Maritime Innovation Challenge launches
The competition seeks innovations to synchronise and team multiple undersea systems.
The AUKUS Competition, closing 28 April, is the second iteration of AUKUS Pillar 2’s Innovation Challenge Series.
AUKUS is a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US, intended to ‘promote a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable’.
The challenge has been trilaterally agreed and is being run as a single multi-stage competition across the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) in Australia, The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) UK in the UK and the Defence Innovation Unit (DIU) in the United States.
AUKUS partners are seeking to research and develop innovations to enable the synchronisation and teaming of multiple undersea systems.
The UK competition run by DASA is open to all nations, although entrants from Australia or the United States can refer to their national competition page.
Up to US$8mln in funding is available.
AUKUS partners invite innovations that enable some or all of the following desired capability effects:
- Provide near-real-time communications between undersea vehicles (UVs).
- Provide near-real-time communications from UVs to command and control (C2) systems/battle management system (BMS).
- Provide near-real-time communications between seabed systems to UVs and C2 System and BMS.
- Provide a system that can optimally allocate the right asset to the right task in a dynamic and complex environment.
- Provide optimal bandwidth utilisation and effective range, and perform in a contested/congested environment.
They are looking for:
- Proposals that describe how their solution will perform at various depths and hydrographic conditions.
- Solutions that exploit the right mode of communication at every point of the mission to optimise the chance of mission success.
- Solutions that could be applied to attritable or survivable systems.
- Technologies that are secure by design.
The deadline to submit a proposal for Stage 1 is midday 28 April 2025 (BST).
More details on the Maritime Innovation Challenge 2025 can be found online.
