EU defence innovators prepare Portugal trials of drones and loitering munitions

More than 200 innovators, military experts and users are due to test emerging defence technologies in Portugal from 28 September under a European Defence Agency campaign focused on turning prototypes into usable military capabilities. The agency announced on 25 September that over 40 companies, start-ups and innovation organisations will gather at the Santa Margarida Military Training Area for EU OPEX 2026, jointly organised with the Portuguese Army.

The campaign brings several programmes into the Portuguese Army’s ARTEX 26 experimentation exercise. They include the EDA’s main operational experimentation activity, the EU-Ukraine BraveTech EU initiative and the Sentinel Strike challenge for loitering munitions. Five finalists in the latter contest are competing for prizes totalling €1.8 million. The EDA describes the overall programme as a way to test technology with military users under realistic conditions rather than assessing it only in laboratories or presentations.

The planned trials cover uncrewed aerial and ground systems, loitering munitions and electronic communications. According to the EDA, the first week is designed around individual tests and single-domain missions. Later scenarios will combine systems across domains and introduce more demanding conditions so that military users can assess performance, interoperability and practical value.

One scenario calls for military drones to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance in a hostile environment, passing live information to commanders. Another will test cooperation between ground and aerial uncrewed systems as they move supplies toward troops at the front line. Loitering munitions will be required to engage multiple targets at night. These are planned exercises, and the agency has yet to report their results.

The campaign is organised by the EDA’s Hub for European Defence Innovation and the Portuguese Army. Its structure places European programmes inside an established national field exercise, giving companies, researchers and military personnel a common setting for tests. BraveTech EU draws on Ukrainian defence innovation, while Sentinel Strike concentrates on a specific category of expendable strike system. Participation in a trial does not itself mean a system has been selected for procurement or deployment.

The EDA says operational testing is intended to generate evidence about how equipment performs when several systems and users have to work together. This can identify technical and procedural shortcomings as well as promising capabilities. The agency’s announcement sets out a staged schedule, with cross-domain field experiments planned for 7 and 8 October and a high-visibility demonstration scheduled for 14 October.

Political leaders, military representatives, innovators and other defence stakeholders are expected at the October demonstration. They are due to observe live experiments and the European technologies under evaluation. The tests beginning on 28 September will provide the evidence on which any subsequent assessment of those technologies rests.