On December 1, 2021, the DISCRETION project officially began under the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP). Coordinated by Portugal’s Deimos Engenharia, the 42-month project brings together a consortium of entities from Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Austria with a total budget of approximately €6.7 million and maximum EU contribution of €5.2 million.
According to the DISCRETION project website, the initiative integrates Software Defined Network (SDN) and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technologies on top of legacy optical networks to build a secure, scalable, and resilient communications architecture for European military use. Portuguese consortium members include Deimos Engenharia, Altice Labs, Adyta, Instituto de Telecomunicações, and Instituto Superior Técnico.
DISCRETION ranked first in its EDIDP 2020 call topic on cyber situational awareness and defense capabilities. It supports the EU Cyber Academia and Innovation Hub (EU CAIH), a Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) project led by Portugal. The project builds on QSCRIPT, a prior Portuguese initiative that demonstrated a quantum-secure link between two defense ministry facilities in Lisbon using exclusively national technology.