£3m to fund new wave of Artificial Intelligence for the Military

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) Intelligent Ship Competition has recently completed its second phase which sought novel technologies for use by the military in 2030 and beyond. Nine projects, including two run by techUK member companies Frazer Nash Consultancy and CGI IT UK, were awarded funding for Phase 2 of the competition, sharing £3m.

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.

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.