UK army looks for long distance drone suppliers

The British Army is seeking an uncrewed Deep Reconnaissance Strike (DSR) drone platform with AI that can operate at ranges greater than 80km.

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has launched a ‘market exploration’ called ‘Air Launched Effects: Revolutionary Deployment Systems’ that runs for just a week until Feb 5th for any suitable drone platforms from the UK, Europe or US.

The Market Exploration is seeking to identify low cost Uncrewed Systems (UxS) with extended range capabilities at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 or above that could potentially be deployed within the next 12 months. These should be modular for expansion and operate beyond visual line of site (BVLoS).

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The war in Ukraine has shown the importance of drones in modern conflicts and have shown that relatively low-cost UxS solutions can defeat more expensive systems. 30,000 drones are to be sent to Ukraine after £45m worth of contracts were placed by the international Drone Capability Coalition of the UK, Denmark, Netherlands, Latvia and Sweden.

Ukraine also makes over 1.3m drones locally for its war effort. “Drone production has seen a significant boost—while the initial goal was one million units, 1.5 million were produced. Notably, over 90% of the drones used are manufactured by domestic enterprises, which is a vital achievement for Ukraine,” said Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to Radio NV.

The platform for the British Army should also be able to deliver shorter-range one-way effectors, or weapons, onto targets identified by the military. A further requirement is an Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capability for identifying dynamic targets and conducting Battlefield Damage Assessment (BDA) following an attack.

The army also wants the ability to rapidly develop, test, produce, operate, and iterate the system which should be modular to provide resilience against technological advancements in Counter Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) and AI and operate where GNSS satellite navigation is jammed.

The market assessment is also looking at supply chain resilience, predominantly from the supply chains of the UK and its allies, as well as a forecast cost indicator of the platform and associated software and modular add-ons.

The application to supply the drone platform is through the DASA submission service.