TU Eindhoven starts new research projects with Israeli partners

On the 5^th of June, Silvia Lenaerts, Rector Magnificus of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), said: “We have to take responsibility here. We know that in Israel too, half of the population does not agree with what the government is doing there. We will not enter into any new collaborations and we will investigate how we can critically look at existing collaborations”, as a reply to Judith Lammers (municipal committee member for PvdD Eindhoven) who asked whether ‘a red line should be drawn by the Brainport industrial community regarding possible Dutch contributions to the situation in Palestine.

At the same time, the TU/e is starting at least four new Horizon Europe projects with Israeli partners in the period between May and October 2025. The most salient Horizon project, ‘PROACTIF’ (signed on the 16^th of May 2025 as part of the CHIPS Joint Undertaking program), explicitly aims for ‘unmanned vehicles (abbreviated as UxVs) for offshore, seaports [-] crowd monitoring and teamed UxV operation’. Such teams of unmanned autonomous vehicles, also referred to as ‘swarms of drones’, are known to be particularly suited for tactical execution of military missions.

Coordinated by Nokia, PROACTIF includes 42 participants that will work on the ‘security needs’ of a civil society in the field of drones and autonomous vehicles. The initiative ‘focuses on developing advanced drone systems equipped with cutting-edge sensors to safeguard vital infrastructure. These drones will integrate laser and radar sensors mounted on hardware platforms, often developed by defense firms like Safran, Leonardo, and Saab.’ These three large European arms companies are listed as project participants.

The Israeli side in this consortium is represented by the company Mellanox (acquired by NVIDIA). It is known that NVIDIA AI chips are implemented in the new LANIUS-X drone which is produced by Elbit Systems, the largest Israeli arms company. These chips allow for ‘AI-powered scouting, for mapping and target classification abilities, with the ability of the drone to explode when required‘. Elbit Systems has also developed the combat swarm management software ‘Legion-X’ for UxVs like these drones.

Another project member, the Dutch company Avular, produces autonomous vehicles and drones. Previously, Avular has participated in a Horizon project with Israel Aerospace Industries on Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM). The project covered ‘Detect And Avoid (D&A) systems for cooperative and non-cooperative traffic, auto-pilot systems as well as Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) systems’.

Avular is part of the Lumipol holding. A recent report by the SOMO research group based on ‘customs records and corporate documents from India and the Netherlands’ revealed how ‘Dutch businessmen Tom Krieckaert, Paul Krieckaert, and Vincent van Campen, through their India-based electrical engineering company SASMOS HET Technologies (from the same Lumipol holding), have become critical links in the supply chain of four major Israeli arms producers, which supply the Israeli army with parts for weapons.’

Two other Dutch partners in PROACTIV, Demcon (Best, Scheveningen) and Van Oord (Rotterdam) were working together on a project on uncrewed platform and autonomous navigation technologies for offshore survey applications. Together with the Dutch army, S[&]T (Delft), TNO and REEQ (Hilversum, acquired by Rheinmetall), Demcon performs research on unmanned vehicles.

Another new Horizon project under the CHIPS Joint Undertaking program, ‘ACT10’, will be coordinated by ASML and includes the TU Eindhoven. ACT10 is a continuation of a series of projects, starting back in 2012, on the development of a semiconductor chips supply chain. The participating Israeli companies Nova, KLA-Tencor Israel, Carl Zeiss Israel, Bruker Technologies and Applied Materials are focussing on the metrology of those chips, while the company Mellanox (owned by NVIDIA) takes part of ACT10 as an end user of this supply chain, like in other recent projects like HICONNECTS, and ID2PPAC. Via ACT10, over €4,9 million European tax money is going to the Israeli companies, thus reinforcing the Israeli militarised economy.

Eindhoven University of Technology is starting a new Horizon project with the Israeli SpinEdge that contributes to military drone operations

The TU/e will start another new project ‘MOSAIC’ with Bar Ilan University and the Israeli company SpinEdge on July 1^st: ‘The project’s achievements will be demonstrated in 31 cutting-edge technical showcases, indicatively global perception through 360° distributed radar, AI-enabled reasoning through magnetic field signature and resilient communications by means of non-terrestrial networks.’

SpinEdge is a company that focuses on spintronic chips for neural networks and AI. It has been supported by the Innofense innovation center for dual-use technological projects, operated by Israel Homeland Security (iHLS) in collaboration with Israel’s Ministry of Defense (IMoD). Following an opinion from an independent ethics committee, the Belgian Vrije Universiteit Brussel has withdrawn from collaborating with SpinEdge in the on-going Horizon project ‘MultiSpin.AI’. In this light, one may bewilderedly wonder why the TU/e, in contrast, is now starting a new project with this same company.

The work of SpinEdge is feared by NGOs to ‘help improve both autonomous vehicle navigation and military drone operations’, while, simultaneously, the ‘European money could help enhance Israel’s military capabilities advances’. The MultiSpin.AI project is coordinated by Bar Ilan University, which was honoured by the Israeli ministry of defence for its “Academic Armor” program. Above this, Bar Ilan University has recently established a new interdisciplinary community of defense-tech researchers with the goal of forging stronger ties between academia and real-world defense applications in Israel.

“Unlike many countries where there’s a disconnect between research and real-world application, Israel’s defense ecosystem is driven by tight collaboration between its three core pillars: the military, academia, and industry.” This is also the conclusion of a recently published report Where academia meets arms consortia which analyses the on-going Horizon projects of Dutch academic and industrial partners with Israel. The report highlights the presence of Israeli consortia that are parallel to Horizon projects , in which the largest Israeli arms companies are present. Collaboration with European industrial and academic partners happens in fields which are strategic for the Israeli military: (quantum) encryption, (quantum) computing, 5G-6G networks, Autonomous driving, Artificial intelligence, and most importantly, integrated photonics and semiconductor chips supply chains that offer hardware for those fields.

It is critical that European universities come to realize that their Israeli partners are pooled with Israeli arms companies in order to exchange knowledge in the fields that are of importance to the Israeli military. The resulting innovations are implemented in the newest products of Israeli arms companies, they are battle-tested and subsequently sold back to the European countries, including the Netherlands. The TU/e should therefore end existing projects with Israeli partners, and should certainly not start new projects with companies like SpinEdge, from which other universities have distanced themselves.

Guest blog by Vesna and Poule, Vredesburo Eindhoven – June 2025