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CDF Supports an EDA Contracted Study
In 2011 the European Defence Agency (EDA) contracted a study to a consortium led by Cassidian and composed of Astrium and FOI aiming at developing a modelling and simulation tool to assess the value of Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities in support of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations. It will help identifying gaps and improving future systems related to information gathering for security and defence. The ISR Capabilities Package Assessment (ICPA) study was conducted in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), the latter providing its Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) and its expertise in System of Systems (SoS) architecture to implement the tool and to assess possible ISR architectures. ESA's CDF has thereby been the focal point where space and non-space experts came together to elaborate and validate ISR architectures and assessment models.
“Building on the growing cooperation between EDA and ESA, this study is one of the first tangible examples of an integrated approach in the field of ISR, exploiting civil-military synergies”
Denis Trioulaire, Capability Manager Knowledge - EDA
During the first study phase, different assets with their related characteristics and data were gathered for a number of defined scenarios, such as protection of sea lines. ESA experts from diverse space domains contributed to developing several architectures, models and tools. Phase-2 of the activity was used to trade a range of architecture options in different timeframes using multiple assets and approaches. A Balance of Investment Analysis Model (BIAM) was established and fed with results coming from the domain experts around the table. Among those experts were delegates from EDA’s Member States that joined the CDF sessions, providing their essential operational experience. The derived BIAM allows optimisation and trading of risks and costs versus capabilities and benefits as requested by the customer and later for exploitation by EDA’s Member States.
The ICPA study was another step in the SoS capability development within ESA and the CDF. It proved again that the order of complexity of such an architecture exercise, together with the huge amount of data to be gathered can be better coped with through the simultaneous support of experts from many domains and applying a structured approach such as Concurrent Engineering.
