- Starion Nederland is heading a team of 13 companies to develop one of six focus areas in the new European CITADEL Range project.
- The €60 million European Defence Fund (EDF) project will enhance cyber defence training and coordination across the European Union.
- The pooling and sharing platform led by Starion will be extensively tested using the CITEF cyber-range platform of sister company Nexova.
Starion Nederland has been chosen to lead development of a major part of the new €60 million Cyber Infrastructure for Training in Advanced Defence Exercises and Learning (CITADEL) Range project. Primarily funded by the European Union’s EDF, the 42-month CITADEL Range will enhance European cyber-range defence technologies to better support cybersecurity forces in training, collaboration and threat response.
CITADEL Range will extend the achievements of the EDF-funded ACTING project, technically led by Starion Nederland, with a specific focus on classified operations, content and environments. It will deliver a set of modular, interoperable components to upgrade national cyber training infrastructures and support a wide range of use cases, including training, mission rehearsals, live simulations and civil–military coordination. With its €48 million EDF funding, CITADEL Range will be the biggest cyber-range-related project ever undertaken in Europe.
Starion, which is one of the biggest contributors to CITADEL Range, will spearhead the development of a shared architecture that will enable pooling and sharing of cyber-range resources across EU Member States – this is a direct continuation of the work being done by the 4-year ACTING project, which is due to finish in November 2026. Activities within this focus area will benefit from the use of the CITEF digital twin platform developed by Starion’s sister company Nexova under a technology sharing agreement between the two companies. CITEF will be used to test technologies developed by Starion and its 12 partner companies for this element of CITADEL Range.
Gaëtan Desclée, CEO of Starion, said: “We are extremely proud to be leading the development of a core focus area within this major European cyber project. This will lead to powerful advances in cyber-range technologies and the delivery of cyber-range exercises, including classified operations, giving the EU a clear lead in this sphere.
“International collaboration is now essential for European resilience in the face of escalating cyber threats, especially in the critical defence domain. Our unique combination of the experience gained through leading the ACTING project and the digital twin technology from Starion’s sister company Nexova means we have a very valuable role to play in CITADEL Range.”
The technology that Starion will finalise and extend in the pooling and sharing area will enable straightforward and secure sharing of cyber-range assets and technology across European Member States, with a specific focus for Ministries of Defence. The CITADEL Range consortium includes 39 companies from 18 EU Member States.
The technologies developed in the CITADEL Range project, like those developed in ACTING, will, among many things, benefit the type of exercises that are carried out in international cyber exercises and related activities such as NATO’s high profile Locked Shields.