Smarter, cooperative missile technology holds huge potential for defence, offering an enhanced capability beyond that of single missiles. Cooperative missiles are designed to communicate with one another, share situational awareness, and coordinate their actions to work together within operator-set constraints to achieve a common objective during an engagement.
The ability to improve missile flexibility and responsiveness, allowing them to react to emerging threats and adapt to changing situations, is a challenge that the defence sector is determined to solve.
To address this, the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) launched the themed competition "It's good for missiles to talk," in 2022, on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Funding was provided by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and forms part of the Cooperative Missile Project. This initial phase funded 10 innovations aimed at providing valuable insights into how cooperative missiles could work.
Building on the success of Phase 1, DASA took the competition to the next level the following year launching Phase 2 in 2023, which focused on building dynamic partnerships with defence Primes, government customers, and industry. This new phase also aimed to deepen the MODs understanding of cooperative missile technology and explore its practical applications, and exploitation routes, pushing the boundaries of missile capabilities.
Collaborate to innovate: bringing UK primes on board
On the outset of the competition, DASA aimed to foster collaboration among all stakeholders, ensuring the best outcomes. Securing buy-in from major UK Defence Primes, Thales and MBDA, was crucial to this goal. Their missile technology expertise would not only aid in the development of the competition document but would also provide help to MOD technical assessors in evaluating innovations, ensuring feasibility and exploitability. This marked the first ever DASA competition with direct support from UK defence primes, highlighting the importance of industry partnership in advancing national defence capabilities.
Another essential aspect of the collaborative approach to the competition was the establishment of strong synergies between Dstl and Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S). In defence, it's common for innovation organisations to work on similar technologies and research. Here, DASA aimed to pinpoint synergies within their respective scopes of work. This would help outline the competition requirements, set clear and measurable objectives, and disentangle interdependencies among challenge areas. The final outcome was a competition document that emphasised shared and achievable goals for all stakeholders.
During the course of the competition, DASA helped maintain these cross-functional relationships, pinpoint key individuals to harness collective wisdom, established goals responsibilities, and organised weekly team meetings to promote mutual support and ensure a unified approach in decision-making.
Outcomes: scanning the horizons for novel missile technologies
By securing willingness from Thales and MBDA to collaborate with the MOD Technical Partners, and establishing synergies between Dstl and DE&S, the competition produced six innovative funded technologies with a total investment of £1.4 million. The collaboration with industry partners and government significantly improved the potential for outcomes, accelerating the exploitation process.
The funded technologies were from a mix of universities, large organisations and SMEs.
Bornea Dynamics
A technique to deploy neural networks and other advanced processing/communication algorithms.
Swansea University
An innovation for improving antenna capabilities, particularly in terms of bandwidth coverage and beam steering.
University of Birmingham
A solution for horizon path planning for a network of cooperative missiles.
Origami Labs UK Ltd.
A collaborative sensing technology to help provide an adaptive, dynamic planning capability for missiles.
University of Liverpool
Automated routing information for missiles in-flight that allows them to maximise use of terrain screening for survivability.
General Dynamics UK Ltd
A capability for missiles to propose new engagement plans while the missiles are in flight.
Proactively partnering with Defence customers to improve capability pull-through
Here is what several stakeholders had to say about It's good for Missiles to Talk: Phase 2.
Dr Colm Kelly - Senior Hardware Solution Architect, Thales
Collaborating with other UK primes, government bodies and various competitors as part of It's Good for Missiles to Talk: Phase 2 has yielded interesting conversations from fresh perspectives. Supporting DASA and MOD throughout the process of crafting the competition, down selection and then collaboration with the competitors gives me greater insight into the expectations that MOD have for not just the Thales portfolio of systems but beyond. Engaging with new people has stimulated plenty of what if, and why questions - it is also good for people to talk!
Ian Fairclough, Head of Critical Technologies, MBDA
As the UK MOD's sovereign partner on complex weapons, MBDA's involvement in the competition phase has allowed us to highlight technologies that could fill emerging gaps, and that will complement technologies being matured through other frameworks and MBDA's own innovation programmes. It has introduced us to new suppliers looking for support to adapt their technologies into an unfamiliar domain. By working together as Industry Primes with the DASA, DSTL and DE&S teams, we have been able to share viewpoints that should guide more of these DASA projects towards developments that we can incorporate into the UK Complex Weapon Portfolio - a win-win.
Charlie Maslen, Chief Future Technologies, Dstl
The DASA community is a great forum to seek innovate solutions and we looked to them to address key challenges in the development of Cooperative Missiles. Involving the missile primes was important to us as it helps MOD ensure the successful exploitation of emerging technologies from supplier teams. DASA's facilitation and organisation throughout the completion has been excellent.
Simon Zavad, Programme Manager - Future Kinetic Effects and Weapon Systems, Dstl
This competition was ground-breaking in its co-operation between DASA, Dstl, DE&S and strategic suppliers Thales and MBDA, who took part in the assessment of bids, providing a clear route to exploitation. For me this demonstrates best practice in breaking down organisational boundaries and delivering innovation through to capability on behalf of the MOD.
James Holder, Engineering Manager, DE&S
"Working as a joint Dstl and DE&S team on the It's Good for Missiles to Talk Phase 2 competition has been hugely successful and has allowed us to collaborate with a number of small innovators who we wouldn't have known about otherwise. The variety of proposals we received was really impressive and will help to support our respective technology development objectives, and the level of support we received from the DASA team throughout the process was fantastic."
Learn more about the competition here: It's Good for Missiles to Talk: Phase 2
