DASA Competition: It’s Good for Missiles to Talk (Phase 2)
DASA seek proposals that identify and develop novel technologies for development of cooperative missiles.
Opportunity Details
When
Registration Opens
11/12/2023
Registration Closes
20/02/2024
Award
The total funding available is £1.6 million (ex VAT). This is expected to fund multiple proposals between £100,000 to £300,000 (ex VAT) over a maximum project duration of 12 months. Further funding may be made available for a third phase to develop higher TRL technologies.
Organisation
DASA
This Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) competition is run on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) supported by UK missile strategic partners. The aim is to identify and develop novel technologies that could be exploited in the development of a new category of missile – cooperative missiles.
Cooperative missiles can communicate with each other, share situational awareness and organise themselves to ‘work together’ efficiently, during an engagement and within operator-set constraints, to achieve a common objective. The aim of the work is to:
- develop technologies to deliver cooperative missiles.
- demonstrate how the capability could be integrated into future systems.
The implementation of cooperative missiles will offer UK armed forces’ enhanced capability, providing a significant advantage in comparison to current capability. There are many benefits that can be realised. For example, considering collateral damage during missions or live safety data updates if non-combatants enter the battlefield post-launch. Cooperative missiles can share this vital information to ensure an abort function is carried out live during a mission, under human operator authority.
It is important to note that the operation of UK missile systems will always remain under human control and we are only interested in technologies that could enable cooperation between missiles within this context.
Phase 2 of this DASA competition builds on Phase 1 with more focused challenge areas. Proposals from innovators that seek to expand on their Phase 1 work are welcome, as well as innovators that are new the competition. Successful submissions into phase 2 will identify and increase the maturity of novel technologies to enable exploitation in future cooperative missile programs.
We encourage proposals where the innovation should output over a range of Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3-5.
Successful proposals will present credible plans for progressing new, advanced technologies which could underpin a future cooperative missile.