DASA: Aiming Far and High – new Market Exploration into uncrewed systems
New DASA Market Exploration seeks revolutionary uncrewed systems. Novel solutions are being sought by the British Army to boost the range and effectiveness of uncrewed systems.
The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has launched a new Market Exploration titled “Air Launched Effects: Revolutionary Deployment Systems,” aiming to identify uncrewed systems (UxS) with extended range capabilities for the British Army. This initiative seeks innovative UxS technologies at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 or higher, with potential deployment within the next 12 months.
Recent conflicts have underscored the strategic importance of uncrewed systems, demonstrating that cost-effective UxS solutions can effectively counter more expensive traditional systems. The rapid evolution of the UxS landscape necessitates swift iterations of platforms and components to meet emerging battlefield requirements.
This Market Exploration reflects the British Army’s commitment to integrating agile and innovative uncrewed systems into its defense strategies to address evolving global security challenges.
The British Army is particularly interested in developing an uncrewed Deep Recce Strike platform capable of operating beyond 80 kilometers and delivering shorter-range one-way effectors onto designated targets. The desired system should also incorporate advanced Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) functionalities to identify dynamic targets and conduct post-strike Battlefield Damage Assessment (BDA). A modular design is emphasized to ensure resilience against advancements in Counter Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, enabling rapid development, testing, production, deployment, and iterative improvement.
Innovators with relevant solutions are encouraged to read the full Market Exploration document and submit their proposals by midday (12:00 GMT) on February 4, 2025.
This initiative highlights the British Army’s proactive approach to leveraging cutting-edge uncrewed systems, ensuring operational effectiveness in complex and contested environments.
Protected: DASA: Defence Innovation Loans now open
SAM IS ....
Flare Bright wins UK MOD Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) follow-up contract.
Following a successful initial DASA contract to prove the concept of true autonomy in drones, Flare Bright have been awarded a larger follow-up contract to provide the same autonomy in powered drones to give increase persistence and endurance. This project will deliver a fixed wing drone that can fly without GPS or any remote-control, when other drones are unflyable due to jamming and denial.
Flare Bright’s latest £425,391 contract lasts for 13 months and recently commenced, and follows on from the completion of an initial £226,500 contract that successfully concluded in April 2021. It will be announced at DSEI, to coincide with Flare Bright being selected to showcase its success at DASA’s stand (H2-110) and representatives will be talking through the innovative technology throughout the show.
The military is increasingly using drones. GPS will often be denied and spoofed, and electromagnetic communication used for remote control will be jammed. Drones typically have an unsophisticated approach to dealing with jamming, outages or failure. Flare Bright has developed the technology to develop a truly autonomous drone that doesn’t rely on any of these methods and uses un-jammable internal means of flight control and navigation.
Flare Bright’s existing autonomous gliding drone has proven this and has now been selected by the US Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment and has been promoted on the UK Government’s website as a Case Study.
Flare Bright aims to extend its proven autonomous flight system’s persistence to perform a mission for 5-10 minutes without GPS or any other communications in a fixed-wing powered drone.
Any military would like to develop a truly autonomous drone that doesn’t rely on GPS or remote control and just uses unjammable internal means of flight control and navigation. As DASA itself states, “The UK Defence and Security sector has demanding requirements for accurate and resilient Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT). When Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are either absent, denied, degraded or unreliable, a platform’s Inertial Navigation System (INS) will drift; PNT uncertainty will grow, and mission success may be compromised. As the future operational environment becomes increasingly congested, cluttered, connected and constrained, advances in current navigation technologies will be required to avoid mission failure.” This project will achieve the next level of practical development in this area.
John Binns, the recently retired Deputy Director of Strategy for the MOD Test and Evaluation team stated, “From my engagement with FlareBright, following a TechUK Defence Test and Evaluation conference, I have been increasingly impressed by their innovative methods by which they use machine learning and AI coupled with synthetic environments to rapidly test and prototype their autonomous SnapShot system validated by short duration live trial data.
I believe the innovation shown by FlareBright in their testing and prototyping has the potential to provide Defence with the ability to accelerate the development of unmanned and autonomous systems and have supported your efforts by providing opportunities to present their innovative technique to FLC’s at the Test & Evaluation Futures Programme Board.”
