An additional £1.5M funding is being allocated to the
Defence and Security Accelerator’s (DASA) Countering
Drones competition.
The Home Office Counter-Drones Unit owns domestic
counter-drones policy for the Government, working closely
across the Government and operational partners to
understand risk and operational requirements. The
Government priority is to help industry and academia to
deliver world-leading counter-drone solutions to support
the safe and responsible use of drones in the UK.
This DASA competition
provides an immediate opportunity to help us further
develop the critical counter-drone technical capabilities
we need at pace, and to support counter-drone exploitation
routes in the future.
It is critical that industry, academia and the Government
work together to solve the counter-drone challenges of the
future. In light of this, the Home Office and the
Department for Transport (DfT) are working closely
with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)
in support of Phase 2 of this DASA competition.
The Home Office and DfT putting in this
additional funding brings the new total to at least £3M. We
anticipate that this should more than double the number of
proposals that the Government will be able to award for
this DASA competition.
In light of this additional funding, the deadline for
this competition will be extended by 10 days: proposals
for funding to meet these challenges must be submitted by
Friday 31st July at midday (BST) via
the DASA submission
service for which you will be required to
register.
For this new funding, we are particularly keen to hear from
industry and academia who have innovative solutions to
respond to domestic security needs, in addition to the
needs already published. While the scope of the existing
competition, and challenges within, in general reflect
these broad requirements, a further scenario to illustrate
some of the added considerations faced is as follows:
A scenario could include numerous drones being used at an
important installation, major event or demonstration over
a wide, complex geographic area, and over a prolonged
period of time. The small UAVs (sUAVs) could be a mix of
commercially available, high performance multirotor
types, being operated directly in a planned and
sophisticated manner. They could also include legitimate
drones. The intent of the sUAVs could range from
surveillance to malicious disruption or attack. There may
be electronically sensitive infrastructure in the area.
We are interested in C-sUAS solutions that can be static,
mobile, portable or temporarily deployable on vehicle(s),
to:
- Detect presence of sUAVs
- Determine location, intent and assess the risk posed
- Locate operator
- Enforce a ‘no-drone’ zone
The impacts of COVID-19 have made it even more important
for the Government to communicate with industry and
academia as clearly and efficiently as possible. Despite
the challenge of COVID-19 the Government is dedicated to
continuing to collaborate closely with the drone and
counter-drone industries. This work will therefore be in
lieu of a separate Home Office Counter-Drone Unit Grand
Challenge this financial year, to reduce the burden on
industry that different competitions bring. The outputs
from this enhanced DASA competition
will still allow the Home Office and DfT to scope the
focus for any potential future investment in developing
counter-drone technologies.
