Background
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.
Small commercially available UAS have already delivered
direct impact effects and have allowed those hostile to UK
interests to deploy cheap, pervasive, low observable
surveillance capability. This threat often bypasses
traditional air defence and ground security measures.
The UAS threat to UK national security is a
cross-Government issue. There are many different UAS
threats, each of which may require a different mitigation
approach. The challenge will deepen with the predicted
future advancement in UAS capability and as the civilian
and military airspace becomes more crowded.
The Competition
This Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) call aims to
address the increasing UAS threat to the defence and
security of UK both at home and abroad.
What are we looking for?
We are aiming to harness recent technology advances in a
range of areas such as sensing technologies, autonomy,
Artificial Intelligence and non-lethal effectors to improve
the ability of the UK defence and security community to
counter an adversary’s use of UAS. This needs to be
achieved whilst preventing or minimising collateral damage.
We would like to focus on two key areas:
- Next generation counter-UAS (C-UAS)
- The future threats from UAS such as swarms, autonomy
and congested air space
The solutions could include complete systems or components
that deliver or enable:
- automated and networked sensing systems over wide and
complex areas
- cost effective sensors
- Plug and play (e.g. SAPIENT) compliant integration
(more detail will be provided in the full competition
document)
- methods of robustly defeating or denying current and
next generation drones in a range of scenarios and
environments
- significant and rapid improvements to extant systems
for deployment
- autonomous decision making
- signal processing to improve discrimination and
identification
- networked approaches which may use existing sensing
systems such as CCTV etc.
- ability to identify and track the UAS operator
- airborne, mobile or expendable solutions
What we are not looking for
- manpower intensive detect, track and identification
solutions
- standard barrage jamming
- highly bespoke, closed or crude integration
- low potential for cost efficiency
The competition is envisaged to have a number of phases;
Phase 1 of this competition is intended to demonstrate
proof of concepts that can be further developed and
integrated during later phases. Successful projects in this
first phase may be encouraged to work with other suppliers
in future phases in order to integrate solutions into a
deployable system, and it is hoped successful projects will
be able to be demonstrated at key showcasing events in
2020.
The total funding for this competition is expected to be at
least £2M, split over multiple phases. The total funding
for Phase 1 is expected to be at least £800K.
This DASA competition is currently planned to open in April
2019 when the full document will be released on our
website. Proposals must be submitted to the DASA submission
service, for which you will have to register.
