SESAR 3 programme: new funding for 12 Leonardo research projects

As part of the new SESAR 3 research and innovation programme for the digitalisation of European skies, Leonardo was awarded 10 projects out of the 48 selected, for a total investment of EUR 350 million by the aeronautics industry and the European Union, through the Horizon Europe funding programme

These projects reflect the innovation flagship priorities outlined in the SESAR 3 JU’s multi-annual work programme, such as Advanced Air Mobility, Artificial Intelligence for aviation, civil/military interoperability, Aviation green deal, demonstrating the commitment of Leonardo to innovation and sustainability. Leonardo has also been awarded two more projects within the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) provision, dedicated to the development of a series of SESAR JU Digital European Sky Demonstrators in the areas of automation and virtualisation.  

The results obtained in SESAR3 by Leonardo represent an important achievement, which follows the positive results of the company in the previous funding frameworks since 2007, with 13 active projects currently active in SESAR Wave 2.

In particular, Leonardo will coordinate the FCDI (Future Connectivity and Digital Infrastructure) project, which aims to specify and develop the future technologies coming from the Communication domain, in order to support and manage the Operational Services in the future Air Traffic Management System. Performance requirements for communications systems are becoming increasingly complex and demanding, then they need to be considered as an integrated system, which includes air and ground solutions converging towards a common infrastructure and a unified concept of operations.

The other projects refer to the topic of U-Space and Urban Air Mobility, - ENSURE and EUREKA, Artificial Intelligence for Aviation -JARVIS, Connected and automated ATM – MIAR; Civil-military interoperability & coordination – MITRANO, Air-ground integration and autonomy ECHO 2 and Network TBO, Aviation Green deal - GALAAD. The project AMPLE 3 is a Master Planning and Monitoring project, to support the S3 Joint Undertaking in planning and reporting on deployment activities in both industrialisation and implementation phases.