EDA - Industry Standardisation Conference

Brussels | Apr 08, 2013 by Elisabeth.SCHOEFFMANN -  EDA News

The European Defence Agency organised a standardisation conference for military land vehicle systems, vehicle components including sensors & effectors and supply chain on 4 April 2013. Both major European system houses and SME’s participated in the conference and presented their views and proposals for standardisation of land vehicle systems.  The conference was chaired by the EDA Armaments Director Mr Giampaolo Lillo and co-chaired by the ASD-STAN Director Mr Günter Lessmann.

The conference underlined the importance of the concept of open standard architecture. This concept offers a high potential for benefits in the competitiveness and strengthening of the European Defence Technology and Industrial Base. Certainly it is not only limited to the area of land vehicle systems, but in particularly this technical domain needs further consolidation and more efficient solutions both among EDA’s Member States and the industry.

One conclusion of the conference was therefore to revitalise the Expert Group for Armoured Land Vehicle Technology to identify best practice standard recommendations in this technical domain. The objective will then be to publish these recommendations on the EDA European Defence Standards reference system (EDSTAR) which is a tool to provide both governmental organisations and industry for procurement of Defence material with best practice standards. Of course, it is necessary to meet a consensus among all stakeholders and with EDA's conference a starting point was set for the revival of the technical domain of land vehicles with a successful end to suggest at least for some components of land vehicles best practice recommendations. EDA will take further actions to (re-)open an expert group competent to deliver these best practice recommendations.

Furthermore the conference discussions have proven the link between the harmonisation of requirements and the standardisation activities. This underlines EDA’s role in the coordination of standardisation management as the harmonisation of requirements is one of EDA’s core missions.

Another aspect highlighted by industry is the need of practical demonstrations (demonstrators) for supporting standardization and proving the concept of a new developed standard. Finally the importance of standardising the test requirements and procedures for the Defence Test and Evaluation Bases (DTEB) was exemplified for the qualification of ammunition.

More information:

• Conference programme
• Speakers and presentation abstracts
• Presentations (.zip file, 7 MB)