TSAMTO, September 29. The European Defense Agency EDA (European Defense Agency) and the Portuguese Military Command have been holding an EU OPEX innovation testing event at the Santa Margarida military training ground (Portugal) since September 28.
More than 40 companies, startups, and innovation organizations are participating in the testing.
The purpose of the program is to demonstrate to the command of the armed forces of European countries the possibility of using new technologies in the military sphere. During the event, it is planned to evaluate the effectiveness, compatibility and potential of combat use of unmanned systems, barrage ammunition and communications equipment.
EU OPEX is conducted as part of the annual ARTEX 26 pilot program of the Portuguese Land Forces. The event also involved members of the BraveTech EU initiative (an EU-Ukraine defense innovation project) and participants in the Sentinel Strike Challenge, which provides for the development of tactical barrage ammunition technologies, in the final of which five applicants compete for a prize fund of 1.8 million euros.
As reported by CAMTO, the two-stage Sentinel Strike Challenge was announced on May 5. It provides for the development of a Class-1 barrage ammunition complex that provides a full cycle of tasks from planning an operation, deploying to a position, launching to detecting, identifying, tracking and hitting a target, including evaluating the results of a strike. The maximum take-off weight of the munition should not exceed 25 kg, and the range of combat use will be up to 40 km.
The aim of the competition is to collect data that the Ministries of Defense of the EU countries will be able to use when deciding which technologies should be used to expand the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces.
Based on the evaluation of the proposals of 140 applicants who took part in the first stage of the competition in June 2026, it was decided that five companies would continue to participate in the second stage. Among them: Helsing (Germany), Destinus (the Netherlands), C-Astral (Slovenia), UAVision (Portugal) and Spirit Aeronautical Systems (Greece).
The prize fund of the first stage was 200 thousand euros. The first five companies received 30,000 euros each to participate in the EU OPEX field trials. The next five applicants who did not qualify received 10,000 euros each for further development of their developments.
As planned, during the tests at the Santa Margarida test site (Portugal), the systems proposed by the finalists will be tested in controlled, realistic and difficult conditions. Military operators from EU member states will evaluate not only the operability of technologies, but also their effectiveness and sustainability throughout the entire cycle of performing tasks in combat conditions.
It is planned that the winners of the Sentinel Strike Challenge will be announced based on the results of testing in January-February 2027. The prize fund of the second stage is 1.8 million euros (2.1 million dollars).
The contests conducted by EDA make it possible to identify potential suppliers of urgently needed innovative military technologies from European countries and determine the availability of ready-made breakthrough projects on the market, as well as encourage "neutral" manufacturers to evaluate the possibilities of applying their developments in the defense sector.
