DASA launches Royal Navy autonomous underwater capability competition

Courtesy DASA

This competition is part of the Royal Navy’s efforts to better understand and shape cutting edge capabilities; a strategy of exploration and analysis has been adopted to inform capability and requirements of ‘Maritime Autonomous System’ use for future Royal Navy operations.

A total of £2.5 million is available to fund one proposal in a two stage process consisting of an initial research, design and re-fit stage and a subsequent testing and trialling stage.

Smaller, discrete autonomous systems cannot complete many of the operations currently undertaken by larger manned assets – so a fully autonomous system of the size and capability of current manned systems is being sought. Development and testing of such a system will permit greater exploration of the utility of autonomous systems for underwater battlespace operations in the future.

This DASA competition anticipates that this could be achieved through re-fitting an existing large asset with an autonomous control system to develop a test-ready autonomous underwater vehicle.

It is recognised that suppliers may not have both the autonomous system and the large manned asset to address this issue and would therefore support collaborative bids. Should suppliers wish to be linked up to other potential bidders, email accelerator@dstl.gov.uk .

To support suppliers, DASA is holding a dial-in event, one to one sessions and a collaboration event. Sign up on Eventbrite by 5pm 17th May 2019.

Proposals must be submitted by midday (BST) on 11th June 2019.

For further information click here