CDE announce winners of Defence Growth Partnership Innovation Challenge

Homeland July 13, 2016

CDE announce DGP winners Mike Squires Business Director, Close Air Solutions

The Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) has awarded contracts to the best ideas from its first competitions with the UK Defence Solutions Centre (UKDSC).

In 2015 CDE, part of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), ran a series of SBRI themed competitions against which industry and academia submitted their innovative ideas. The first two competitions were on the subjects of agile, immersive mission training and persistent
surveillance.

Organisations successful in these two competitions had the opportunity to bid for further funding to take their ideas forward. CDE, together with UKDSC, helped to form new relationships and encouraged collaborations that will be useful for future exploitation of the outputs.

For the agile, immersive mission training competition, follow-on phase II contracts worth a
total of almost £1M have been awarded to SMEs Close Air Solutions and Inzpire.

In persistent surveillance, phase II contracts worth a total of £1.35M have been awarded to SMEs Glyndwr Innovations and Amethyst Research, along with the University of Birmingham, and large defence company QinetiQ.

Mike Squires, Business Director, Close Air Solutions, said: “The funding and support we have received from CDE has helped us develop industry-leading technology that has enormous potential to save money and increase the effectiveness of the British Armed Forces. It’s fantastic news that Close Air Solutions has been selected for phase II funding, which really could be the making of our small business.”

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Amethyst Research CDE Dstl Glyndwr Innovations Innovation Challenge QinetiQ UKDSC University of Birmingham