Defense R&D: Winning peace from the laboratory | Science | EUROtoday

“Some of us know the vital role played by radar in achieving victory over Nazi Germany. Here too, it was painstaking scientific research over many years that made it possible.” It was 1945 and the director of the Office of Research and Development, Vannevar Bush, despatched the report back to President Truman. Science, the Endless Frontierbasis of US science coverage. It isn’t any coincidence that dual-use applied sciences – so known as due to their twin civil and navy curiosity, corresponding to radar – have since then been a pillar of the American R&D system. Bush was the institutional catalyst of the Manhattan venture and his message was clear: science had been decisive in profitable the conflict; Now it needed to be to win peace.

For historic causes, the binomial analysis and protection has been tougher to mix in Europe. Both the Horizon Europe program of the European Commission and the European Regional Development Fund managed by the Member States – and which is the monetary muscle of R&D&I insurance policies in Spain – have a problematic relationship with twin use. The first assumes that the outcomes may have subsequent purposes for Defense, though the initiatives should pursue purely civil targets. FEDER goes even additional, forcing the protagonists to “hide” these doable purposes.

Everything has modified with Trump’s return to the White House and, in just a few months, European innovation coverage has taken an unprecedented flip. With the tailwind of the Draghi report, the brand new von der Leyen mandate – already marked by strategic autonomy – has promoted reforms that can permit work with out complexes in twin R&D&I: from the European Investment Bank to the European Innovation Council, regulatory boundaries have been lifted to help applied sciences of curiosity for protection; and within the case of FEDER they don’t seem to be solely allowed, however will get pleasure from extra favorable situations when integrated as a fourth household of strategic applied sciences for Europe ―together with well being and biotechnology, digital applied sciences and clear energies―. “Europe is in combat. A combat for a complete and peaceful continent. For a free and independent Europe.” Some phrases that not solely open the State of the Union Address 2025however they mark the way forward for European innovation coverage.

This future implies administration challenges however, above all, it requires a cultural change within the public R&D system and, significantly, in Spanish universities. Today, lots of them restrict or prohibit protection analysis actions of their rules. In April 2025, urged by NATO funding commitments, The Government authorized an Industrial and Technological Plan for Security and Defense which enabled, for the primary time, a fund of 500 million for dual-use R&D efficiently managed by the CDTI, connected to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Calls for firms and expertise facilities have integrated, in document time and with document participation, priorities outlined by the Ministry of Defense. But it’s price asking how universities would reply to an analogous invitation and the way they are going to reply to the twin calls of the subsequent Horizon Europe 2028-2034.

In my opinion there are three arguments to mobilize our public science in favor of dual-use R&D: the cynical, the pragmatic and the values. The cynic would be the most repeated: if the EU is redesigning R&D coverage to help twin applied sciences, why refuse to take action? If I do not do it, others will reap the benefits of these alternatives. The pragmatist is extra refined: from the voice recognition of our cellphones to Ukrainian drones, quite a few applied sciences have been born within the area of protection to later discover civilian use, and vice versa. Much laboratory analysis can go each methods, particularly in hybrid applied sciences corresponding to area, AI or cybersecurity. Why quit doing cutting-edge science that may, on the similar time, contribute to nationwide safety and open revolutionary markets?

But there’s the argument of values ​​that, resulting from its relevance, deserves a relaxed debate on campuses. Because it isn’t nearly accessing extra assets or engaged on difficult initiatives: it’s about “A fight for our values ​​and our democracies. A fight for our freedom and our ability to determine our destiny for ourselves.” These are the next phrases from von der Leyen’s speech. Of perceive that the liberty of Europe is at stake ― together with, by the way in which, the tutorial freedom that we have now seen threatened within the US.―, to imagine a brand new geopolitical situation wherein expertise might be used, greater than ever, to weaken our bodily and financial safety. To threaten so many certainties that give that means to immediately’s Europe.

It is price, in fact, trying the opposite approach. Pretend to proceed residing in 2024. To assume that we have now not seen Russian drones in Polish airspace, threats to the Baltic submarine cables, cyber assaults on Norwegian dams or disruptions in electoral processes. Pretend that new american nationwide safety technique It doesn’t certify a radical change in its dedication to European stability and that the Greenland disaster is a nasty nightmare. But if it does, if the University seems to be the opposite approach, it should agree with those that accuse it of a scarcity of dedication to the challenges of our time. Or at the least, with the survival of a peaceable Europe within the subsequent technology.

It is paradoxical {that a} report written in 1945 for an American president accommodates a coded message for the Europe of 2026, the one which observes in perplexity the dismantling of the post-war multilateral structure: “We can not belief our allies to cease the enemy whereas we try to catch up. [tecnológicamente]. We want a higher, and higher directed, effort to advertise navy analysis in peacetime.” Science has been decisive in building a peaceful Europe. Now, whether we like it or not, it must be decisive in order to avoid war.