European Extended Mine Countermeasures (E=MCM)

ongoing

The maritime mine threat is a reality for both the civil and military shipping since more than a century and the consequences can be ranged from blocking access to harbours, coastal waters and specific maritime areas to hindering drastically maritime trade and the freedom of manoeuvre of naval ships. In EU, the sea mine threat has been a constant – although changing – reality for decades and it is crucial that the EU Allies strengthen their capacities to counter effectively mine threats appearing in broad maritime spectrum zones that encompass surf zone to deep water including chokepoints, SLOCs delivering enabling essential trade such as communications, and energies to EU citizens, companies, governments. In that context, the European Extended Mine Countermeasures (E=MCM) project aims to close development gaps for capabilities of the Toolbox 2.0 by delivering better, faster, safer and more resilient MCM operations by designing, prototyping and demonstrating a single consistent system of systems (SoS) composed of: (i) advanced evolving & scalable unmanned autonomous toolboxes; (ii) intelligent platforms and decision support tools to achieve significant operational gains in terms of quality, performance and efficiency; (iii) incremental capabilities to address and counter, with increased effectiveness, the current and future mine threat ((drifting, tethered, and buried mines). The consortium of E=MCM project is composed of 21 beneficiaries from 11 EU nations with 9 large companies, 2 Midcaps, 6 SMEs and 4 RTOs and the work is structured into 12 WPs: 3 WPs are related to studies, 4 WPs are related to Design activities, 4 WPs to Prototyping activities and 1 WP related to Testing activities. 7 sea trials will be conducted across the overall EU (BE, NL, FR, DE, ES) and the total eligible cost of the E=MCM project is 69,87M€ with 45M€ from EU grant and 23,87M€ from 10 supporting EU Member States (BE, DE, EL, ES, FR, LT, LV, NL, PT, SE)