Defence

DASA launches Intelligent Ship Phase 2 competition

Posted 11 January 2021

The second phase of funded proposals has been announced for the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) Intelligent Ship competition to revolutionise military decision-making, mission planning and automation.

Above: Digital image of a warship with data streams over the picture.
Courtesy DASA / Dstl / MoD / Crown copyright

Phase 2 of Intelligent Ship, run by DASA on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), sought novel technologies for use by the military in 2030 and beyond.

Nine innovative projects have been funded, sharing £3 million.

With a focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the projects will support the evaluation and demonstration of a range of human-machine teams and their integration with an evaluation environment. Phase 2 will develop AI for wider application across defence platforms.

Julia Tagg, Dstl Project Technical Authority said: "The Intelligent Ship project aims to demonstrate ways of bringing together multiple AI applications to make collective decisions, with and without human operator judgement.

"We hope that the use of AI in the future will lead to timely, more informed and trusted decision-making and planning, within complex operating and data environments. With applications for the Royal Navy and more broadly across defence, we are very excited to see what these Phase 2 projects might bring."

Rachel Solomons, DASA Delivery Manager said: "DASA is focussed on finding innovation to benefit the defence and security of the UK.

"Artificial Intelligence and human-machine teaming are such innovations, and by taking this competition to Phase 2 we hope to help find solutions that could make a real difference to future decision making in defence."

The companies awarded funding for Phase 2 are:

CGI IT UK Ltd
Decision Lab
DIEM Analytics
Frazer Nash Consultancy
Montvieux Ltd
Nottingham Trent University
Rolls Royce
SeeByte Ltd

Examples of proposals funded include an intelligent system for vessel power and propulsion machinery control to support the decision-making of the engineering crew, and an innovative mission AI prototype Agent for Decision-Making to support decision making during pre-mission preparation, mission execution and post mission analysis.

Phase one contracts were announced last year.