Former Paratrooper and Flare Bright’s Chief Commercial Officer, Chris Daniels said, “Every soldier knows that instant, tactical aerial surveillance is vital on any operation. To provide this to front line soldiers in a super lightweight form, with no training needed, and that can work in any challenging environment has to be good news for soldier survivability. We’re delighted we’re helping out.”
More info on Flare Bright
Flare Bright is a rapidly growing aerospace company pushing the boundaries of embedded AI technology to develop autonomous drones. Flare Bright is developing a number of drones with different characteristics, but all based on a core autonomous, miniature, inertial navigation system built on cutting edge machine learning enabled digital twin technology, which facilitates image-capture, wind measurement and sensing for a wide range of civil and defence customers. It has successfully won project-funding from the MOD’s Defence and Security Accelerator and is part of 2 UKRI Future Flight projects.
DASA awards £2m to fast-track autonomous vehicles in harsh conditions
Boost to UK prosperity as 21 contracts awarded to small and medium-sized enterprises and innovators for next generation autonomy systems
The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) can today announce it has awarded 21 contracts worth a total £2.1 million to boost how autonomous vehicles and systems operate in challenging environments.
DASA, on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), launched the Autonomy in a Dynamic World competition last year seeking proposals for innovative solutions and novel techniques to improve the way autonomous systems work in conditions such as rugged landscapes, dense vegetation, varying wind speeds and sea states – and man-made conditions such as congested and contested electromagnetic spaces.
The call also sought solutions to the Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) problem – the effective integration of humans, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics into military systems.
All these factors affect the military effectiveness of current autonomous technologies.
Project manager Helen Mullender said:
The work being funded is to mature autonomous systems with the capability to operate on demand, under all conditions that may be encountered.
Military operations are undertaken in all kinds of challenging environment. The inclusion of autonomous systems in these operations will demand their ability to operate effectively and efficiently regardless of the environment.
DASA delivery manager Laurence Bickerton said:
DASA is pleased to be working with Dstl and some of the best and brightest minds in industry to provide a step change in the capability of unmanned autonomous military systems.
In society, we are becoming increasingly dependent and trusting of unmanned, autonomous and semi-autonomous systems to operate our machinery, cars and even our home deliveries.
Similarly, in defence, autonomous systems are driving a revolutionary change in military operations, transforming the battlespace with improved intelligence and mobility.
The competition is funded through the MOD’s Chief Scientific Adviser’s Research Programme’s Autonomy Incubator project that aims to: Identify and develop underpinning research and technologies to support the development and fielding of unmanned systems across defence which may be matured through the Dstl Autonomy Programme and other Research and Development programmes.
The organisations that have been funded are:
Animal Dynamics (3 proposals funded)
Archangel
Autonomous Devices Ltd (2 proposals funded)
Beamagine SL
Blue Bear Systems Research Ltd
Createc
Deep Vision
Fleetonomy.ai
Frazer-Nash Consultancy
Horiba Mira
Imperial College London
Plextek Service Ltd (2 proposals funded)
QinetiQ Business Unit Farnborough
SeeByte Limited
Sonardyne International Limited
University of Dundee
Zenotech Ltd
DASA – the MOD’s innovation hub – finds and funds exploitable technology to give Her Majesty’s Armed Forces and UK security a strategic advantage over adversaries while supporting the nation’s prosperity.
DASA works with scientists from Dstl, academia, and industry to rapidly develop these new technologies.
DASA awards £2m contracts to counter hostile drone threats
Funds will develop new technology to tackle rising security risks posed by Unmanned Air Systems
The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) can today announce it has awarded nearly £2m to develop new capabilities to detect, disrupt, and defeat the hostile and malicious use of drones.
Among the proposal being developed are methods for detecting 4G & 5G controlled drones, cutting edge applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence for sensors to automatically identify UAVs, and low risk methods of stopping drones through novel electronic defeat or interceptor solutions.
The competition, run by DASA – the MOD’s innovation hub – on behalf of Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), is the latest stage in Dstl’s ongoing research programme into countering unmanned air systems (UAS) which has been running for ten years.
