lifespan.
Furthermore, RAPTOR will offer interoperability with other weapons systems by providing standardised interfaces and data exchange formats used by the EU armed forces and the capability of executing data processing and analytics close to the data sources to decrease the capacity needs to transfer sensor data through the communications network.