La call document technological, called by the Army General Staff on the subject of “cooperative combat in compartmentalized and underground areas”, marks a significant step towards adapting Armed Forces to the contemporary challenges of modern conflicts. As threats evolve, it has become crucial to develop and integrate new technological capabilities that can ensure effective operation in complex and restricted environments.
During the demonstrations of the event, at the multipurpose testing center of the Army in Montelibretti, the Armed Forces leaders attended the presentation of forty-four technological products related to the proposed topic, presented by Italian and foreign companies that joined the initiative.
A total of twenty-seven companies presented virtual reality systems, ground and aerial drones, communications platforms and a range of other technologies that were evaluated by Subject Matter Expert of the Armed Forces from the Army Evaluation and Innovation Command, the Transmission Command, the Engineer Command, the Tactical Information Brigade and the Multipurpose Experimentation Center.
The various practical tests also saw the involvement of highly specialized teams from the Infantry School and the 4th Alpine Parachute Regiment.
The event allowed for the testing of innovative manned and unmanned products, called upon to operate and navigate autonomously and in the absence of a signal, along routes of increasing difficulty, reproduced in particularly compartmentalized environments created specifically for the purpose.
The activity was an opportunity to increase an effective network – in compliance with the principle of open innovation – between the Army and the industrial sector, with the aim of stimulating all the actors involved to direct the projects towards the Army's capability developments with a view to realizing and validating the concepts of Manned-UnManned Teaming (MUM-T) and Cooperative Combat, essential for the creation of the “system of systems” that will characterise future platforms under development (A2CS and MGCS).