The UK Government has launched a competition that aims to identify and develop novel technologies that could be exploited in the development of a new category of missile – cooperative missiles.

Cooperative missiles can communicate with each other, share situational awareness and organise themselves to ‘work together’ efficiently to achieve a common objective.

The aim of the work is to investigate how inter-missile communication and cooperative behaviours can be technically achieved to solve UK military challenges.

UK defence systems enabled by artificial intelligence (AI), including missiles, will always be subject to context appropriate human involvement. For this competition, the focus is on technologies that could enable cooperation between missiles.

This themed competition focuses on the following challenge areas:

• Challenge 1: Distributed target detection and identification
• Challenge 2: Data processing onboard and between missiles
• Challenge 3: Enhanced navigation through cooperation
• Challenge 4: Application of AI

The development of cooperative missiles for future UK missile systems is considered a key challenge that Defence is seeking to solve.

At the moment, missile development seeks to overmatch adversary capabilities by improving the performance of individual missiles. For example, through use of more sophisticated seekers or navigation systems.

However, through the cooperative missile approach, overmatch can be achieved through leveraging networked technologies. This approach is potentially disruptive because the technologies and sub-systems used in a cooperative missile system will be less complex than current designs, while offering greater performance when working together.

This capability is important because the operating environment for UK missile systems is growing increasingly complex.

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For example, potential targets are often concealed and are likely to be surrounded by buildings, trees and vegetation, which can make identification and navigation challenging. Cooperative missiles will also be beneficial in environments where Global Navigation Satellite Services (GNSS) is degraded.

Total funding available for ‘Phase 1’ is up to £800,000 and is expected to fund multiple proposals.

The deadline to submit a proposal is midday August 2nd, 2022. If you’re interested in doing so, you can here.

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