Because Italy should follow France by creating a DARPA for defense
Paris four years ago set up the Defense Innovation Agency, a French DARPA. Game amid many perplexities, has won the trust of military and industrialists. So much so that his number one has reached the top of the Dga. Pietro Romano's article from Aeronautica & Difesa
A Franco-Japanese cooperation project to address threats to navigation posed by underwater mines. A second project aimed at developing joints to make 3D fabricated structures more solid. A third intended to transform underwater drones into connected objects for low-cost underwater missions. A fourth concerning an underwater drone to explore the seabed and first of all try to identify dangers for the connection cables. Finally, a fifth related to the development of a laser system to intercept, and if anything shoot down, maritime drones (and not only) considered dangerous. At Euronaval, the largest global exhibition dedicated to the naval defense industry (held in Paris from 18 to 21 October), these five innovations (together with initiatives at a more advanced stage) were the strengths of the pavilion set up by the Agence de l'innovation de défense (Aid), one of the busiest spaces of the fair organized in the park of Le Bourget. Success at Euronaval is just the seal on a story that began a few years ago, an example for other European countries and for Italy .
The transalpine body was born on 1 September 2018 as an offshoot of the Direction générale de l'armement (Dga) to "wake up the sleeping beauty" as it was written at the time. That is to say to "overcome the weaknesses and fill the gaps" proper to the DGA.
According to the official definition contained in the institutive law, Aid is called to implement the ministerial policy on innovation and research and to direct the strategies elaborated by these sectors for the general staffs. Coordinates and directs the implementation of innovation and scientific-technical research works carried out by the general staff within the scope of their powers. It identifies, develops and implements partnerships and collaborations with public and private actors, also at an international level.
The then Minister des Armées, Florence Parly, strongly wanted the creation of the Agency, and managed to convince the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. Ms Parly said the agency, "created to facilitate trials directly with users, would become the beacon of innovation in an outward-looking ministry." Explaining how “innovation in the defense sector has been exclusive or almost exclusive to the major industries in the sector for decades. We are now convinced that these companies must interact with other entities in the galaxy such as small and medium-sized enterprises, research laboratories, innovative start-ups".
Going from saying to doing was not easy. Of course, the resources made available to Aid are not comparable to those enjoyed by the US counterpart Darpa, which now amount to four billion dollars a year. Not even the French agency, however, has to make a wedding with dried figs: it started with a budget of 750 million euros (albeit with a hundred technicians, military and administrative personnel to be paid) which has risen to one billion this year and presumably destined to grow from 2024. After all, they explain in Paris, any comparison with Washington is unthinkable: “Our technological competitiveness rests on a selective approach in quantitative terms. We do not have, nor could we carry forward, ten, fifteen solutions in parallel to get one or two out of the hat. We try to identify our needs upstream and aim for suitable technologies to solve them as soon as possible".
The early days of Aid weren't lucky. In particular, the Agency ended up in the crosshairs of the French Court of Auditors which explicitly asked what the Aid was for in the presence of the Dga. But Aid's trump card from the outset was its number one, Emmanuel Chiva, who exalted its prospects in every forum (political, industrial, military) and managed to forge solid alliances everywhere. So much so that he managed to burn the stages of his career.
Today 53 years old, 49 years old at the time of taking office, Chiva has a curriculum that is half scientist half grand commis de l'ètat with a dash of entrepreneur. Graduated in biomathematics (the branch of biology that uses mathematical methods to study biological systems) with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence, expert in complex systems and biomimicry (the discipline that studies and imitates the biological and biomechanical processes of nature and living beings such as source of inspiration for the improvement of human activities and technologies), Chiva also attended ENA, the Ecole Normale Supérieure, forge of the transalpine ruling class before Macron suppressed it in April 2021.
Appointed to the top of the Transalpine Innovation Agency since its foundation, Chiva has tried to capture as quickly as possible the innovation where it emerges, thanks to his experience as creator of innovative start-ups, and above all to exploit civilian innovations for military purposes , reversing the opposite approach of the US school. Without staying in the office to wait for proposals, he began sifting through the world of production innovation, discovering "nuggets" such as the start-up Watiz, which developed image recognition software for Internet commerce and was included in the MMT project (Man machine tealing), aimed at putting Artificial Intelligence on board fighter planes.
In an interview that appeared in the December 2020 issue of the monthly L'Usine Nouvelle , Chiva explained that, unlike in the past, innovation in the defense sector is closely linked to that conducted in the most advanced civil sectors: quantum technologies, intelligence artificial, energy, latest generation materials. The first task of the Agency – he underlined on the occasion – is to be able to find technologies in the universe of research and innovation that can be adapted for military use in order to conduct studies and designs on this side in parallel with studies oriented exclusively on the military. In fact, the dual is not always easily applicable. And in this regard, he had explained that it is one thing to design an electric car for city streets and another an armored vehicle with electric propulsion capable of responding to the very different demands of a terrain such as that of the Sahel which, even from the from a motoristic point of view, it has very different needs. Building on his experience, Chiva said he was optimistic about a new season of relations between companies (especially those not only military) and the ministry, often stormy in France. A less bureaucratic approach, according to Chiva, would have allowed Aid to facilitate relations between companies and the ministry. In this regard, he had cited specific cases of companies which, thanks to relations with his agency, had passed, or were passing, to collaborate with the ministry by carrying out joint projects: the drone manufacturer Parrot, the producer of fuel additives Poly- Shape, Franky Zapata (maker of the Flyboard water propulsion engine).
Less than two years after this interview, these companies (and others) have begun to work in perfect harmony with the DGA. The successful entrepreneurial approach of Chiva (who in the past headed 13 companies active in the innovation and defense sector) evidently also convinced Macron. So much so that, at the end of July, Chiva was nominated general delegate for armaments, in short at the top of the DGA, with the green light from military and industrial leaders. And it should be remembered that defense industries matter in France, even politically. Very. Borrowing the language of finance, one could say that Aid made the takeover bid (in short, it won) on the DGA, a giant with 10,000 employees and a budget of almost 25 billion. Chiva's place at the top of Aid was taken ad interim by his right-hand man, Patrick Aufort, general engineer of the armaments who is likely to be the next effective number one and would guarantee full harmony with his predecessor. In the meantime Chiva immediately set to work on the hottest dossiers of the French defense, starting with the speeding up of the production of armaments, expressly requested by politics and the military to respond to the needs (and gaps in equipment) created by the war in Ukraine and from supplies to Kiev.
Peter Roman
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-litalia-dovrebbe-seguire-la-francia-creando-una-darpa-per-la-difesa/ on Sat, 03 Dec 2022 06:33:08 +0000.