EPRS_BRI_2025_772885_EN.pdf — page 7

Military drones 
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while reducing strategic dependencies. This roadmap seeks to reinforce synergies between civilian 
and defence R&D, strengthening the competitiveness and resilience of the EU's security and defence 
sectors.  
As drone warfare becomes increasingly central to the Russian-Ukraine conflict, commercial drones 
have served as the foundation for the models the Ukrainian army now uses to target tanks. Civilian 
drones have been extensively repurposed for military applications, serving both Ukrainian and 
Russian forces. These commercially available drones, primarily manufactured by Chinese companies 
like DJI, have been adapted for various battlefield roles, including reconnaissance, artillery targeting 
and direct attacks. The fact that these drones are easily available and affordable has facilitated their 
acquisition through crowdsourced funding, allowing military units to enhance their operational 
capabilities significantly. Significant amounts of EU research funding, channelled through sources 
such as Horizon Europe, have been invested in civilian drone projects, which – given the inherently 
dual-use nature of many drone technologies – could also potentially benefit certain defence 
applications. However, this excludes the specialised category of heavy military drones designed 
exclusively for combat or strategic missions. Importantly, Horizon Europe has always required a 
strict focus on civil applications. Meanwhile, it also allows for collaboration with EU-funded defence 
research to foster synergies, while at the same time recognising the presence of dual-use 
technology fields. In addition, the Commission established an Observatory on Critical Technologies 
in 2021 to identify key technologies in space, security, defence, and public order. 
Permanent Structured Cooperation – a legal framework to deepen defence cooperation between 
its 26 Member States – is also being leveraged to coordinate drone and counter-drone systems. 
Under PESCO, the EU has launched several projects to strengthen defence through collaborative 
drone and counter-drone advancements. Key initiatives include the European Medium Altitude Long 
Endurance Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (EURODRONE), coordinated by Germany, to develop 
a European MALE RPAS for enhanced surveillance and reduced reliance on non-European systems, 
while the Counter Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS) aims to detect and neutralise hostile drones. 
The Next Generation Small RPAS (NGSR), coordinated by Spain, focuses on developing tactical 
unmanned aerial systems for military and civilian use, with a prototype expected by 2027, and the 
Maritime Autonomous Systems for Mine Counter Measures (MAS MCM), coordinated by Belgium, 
integrates autonomous technologies for mine countermeasures.  
To enhance the EU's defence capabilities in UAS, a range of experts have proposed complementary 
strategies across five interrelated domains: governance, procurement, innovation, counter-drone 
capabilities and strategic autonomy.  
Recommendations in the area of governance and strategic coherence converge around the need 
for a clearer mandate for the EU Defence Commissioner and the creation of a comprehensive drone 
strategy that aligns procurement with long-term military planning. This includes ensuring coherence 
across Member States in drone development, deployment and regulation, as proposed by 
Andersson and Simon from the EU Institute for Security Studies. Enhancing coordination between 
EU institutions, national governments and international allies is also viewed as essential to fostering 
interoperability and streamlining defence efforts.  
A second priority is procurement and industrial capacity. Pierre Haroche, Associate Research 
Fellow in Defence at the Jacques Delors Institute, argues for a large-scale EU initiative aimed at the 
mass production of drones, both to supply Ukraine in the short term and to reduce long-term 
dependency on external suppliers. He proposes creating an EU-funded procurement mechanism 
and using joint industrial policies to incentivise domestic drone production. Echoing this, Arana and 
Romero from Harvard's Belfer Center advocate for an EU-wide defence procurement programme to 
unify and scale investment across Member States.  
In terms of technology and innovation, Arana and Romero emphasise the importance of investing 
in AI-driven drone research and propose expanding the European Research Council into a global 
innovation ecosystem. To finance this push, they suggest issuing defence eurobonds and launching 
collaborative development projects that also mobilise private capital through targeted incentives.