We met Eduardo Villamor, Senior Project Manager at ETRA I+D who is the project coordinator of the PRESERVE project.
Ben Lane:
Hello Eduardo. We are looking forward to seeing you at Critical Infrastructure Protection & Resilience Europe conference in Brindisi, October 14-16, 2025 where you will be speaking in the Drones and UAS session: https://www.cipre-expo.com/session/drones-and-uas/
Eduardo Villamor:
Thank you very much for having me and look forward to seeing you in Brindisi.
Ben Lane:
Please give us a brief overview of your work at ETRA – https://www.grupoetra.com – and your involvement with the Horizon Europe project, PRESERVE – https://preserve-he.eu/
Eduardo Villamor:
I am a Senior Project Manager at ETRA I+D. I manage and coordinate the implementation of EU projects in the field of security and defense. GRUPOETRA is a large industrial group based in Spain with multiple locations worldwide. We develop large-scale distributed control systems for critical infrastructure operators, law enforcement agencies, and army forces. We also design and manufacture drones and counter drone systems. And we are the project coordinators of the PRESERVE project, which is dealing with the so far unmanageable threat of weaponized consumer drone swarms.
Ben Lane:
Please give us an overview of the PRESERVE project; core mission and specific gaps or threats, for example, of swarm-based drone attacks. How does this project aim to address these areas?
Eduardo Villamor:
PRESERVE’s mission is to protect EU citizens and public spaces from terrorist attacks, articulated through current and emerging drone technologies and open-source knowledge by equipping the police authorities with an advanced shield. PRESERVE’s approach enables effective prevention before the attack is unleashed, and timely and informed multi-layer countermeasures within an ongoing attack for seamless operational response and mitigation. It provides tools against drone-related threats with ever-growing cases, including drone swarms and kamikaze drones in conflicts such as the Russian-Ukraine war, or other conflicts in the Middle East.
The objective is the protection of EU citizens proactively before these threats spread through the EU. This has been also highlighted by the European Commission in a communication that was released at the end of 2023, for non-cooperative drones in this case. They highlighted that the modus operandi of terrorist groups and the enhanced skills in the use of off-the-shelf drones could reach our borders and represent a threat. PRESERVE is ahead of the curve, anticipating that such kinds of threats could reach us as we are starting to see in some member states.
Ben Lane:
Please give us an idea of the four products of the platform and touch on this idea of the C-UAV training program and how that integrates.
Eduardo Villamor:
PRESERVE will deliver a comprehensive counter-UAS framework with four main products, as you said. The first one is called SECURE, which stands for Swarm-Based Counter-UAS Arsenal, which is a nomadic suite of sensors and data-fusion components for threat prediction and rapid neutralization in complex large-scale environments in public spaces while ensuring compliance with applicable regulations. Then we have ODIN, which stands for Online Drone Intelligence Engine. It is a digital tool for gathering and analyzing multimodal online data, including text, images, and audio to detect early indicators of attack planning or threat escalation in the web. The third product is the PRESERVE Platform, which is an integrated Command, Control and Coordination platform using the data that is collected from the previous products to manage the full spectrum of drone threat prevention, detection analysis and mitigation. And finally, is the PRESERVE training program, which is an advanced training initiative building on previous training programs which are deployed worldwide. Updating this training for the current threat scenarios, updating law enforcement training in line with new technologies, as well as with emerging tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Ben Lane:
So, let us look at some real-life, real-world case studies and how they are being selected and what is going to happen in this space?
Eduardo Villamor:
We started this venture by gathering a consortium of 18 partners spread across 11 EU and non-EU countries. Among these partners we have the Spanish national police, the Hellenic police, the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the General Police Inspectorate of Moldova.
We discuss between the technical partners and the end users, which are these police authorities, the relevant threat scenarios and how we could tackle them with innovative technologies. And we came across two main challenging scenarios. One is what we call auto piloted drone swarm terrorist attack at a major sporting event. Major sporting events are a key concern for police authorities. Let us imagine that we have a marathon that is taking place with more than 35,000 people attending. After the event begins, a swarm of consumer drones flying at a very high speed and very low altitude enter the marathon carrying explosive and toxic agents. How can we address this? This is a question that we will address in the project.
The second scenario is called orchestrated weapons delivery during, for example, a Christmas concert. So again, celebrations like this are a key concern for the police authorities. And in this case, let us imagine that we have a major concert that is taking place in an open area that could be close to critical infrastructure such as a train station. Imagine there are authorized drones flying in the area that are used to cover the event for the media. On the day of the concert a security officer sees a swarm of flying drones delivering weapons and drops a container on the rooftop of a shopping center, bypassing all security controls. These drones are delivering weapons to terrorist actors on the rooftop. What can we do in these kinds of situations to counter or to prevent the delivery of these weapons?
Ben Lane:
We touched on compliance earlier. We can look at that a little bit more, the compliance issue with the EU and national regulations. How is this shaping your design decisions?
Eduardo Villamor:
This is a very important aspect from many viewpoints. We need to comply with the applicable regulation at both EU and national level. But there is a lack of regulation in many areas when we speak about counter-UAS. So, this is taken into the project in a very comprehensive compliance framework that is under development. At an EU level, we need to consider EASA drone regulation, the NIS2 directive on cyber security, GDPR of course, and the AI Act to ensure that all relevant touch points are addressed. There is also legislation at national levels that require factoring in. So, we are studying this, we are trying to understand the most relevant constraints and taking them into account as technological requirements that will drive our prototyping phase.
A first iteration of these requirements will be finalized this year. There is no EU-wide counter-UAS regulation. There is nothing like this in Europe and this brings the possibility to support policy makers in adapting future regulation or future regulatory frameworks to the needs we identified together with the police authorities. This is one of the core activities of our project, and we are in touch with policy makers at the European Commission to discuss input.
Ben Lane:
How is the PRESERVE project engaging with police authorities, stakeholders, and end users? What is the engagement policy?
Eduardo Villamor:
The tool for this is the stakeholder group, which is an opportunity to take part in our activities. It includes, as you said, police authorities, but also citizens, civil aviation authorities, international organizations, technology providers, policy makers, and the scientific community. So, it touches on all areas and all the stakeholders that are relevant to our project.
We are in touch with other EU projects on counter-UAS, and on the development of AI technologies for the security of citizens. During the first year of our project (we are now at month 11) we have already reached eight members confirmed of the stakeholder group, which is an outstanding milestone for us.
The next step for us in terms of activities with this stakeholder group is to launch some webinars and some clustering activities to keep them in the loop and informed about what we are doing. And they can also provide suggestions and recommendations. In fact, we are planning during the whole project four clustering workshops both online and physically. These workshops are intended to bring together stakeholders to discuss and exchange ideas, enhance the project’s technical developments, and increase the profile of our project in the scientific community. These clustering workshops are also aimed to attract policy makers and the standardization community to help formulate policy recommendations to the commission and contribute to standardization efforts.
We are also planning pilot demonstrations, which will take place end of 2026, and at the beginning of 2027 in Spain and Greece. We will invite our stakeholders to attend these events and to experience firsthand what we are doing and the results of our project.
If you are interested in what we are doing at PRESERVE, visit our website at https://preserve-he.eu/ and register for the stakeholder group so that we can stay in touch and inform you of upcoming activities.
Ben Lane:
Thank you and we look forward to seeing you in Brindisi where you will be speaking in the session: https://www.cipre-expo.com/session/drones-and-uas/
Eduardo Villamor:
Thank you very much.