The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has launched a competition that seeks innovative ideas from industry and academia that could provide efficiencies for military logistics.

Ideas are sought that identify, develop, and demonstrate to the military logistics community that they could deliver a step change in military logistics capability across the Maritime, Land and Air domains.

Right on Time: Automating Military Logistics, is focussed primarily on innovative ideas in autonomy and the potential automation of the logistics chain. The aim is for the developed technologies to inform future military user requirements across the domains (Maritime, Land and Air).

The competition will feed into the Deployed Military Logistics Hubs development thinking.

The scope of this competition, run on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) covers two areas of innovation:

• autonomy and automation

• additive manufacturing

Full details of scope can be found in the competition document. Proposals which are relevant to either or both of these areas are welcomed and we seek all ideas that could provide better solutions and efficiencies for any Deployed Military Logistics Hub.

A total of £800k is available for this competition to fund multiple proposals, with projects showcasing their innovation at a demonstration event to be held in the UK during September 2021.

We are interested in technologies which can be progressed towards Technical Readiness Level (TRL) 6 within this timescale.

We encourage collaboration between organisations for this competition.

To support this we have a short survey to collect details of those who wish to explore collaboration possibilities. If you are interested in a collaboration, please complete the survey and your details will be circulated among other potential suppliers who have completed the survey and are interested in collaborating.

It is likely that a larger number of lower-value proposals (for example £40k to £80k ex. VAT) will be funded than a small number of higher-value proposals.

This competition closes at midday GMT on Thursday 25th March 2021.

A dial-in session providing further detail on the problem space and a chance to ask questions in an open forum will take place on 11 February 2021. If you would like to participate, please register on the Eventbrite page.

A series of 15 minute one-to-one teleconference sessions, giving you the opportunity to ask specific questions will take place on 23rd February 2021. If you would like to participate, please register on the Eventbrite page.