Advancing Less
Lethal Weapons seeks proposals for innovative
technologies from industry and academia that can
temporarily stop a violent or armed subject to prevent
the escalation of conflict or destruction of property.
The technologies would allow the use of less lethal
means as an alternative to firearms in some scenarios,
giving police more versatile and effective options to
defuse dangerous situations to keep the public safe
without having to resort to lethal force.
An initial £500,000 funding is available for innovators
with up to £500,000 additional funding for a later
phase.
The scope of this competition, run on behalf of the
Home Office,
includes looking at technologies that have not been
deployed operationally before and investigating
combinations of technologies that may provide better
solutions.
The proposed technologies would need to reach a
distance of 50m to meet the police requirement while up
to 70m could also meet potential military requirements.
The ability to mark a subject in order to ‘identify’
them at a later stage would also be desirable.
There are two tracks to the competition looking at:
Full details of scope and tracks can be found in the
competition
document.
The competition closes for submissions at midday BST on
Thursday 15 October 2020.
This funded call follows on from a market
exploration which was conducted by DASA on behalf
of the Home Office and police late last year.
The previous call focused on near market and mature
solutions for similar policing problems. In contrast,
this call is looking for technologies at technical
readiness levels (TRL) levels between 3 and 7.
A dial-in session providing further detail on the
competition and a chance to ask questions in an open
forum. If you would like to participate, please
register on the Eventbrite
page.
A series of 20 minute one-to-one teleconference
sessions, giving you the opportunity to ask specific
questions will take place on 9 September
and 24
September.. If you would like to participate,
please register on the Eventbrite page.
