580 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos Núm. 2 / 2013 a compensating factor, these international joint defence initiatives are fostering aggregated research efforts in parallel with civil research, with the involvement of all technical actors. In addition, this establishes an international framework of knowledge and industrial capacity building, as well as some extremely favourable profitability prospects. By the same token, technological advances in the fields of communication, in navigation and positioning, as well as an increase in processing capacity and reliability, have led to the development of an unmanned airborne platform system for civil use, not merely in a commercial sense, but also since this is open to other governmental bodies, such as security, border control and civil protection bodies. The Technology Watch and Foresight System (hereafter SOPT) of the Sub- Directorate for Technology and Centres, which falls under the Directorate-General of Armament and Equipment, offers a general overview in one of its monographs of the development brought about by Electronic Warfare (EW) in Spain. This presents itself as the organisation that carries out the following activities: 1. continuous and systematic technology monitoring; 2. technology foresight, prioritisation of technologies and areas of interest for the defence sector; 3. support for R&D&I activity planning; 4. knowledge management; 5. technical assistance for the procurement of technology-based systems. This system (SOPT) is currently a network organisation formed by nodes known as Technological Observatories. These are set up within specific fields relating to, inter alia, weapons systems, electronics, information technology and robotics, in addition to a managing node pertaining to the Ministry of Defence, which carries out technology watch activities and leads joint efforts in international organisations. The SOPT describes multifunctional intelligence systems using programmes that constitute the future trends of Electronic Warfare (EW), taking a time horizon close to the year 2030 as a reference point. These have been supplied by companies such as, inter alia, INDRA, EADS-CASA, GMV, IECISA, TELEFÓNICA SOLUCIONES and TECNOBIT, and Spanish universities. All this results in the generation of a real R&D&I system, where the defence sector acts as a catalyst for inventions and the companies that make up the industry and participating institutions constitute the research, development and innovation poles whose EW projects will eventually give rise to a safer defence system in which the following exist: 1. faster localisation of risks; 2. threat detection capacity enhancement; and,
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