European Counter-HGV Sensor Architecture
EDF 2026, adaptive radar, and the NATO IAMD integration problem
Hypersonic glide vehicles expose a structural weakness in European air and missile defence: the problem is not only interception, but the prior ability to convert a fast, manoeuvring, low-trajectory and variable-signature threat into a stable, classified and engageable track. The EDF 2026 Counter-HGV EUCI action, with its EUR 68 million direct-award second tranche, should therefore be read less as an isolated hypersonic demonstrator programme and more as a data-generation node for Europe’s future counter-HGV sensor architecture. Public sources do not confirm a stand-alone “MBDA-Thales HGV-D radar” programme. They do, however, confirm a more significant architecture: an HGV demonstrator intended to generate signature and kinematic data; an EDF radar topic focused on cognitive waveforms, AI-supported classification and tracking; and an industrial perimeter that includes MBDA, Thales Nederland, Hensoldt Sensors, Leonardo, Diehl, Airbus, Indra, Saab and other European actors.
The report is structured around four analytical blocks. The first reconstructs the institutional and legal baseline of the EDF 2026 Counter-HGV action, including the EUCI classification, the direct-award mechanism and the continuity from the EDF 2024 tranche. The second defines the HGV threat in operational and sensor terms, distinguishing the glide vehicle problem from ballistic, cruise and MaRV profiles. The third examines the radar and sensor layer, with particular attention to AESA systems, cognitive signal processing, radar cross-section variability, signature databases, ISAR, micro-Doppler classification and the sensor-to-shooter chain. The fourth assesses the industrial and strategic implications for European primes, NATO IAMD interoperability and the possible 2030 architecture of a European counter-HGV capability.