Competition summary: many drones make light work
Updated 25 October 2016
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1. Summary
The aim of this Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) themed competition is to demonstrate and evaluate the benefit that unmanned air system (UAS) swarms could bring to defence.
We want more than 20 UAS, also known as drones, to operate in a co-ordinated and closely coupled way to achieve military effect across the electro-magnetic (EM) spectrum; in a contested environment; and all managed by a single operator.
The competition challenges are:
- Open, modular UAS
- Mission management of UAS swarms
- Development of technology enablers for UAS swarms
As well as developing technology components in this competition, we also want to go on to demonstrate integrated system solutions, comprising technology components from a number of suppliers.
2. Total funding
Up to £1 million is available for phase 1 of this competition. We expect to fund a number of projects around £40,000 to £80,000 lasting up to 6 months, with phase-1 deliverables completed by July 2017.
Up to £2 million will be made available for phase 2. This will only be to projects funded through phase 1 of the competition and will be considered on a per-project basis.
3. Competition close
This competition closes on Thursday 3 November 2016 at 5pm. Proposals must be submitted to CDE online.