Deadline: 29-Sep-2026
The European Commission is currently accepting grant applications to support the detection, collection, and disposal of hazardous military residues while reducing human risk.
The initiative focuses on reducing human involvement in military waste cleanup, improving environmental protection, supporting green military practices, and enhancing safety. It emphasizes autonomous and energy-efficient ground platforms, UAV integration, AI-assisted target detection and classification, platform cooperation and swarming, and clean and resource-efficient technologies in line with STEP objectives.
The indicative budget for this topic under the call is EUR 10,000,000, as part of an overall budget of EUR 422,000,000 allocated to this call, supporting studies, design, prototyping, testing, qualification, and certification, including eligible upstream and downstream development activities.
Military exercises and combat operations generate hazardous residues, including inert casings, dud projectiles, drone wreckage, explosive residues, and buried unexploded ordnance. These can harm wildlife, agriculture, and humans. Automating cleanup reduces risk, improves efficiency, and allows faster restoration of affected areas.
Proposals should develop autonomous, energy-efficient, and self-repairable ground platforms equipped with tools, sensors, and algorithms for surface and sub-surface target recovery. Platforms should navigate efficiently, classify and sort detected items, and prepare them for transport and recycling. UAV technology with advanced sensors should be used for mapping and detection, while AI and assisted learning improve classification and target identification.
Swarming and platform cooperation concepts are encouraged to enhance safety, allow operations beyond communication ranges, and increase scalability. Additional sensors to detect toxic or harmful substances and autonomous UAV charging from ground platforms can be included. Projects must not duplicate existing initiatives or address emplaced weapons like mines and IEDs.
Eligible participants are legal entities established in EU Member States, EDF-associated countries, or EEA countries, with executive management in eligible countries and no control from non-associated third countries unless guarantees are provided.
For more information, visit European Commission.
