UK Defence has an enduring requirement for an increased presence within the underwater battlespace.
A £2.5 million funding competition has been launched by the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) on behalf of the Royal Navy to develop understanding of the current capability and test future options.
Research and innovation in unmanned underwater vehicles and autonomy is sought to help inform the future utility and concept of operations of Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicles.
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
