At a meeting of the Steering Board of the European Defence Agency (EDA) on Tuesday 14 November, EU defence ministers approved the EU Capability Development Plan for 2023, which includes 22 priorities.
These priorities reflect the military realities observed in Ukraine, support the EU’s defence objectives and are designed to lead to concrete projects, according to the EDA. 14 priorities relate to five military domains: land, air, sea, space and cyberspace, and eight are linked to ‘strategic enablers and force multipliers’.
These include precision ground engagement, integrated air and missile defence, the development of professional military education, training and the ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment and to operate in new military domains such as space and cyber, full-spectrum cyber defence operations capabilities, undersea warfare, critical infrastructure protection and energy security.
Capability development priorities also take into account lessons learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the need for agile, mobile, interoperable, technologically advanced, energy-efficient and resilient full-spectrum land forces, according to the EDA.
Similarly, the Agency points out that the Ukrainian context has highlighted the importance of a multi-layered integrated air and missile defence and of an appropriate rebalancing between qualitative and quantitative dimensions in many capability areas.
See the EDA brochure on the Capability Development Plan: https://aeur.eu/f/9js (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)