The introduction of Unmanned Air Systems (UAS), often referred to as drones, has been one of the most significant technological advances of recent years and represents a shift in capability of potential adversaries.
The threat from UAS has evolved rapidly and we are seeing the use of hostile improvised UAS threats in overseas theatres of operation. There is a similar problem in the UK with the malicious or accidental use of drones becoming a security challenge at events, affecting critical infrastructure and public establishments; including prisons and major UK airports.
There was a very high level of interest from industry with over 90 bids from a wide range of organisations from micro businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises, large defence firms and academia.
This led to a doubling of initial funding from around £1m to around £2m being awarded to organisations in Phase 1.
The first phase of this competition is intended to demonstrate proof of concepts that can be further developed and integrated during later phases.
Phase 2 is planned to launch next year with a focus on developing and maturing successful research into integrated solutions
The 18 projects funded around £100,000 each are:
Airspeed Electronics Ltd – to develop an artificial intelligence detection system which uses acoustic sensors.
Animal Dynamics – to develop UAS swarm system to detect and neutralise.Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) by employing peregrine falcon attack strategies.
Autonomous Devices Limited – to develop interception technology.
BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Ltd – to develop electromagnetic defeat of UAS.
BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Ltd – to develop passive radar for detection of UAVs.
Cubica Technology Ltd – to develop an automatic recognition and targeting system of UAVs from large distances.
MBDA UK Ltd – to demonstrate an integrated system to detect, track and intercept hostile drones.
Northrop Grumman – to develop UAS defeat using cyber and sensor vulnerabilities.
Northumbria University – to develop anti-swarm drone technology.
PA Consulting – to develop a detection system against cellular controlled UAS.
Plextek Services Limited – to develop detection and signal jamming capability for UAS.
Plextek Services Limited – to develop miniature Counter-UAS radar.
QinetiQ – to develop a drone tracking system in complex environments.
QinetiQ – to develop a ‘hard kill’ for disrupting the UAV’s on board electronics.
RiskAware Ltd – to develop an automated drone identification and target tracking system.
Thales UK – to develop a machine learning for Counter-UAS radar.
University College London – to develop signal processing and machine.learning algorithms to identify drones in areas highly populated by birds.
An additional proposal, subject to contract.
Phase 1 of the competition is due to run until summer 2020.
Representatives from industry and academia interested in making collaborative bids for Phase 2 of the competition can register their interest in attending the event here.
Note that numbers at the event are limited and those who express an interest will be selected to attend depending on their skills and experience.
Army boosts UK prosperity with £3m funding through DASA autonomous competition
Six companies have been awarded a share of £3m to develop new semi-autonomous concept demonstrators for the British Army.
The winners, announced at DSEI, will demonstrate their innovations at the Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE19) in April 2020.
The competition, run by the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), sought to find collaborative ideas that could demonstrate semi-autonomous unmanned reconnaissance systems tasked from manned mobile positions for the British Army; a concept known as Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T).
The funded projects will be led by Leonardo, General Dynamics (UK), QinetiQ, Horiba-Mira, SCISYS and Tekever. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) as the lead for AWE19, will be providing the experiment design in addition to technical partnership to each of the projects in the lead up to the demonstration.
In announcing the competition winners, Maj Gen Jeremy Bennett, the British Army’s Director of Capability, said:
The Army’s commitment to innovation and UK prosperity has been reinforced in the Army Warfighting Experiment 19. We will work with both the Wildcat prime contractor, Leonardo, and the Ajax manufacturer, General Dynamics (UK), to integrate the control station for UAVs into these platforms.
He continued:
Building on previous investment with QinetiQ and Horiba-MIRA we will show how high levels of automation will reduce the cognitive burden for vehicle commanders and helicopter crews. Finally, two consortiums of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises headed by SCISYS and Tekever will explore the benefits of open architectures and operating UAVs beyond visual range.
The British Army, Dstl and DASA competition focused on finding and funding technological advances and innovations that make it as easy as possible for the operator to control an unmanned system, with minimal intervention and operator burden, so that they can concentrate on other military tasks in the field. DASA is committed to reaching out to industry and academia to find solutions to defence and security challenges and in this competition putting innovation into the hands of soldiers quicker.
