By Barbara Erling
KRAKOW, Poland, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Europe's five biggest defence powers are teaming up on a multi-million euro project to bring low-cost air-defence systems like autonomous drones or missiles into production within 12 months, ministers meeting in the Polish city of Krakow said on Friday.
The war in Ukraine has shown how autonomous interceptor drones can provide an effective alternative to costly air-defence missiles, and Kyiv's European allies are keen to learn from its experience.
The European Group of Five Defence Ministers, which brings together top military spenders France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Britain, met as European leaders work to boost defence capabilities amid increased European doubts about Washington's commitment to protecting the continent.
"It's a multi-million pound, multi-million euro commitment ... to step up this technology," Britain's Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard said.
"We're really hopeful that this will produce an effector that... will be in production within 12 months."
In military terminology, "effectors" are the components of a system that produce a physical effect, while "autonomous platforms" are unmanned systems capable of independent decision-making.
The 'Low-Cost Effectors and Autonomous Platforms' initiative, known as LEAP, involves the development of advanced low-cost air-defence systems - such as autonomous drones or missiles - the first project of which will be delivered by 2027, the UK government said in a separate statement.
"We have just signed a very important commitment on the joint development of drone-based strike capabilities, low-cost, joint production, and joint procurement of low-cost drone effectors and payloads," Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
"This is the challenge of our times - technologies are changing... and we must respond very quickly."
(Reporting by Barbara Erling in Krakow, Pawel Florkiewicz in Warsaw, Lili Bayer in Brussels, M Muvija in London, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris: Writing by Alan Charlish; Editing by David Holmes and Philippa Fletcher)
