National defence procurement agencies

1. Accelerate Defence Procurement and Industrial Scaling
ID: IN-001
Lab: SCALE
Challenge: Europe must significantly shorten procurement cycles and enable faster contracting procedures.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: National ministries of defence, Primes / large Defence Companies
First step: Select one defence mobility requirement and run requirements, integration, assurance and contracting activities in parallel.
Timeframe: 90 days
KPI: Decision-ready contracting package within 90 days; target ≥30% shorter procurement preparation cycle.

2. Capability-based tenders with mandatory spiral updates
ID: IN-013
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Overly detailed technical specifications can freeze a solution when the tender is issued. Software, communications, payloads and countermeasures then cannot evolve at operational speed. Disproportionate turnover, liquidity or past-performance thresholds can also exclude technically capable SMEs.
Lead actor: National procurement agencies; in Germany, BAAINBw
Supporting actors: Ministries of defence, European Commission, EDA, end users, certification and airworthiness authorities, and industry
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: At least 50% of new UAS and C-UAS tenders use capability-based requirements and a spiral-update clause; eligibility criteria are documented as proportionate; median authorised update cycle below 90 days.

3. Make interoperability a condition of purchase
ID: IN-046
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Stop procuring systems first and solving interoperability afterward. Require identity integration, APIs, data semantics, metadata, security interfaces, observability, and deployability from the beginning.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: Armed forces and operational commands; national ministries of defence; NATO, NCIA and the NATO Standardization Office; EDA; suppliers
First step: Add a mandatory pass/fail interoperability demonstration to tender and acceptance criteria, using named identity, API, data, security, observability and deployment profiles.
Timeframe: Template clauses within 6 months; pilot in the next three suitable tenders within 12 months
KPI: All pilot tenders include the test, and no award or acceptance occurs without evidence. Test time, defects and waivers are reported against the baseline.

4. Make modularity economically attractive to industry
ID: IN-051
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Procurement models often reward vertically integrated solutions and vendor lock-in. Contracts should instead reward open interfaces, replaceable components, portable data, reusable services, and documented architectures.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: Finance and economy ministries; national ministries of defence; DG DEFIS; EDA; NATO bodies; industry associations; primes; SMEs and start-ups
First step: Issue standard modular-contracting clauses covering interface rights, data portability, component replacement, conformance testing, exit rights and supplier handover.
Timeframe: Standard clauses within 6 months; pilot awards within 12 months
KPI: At least five relevant awards use the clauses. Each includes a tested data export and API, plus at least one separately competed module or work package.

5. Procure by Iteration, Not Configuration
ID: IN-062
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Fixed specifications freeze yesterday’s technology into tomorrow’s contract.
Lead actor: Procurement agencies
Supporting actors: Armed forces, industry
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: New relevant contracts permit defined iterative upgrades without retendering.

6. Create a mutual fast-track qualification protocol for combat-proven Ukrainian systems among Germany, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia: accept Ukrainian MoD codification and documented combat validation as primary evidence, followed by confirmatory rather than full national testing; a qualification completed by one participating state is recognised by the others.
ID: IN-077
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Ukrainian systems are combat-proven but frequently not NATO-codified or qualified against the national standards that procurement presumes. Each state re-tests the same system separately, and full qualification takes longer than the system’s relevance cycle on the battlefield. This is a bottleneck on the receiving side, and ours to fix.
Lead actor: National armaments and procurement agencies of Germany (BAAINBw), Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
Supporting actors: Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (codification authority); national defence innovation and test centres; NATO standardisation and codification bodies; European Defence Agency
First step: Agree a common “combat-validation evidence pack” (operational use data, user feedback, codification records) and select three pilot systems, e.g. passive UAS detection, electronic warfare and interceptor UAS.
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: Protocol signed by four states within 12 months; three pilot systems qualified in ≤6 months each; each qualification recognised by at least two other participating states without repeat testing; first procurement contract placed on the basis of the protocol.

7. Introduce mechanisms to financially absorb the risk of unsuccessful innovation projects ("buy the risk").
ID: IN-113
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Some potential innovations are not pursued because the risk of failure is too high.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: National ministries of defence; Defence SMEs and start-ups
First step: Develop options for financing innovation risks and compensating unsuccessful projects.
Timeframe: 24 months
KPI: Process for financing innovation risks available.

