Defence

Dstl invites industry and academia to help develop SE Tower

Posted 19 August 2016

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is looking to expand its Synthetic Environment Tower of Excellence (SE Tower) Community of Practice (COP), inviting industry and academia to join to collaborate in simulation and synthetic work.

Above: Soldiers inside a simulation tent.
Courtesy Dstl / Crown Copyright

Since 2004, the SE Tower has provided a mechanism for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), industry and academia to work together on areas of research in simulation and synthetic environments. The SE Tower aims to develop UK defence capability in this area, and annually seeks to refresh its relationships with the supplier community by opening the COP to new members.

Last year, 38 members joined, benefitting from twice-yearly Information Exchange Events (IEE). The next event is planned for November 2016 where Dstl will once again be looking at ways to increase the mutual understanding and cooperation between the MoD and supplier base who work in the area of simulation and synthetic environments. Joining the COP is a way to encourage and enable members to collaborate in research and exploitation activities for UK defence purposes, independent of contracted research.

Bharat Patel, the SE Tower Chair, Dstl said: "By underpinning the SE Tower with a Community of Practice, we gain a deeper understanding of simulation and synthetic environment capabilities and how these capabilities can be used by MoD. For suppliers it is an opportunity to improve their understanding of how they can help MoD tackle its future challenges, and to build teams to conduct research and development."

Recently, the COP members successfully provided key input into the translation of strategic user needs into research requirements as part of MoD’s Scientific Capability Review. The COP was also successfully utilised to inject unique ideas or innovative approaches in the Architectures, Interoperability and Management of Simulations research task within the SE Tower.

Simulation and synthetic environments are used by MoD in a variety of ways, from supporting training, concept development and experimentation, to acquisition, evaluation and mission preparation.

The application to the SE Tower COP is now open. The membership questionnaire and more information is now available . The closing date to apply is 30 September 2016 at 1700.