Specific Support for Research Works and Innovation Defence: Maturation and Development (ASTRID-Maturation)

The French national research agency (ANR) launches in partnership with the French armaments procurement agency (DGA), the second edition of the ASTRID-Maturation programme: "Specific support for research works and innovation defence: Maturation and Development". This programme is entirely funded by the DGA and is implemented by ANR.

ASTRID-Maturation is a dedicated programme to support the development of scientific work carried out in the framework of ASTRID and Exploratory Research and Innovations (REI: programme that preceded ASTRID managed by the DGA until 2010). This dual-use programme (applications should interest both civil and military) is one of the 40 measures of the "SME Defence pact"

The ASTRID-Maturation programme aims at:

- anticipating technology demonstrations and pre-industrial work that can lead to dual-use scientific innovation, - boosting the attractiveness of the results both for the industry and the investors.

This programme, at the border line between upstream research and technological research, is complementary to the RAPID and upstream studies programmes of the DGA (as far as military applications are concerned) and other initiatives related to civilian research (competitiveness clusters, European programmes, SATT, etc.).

ASTRID-Maturation is open to all types of enterprises. However, in order to promote innovation in SMEs, the participation of at least one company in this category is required in a project. Scientific work done in recent research works (ASTRID, REI or thesis financed by DGA) must have been successfully completed before the end of 2014.

The grant awarded per project, whose duration must be between 2 and 3 years, will not exceed €500 k.