8. Develop a digital platform providing information on certification requirements.
ID: IN-114
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Young organisations do not always understand which certifications their new innovations must fulfil.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: National ministries of defence; Defence SMEs and start-ups
First step: Define the structure and requirements of the digital platform.
Timeframe: 24 months
KPI: Digital certification information platform available.

9. Increase defence order volumes and stability through upfront payments and milestone-based payment structures.
ID: IN-115
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Higher upfront commitments and milestone payments increase the financial risk borne by the buyer.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: National ministries of defence; European Defence Agency
First step: Set new mandates for procurement agencies to enable upfront and milestone-based payments.
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: Double approved orders to SMEs.

10. Accelerate defence procurement by introducing binding decision deadlines and reducing existing approval times.
ID: IN-116
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Outdated bureaucratic procurement processes are designed primarily to eliminate risk rather than enable rapid purchasing.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: National ministries of defence; European Defence Agency
First step: Set binding procurement deadlines at half the current average approval time.
Timeframe: 100 days
KPI: Double procurement agency throughput value; track the average number of days from order submission to approval.

11. Create a rapid, paid trial-to-procurement pathway connecting validated military requirements, comparative testing, limited test purchases, structured user feedback and follow-on acquisition decisions under one accountable procurement programme.
ID: IN-123
Lab: INNOVATION SPEED
Challenge: Testing and purchasing are disconnected, leaving suppliers without clear success criteria, procurement ownership or funding prospects. Repeated unpaid demonstrations, inconsistent assessments and fragmented feedback delay product improvement and operational adoption.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: Armed forces and operational commands; Defence SMEs and start-ups
First step: Within 100 days, appoint a programme owner, allocate a paid-pilot budget and select five validated military user problems. Define functional evaluation criteria, responsible users and evaluators, supplier feedback procedures, procurement routes and decision rules for follow-on purchases or proportionate retesting.
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: At least five paid pilot purchases and evaluations completed within 12 months; written supplier feedback normally within 15 working days and a documented purchase, further-development or rejection decision normally within 30 working days after final testing. Track trial-to-decision times and progression to follow-on orders.

12. Design for Replacement, Not Preservation
ID: IN-073
Lab: RESILIENCE
Challenge: European procurement often treats equipment as assets expected to remain in service for decades. Attritional warfare consumes equipment continuously.
Lead actor: Ministries of Defence / procurement agencies
Supporting actors: Industry, NATO
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: Every relevant capability plan specifies monthly wartime replacement capacity, not merely stock numbers.

13. Create a fast-track mechanism connecting urgent defence and critical-infrastructure problems with qualified research institutes, labs and SMEs.
ID: IN-093
Lab: RESILIENCE
Challenge: Finding appropriate technical expertise and testing capacity can delay the response to urgent technological problems.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: Research institutes, universities and think tanks, Armed forces and operational commands
First step: Launch pilot fast-track mechanisms for priority technological challenges.
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: Priority cases reach initial laboratory testing within 30 days.

14. Introduce standby capacity-reservation contracts: procurement agencies pay a retainer to dual-use plants to hold reserved foundry, forge and machining hours that convert to defence orders within 30 days of call-off (building on the idle-capacity provisions of Latvia's Defence Industry and Innovation Strategy 2025-2036).
ID: IN-107
Lab: RESILIENCE
Challenge: Civil plants cannot commit capacity to defence without demand certainty; lumpy orders push investment and skilled labour to civil work, leaving Europe without surge capacity for the 20x target.
Lead actor: National defence procurement agencies
Supporting actors: National ministries of defence; European Commission, particularly DG DEFIS
First step: Latvian defence authorities launch a pilot framework with a qualified national heavy-industry supplier covering a defined share of plant hours, designed to be replicated across Lithuania and Estonia.
Timeframe: 12 months
KPI: At least one pilot capacity-reservation framework operational in Latvia; a simulated call-off test successfully produces and validates a test batch within 30 days; blueprint prepared for Lithuania and Estonia.