Official launch of the European Defence Fund project FACT

On 24 January 2024, the Federated Advanced Cyber physical Test range (FACT) project consortium
held its kick-off meeting in Oslo, hosted by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (Project Coordinator).
FACT aims to provide an unprecedented new European capability to test and verify the cyber
vulnerability of equipment. The project will pave the way for the EU’s autonomy and ability to
create and integrate a federated cyber-physical test bed.

Participants included representatives of 19 participating entities from 15 Member States and
Associated Country. It was an opportunity for all to present themselves and express how they will
respectively contribute to the project. The Work Package leaders also presented their project plan
and their expected final results.

The consortium members recalled the urgent need to strengthen cyber defence capabilities and
to increase coordination and cooperation between nations in order to improve the ability to
prevent, detect, defend against, recover from and deter cyber-attacks on military systems.

Brian Kelly, CEO at Emproof added: “There was substantial value from this inaugural meeting,
which emphasised the synergy among consortium members. We are looking forward to further
sharing Emproof’s experience in embedded software security to significantly contribute to this
project.”

A project selected by the European Defence Fund 2022

The European Commission has awarded €26.9 million over a three-year period to the FACT project
led by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.

The European Defence Fund (EDF) is a financial instrument created by the European Union in
2017 as part of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The Wirst call for proposals was
published in 2021. FACT is one of the 41 projects selected for the 2022 EDF (out of 134 proposals
submitted).

What comes next?

Regarding the next steps, the FACT consortium confirmed that the Concept of Operations
(CONOPS) will be presented at the next General Assembly in June 2024. It will deWine the targeted
performance of the proposed system for all stakeholders and include the description of its use in
a centralised and federated manner. It will be the basis for deWining a business model and
developing a sustainable range/laboratory capability as a common European asset after the
project.

The FACT consortium

The project is led by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and other consortium members are: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Approach Cyber, BPTI Inventive, Bianor Services, C&V Consulting, certSIGN, Crosshill Ltd, CR14, Leonardo, Nokia Bell Labs, Latvijas Mobilais Telefons SIA, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Rheinmetall, SPACE HELLAS S.A., TERMA Group, Thales, Università degli Studi di Genova.