Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA)

What's the innovation challenge?

Help protect the UK by coming up with innovative ways to counteract the threat of drones.

Challenge details

With Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) advancing, both in their technical sophistication and their abundance, creating a way to tackle the threat they pose to both military and civilian air spaces is paramount.

Small commercially available UAS have already delivered direct impact effects and have allowed those hostile to UK interests to deploy cheap, pervasive, low observable surveillance capability. This threat often bypasses traditional air defence and ground security measures.

Malicious or accidental use of drones is becoming a security challenge at events, affecting critical infrastructure and public establishments; including prisons and major UK airports.

DASA is looking to harness recent technology advances in a range of areas such as sensing technologies, autonomy, Artificial Intelligence and non-lethal effectors, to improve the ability of the UK defence and security community to counter an adversary’s use of UAS. This needs to be achieved whilst preventing or minimising collateral damage.