Many drones make light work competition – phase 3
Mon, 22 Oct 2018 10:18:35 BST
The Ministry of Defence, under the Defence and Security Accelerator, invites applications for its many drones make light work phase 3 competition. This seeks proposals for novel and innovative approaches to developing and evaluating the military utility of a swarm of low-cost, small unmanned air systems operating as a collaborative mission capability.
Proposals must deliver a structured flight evaluation of an integrated swarming UAS capability. The flight evaluation should provide evidence that supports the military utility and effectiveness of swarming UAS performing credible military tasks in an operationally representative environment. Proposals should describe a programme of work that covers development of a suitable system architecture, further development and incremental testing leading to an evaluation of the complete system.
The technology should be at least technology readiness level 3 or 4 at the start of the competition and achieve TRL 6 or 7 by the end of phase 3.
Proposals must respond to the following challenges:
- comprehensive end-to-end systems architecture;
- unmanned air vehicles platforms and sensors;
- mission systems;
- mission management;
- communications and networking;
- resilience, robustness and survivability;
- military tasks;
- evaluation using synthetic environments such as live-virtual trials as a way of de-risking system integration in preparation for live flight trials.
Eligible applicants may have or may not have applied to the first two competition rounds. All types of organisations in the UK or overseas may apply. There are no nationality restrictions.
The total budget is worth £2.5 million to fund one to two proposals for 18 months.
