June 2026 – The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded more than €15 million in funding under the KIC call High-performance materials for Defence and Security. This investment will enable ten cutting-edge research projects to begin, each focused on developing advanced materials for the Ministry of Defence. An additional €4 million in co-funding from companies and partner organisations strengthens the initiative, ensuring collaboration across academia, industry, and government.
The projects aim to deliver innovations in resilience, weight reduction, repairability, and performance, supporting the next generation of defence equipment. They cover diverse areas such as ceramics, metamaterials, smart coatings, drones, composites, and electromagnetic shielding.
Among the awarded projects are Cera-Shield, which explores ceramics-based ballistic protection systems; META-SMA, focusing on metamaterials with shock absorption through shape memory alloys; and AAM-BPC, which develops alloys for additively manufactured ballistic components. Other projects include breathable smart coatings responsive to gases, foam 3D printing for drones, and iTRaCS, which innovates temporary patch repair for composite aircraft structures.
Further breakthroughs are expected from TactVision, which investigates liquid crystal polymer invisibility cloaks, and research into thermal management and infrared signature control for hypersonic vehicles. Projects like VALOR will design lattice-based composites for electromagnetic shielding and impact resistance, while Welding Made Easy explores tunable magnetic materials for decentralized repair of hybrid composites.
This initiative reflects NWO’s broader mission to align innovation with societal challenges. By fostering cooperation between knowledge institutions, private companies, and government, the programme ensures that research outcomes contribute not only to defence capabilities but also to economic opportunities and societal impact.
The collaboration between NWO and the Ministry of Defence marks a strategic step toward building a structural research partnership, with these ten projects forming the foundation of a long-term agenda in advanced materials science.
