Defence Online

CDE themed competition

August 3, 2016

Many drones make light work

This competition opens on 25th August 2016 when the competition document will be published here. It’ll be briefed at the CDE Innovation Network event on Thursday 22nd September 2016.

The competition closes on 3rd November 2016 at 5pm. Proposals must be submitted to CDE online.

Competition summary: many drones make light work

Published 14 July 2016

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.

CDE 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 £1M 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 six months, with phase-1 deliverables completed by July 2017.

Up to £2M 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 3rd November 2016 at 5pm. Proposals must be submitted to CDE online.

CDE CDE Innovation Network competition drones funding Innovation technology UAS

Post written by: Vicky Maggiani

Vicky has worked in media for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience in editing and creating copy for a variety of sectors.