Six European Countries Develop Sensor Network to Detect WMDs

Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic are developing a software sensor network to detect any biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological threat. The sensors will be put on unmanned ground and aerial vehicles that can be deployed in danger zones

Six European Countries Develop Sensor Network to Detect WMDs

Archive photo: AP

Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have teamed up to develop a new sensor network to detect weapons of mass destruction, Defense One reported.

“We already have existing defense cooperation agreements between our various countries,” said Ales Mismas, Director-General of Defense Policy at the Slovenian Ministry of Defense. “But we wanted to do more. We wanted to show that smaller countries can play a larger role in European defense.”

The sextet is developing a pioneering software sensor network to detect any biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological threat. Their approach is to put sensors on unmanned ground and aerial vehicles that can be deployed in danger zones and beyond line of sight. Any information gathered will be transmitted and collected by software in real time; it can then immediately be shared among the partners.

A prototype of the WMD sensor network is planned for the end of 2020. If the effort is selected by PESCO (the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation) as an official project and receives funding from the new European Defense Fund, it will go into production. The group then intends to sell the network to allies.