• The Defence Digital Network

  Spring Topics and Funding Opportunities

  Posted by David Murray on March 24, 2022 at 10:58 am

  Welcome to those of you new to this group!

  It’s good to see more people joining, especially interesting is the wide background now represented by our members. I hope this will stimulate 2-way sharing of information, knowledge and experience between the defence and other sectors.

  To new members particularly, please look at an article in this group’s ‘Documents’ folder (extreme right (or second row) below the banner) on 18th January (was it really that long ago?!).

  It sets out to describe the digital thread in the defence sector that will lead to digital twins being introduced. Many other sectors are ahead of us in this; so, please comment, agree, disagree and feel free to suggest better ways of doing things!

  Extending this theme of getting the basics of Digital Twins (DTs) consolidated, there are a number of areas that spring to my mind where sharing experience would be useful – please add your own and/or vote for topics:

  1.      Requirements: What is involved in getting requirements specified in a DT-friendly way – that is to kick-off the design process as a first step in producing a DT?? E.g. as an executable model rather than a pile of documents.

  I see that Iain Miskimmin has already made a valuable contribution relevant to this area and has included a very helpful link in his posting ‘Modernise or Die’ on 1st Feb. Iain’s document defines a structure and points to identifying who needs what and when – valuable considerations when launching future projects – thank you Iain, your mix of military and industrial experience is greatly valued.

  2.      Recruitment: There are issues in recruiting Engineers – does the improved join-up of lifecycle aspects create more opportunities for non-Engineers – for example in User-Engineer communications??

  3.      Federations: Are there likely to be difficulties in joining-up twins from different technical domains when integrating towards creating a National twin environment? What, if any, standards will be needed? If there is to be a model of the physical environment, into which twins can be inserted, what physical aspects should it include (e.g. geographic, weather, responses to RF and other parts of the EM spectrum, etc.)??

  Please share your thoughts so we can introduce relevant-to-you topics for more in-depth discussion.

  Some Funding Opportunities  

  Finally, I regularly point to the funding available from the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) and this time there are some notable initiatives – more information will be available from Peter Wilkins (DASA):

  ·        An Open call closes on 27th April – for information about what has previously been funded click here

  ·        Check the more focussed calls for wearable technology and information systems’ assurance

  ·        £1.3M to fund integration of telepresence, robotic and haptic technologies

  ·        £2.8m for novel S&T in distributed Radio Frequency (RF) sensing; integrated RF effects; and provision of Position, Navigation and Timing as a Service click here for more information

  ·        A market survey of the range of technologies used for commercial positioning and navigation systems (+/- 5 metres accuracy) suitable for use on rapidly moving platforms – for possible exploitation funding later this year

  ·        Loans programme provides an opportunity for single small and medium enterprises with solutions to Defence-themed problems to apply for a loan of up to £1.6 million with a below market interest rate. Broadly speaking this is intended to help turn prototypes into products

  ·        Digital Catapult are working with the National Cyber Security Centre to find companies who can offer best in class research and potential solutions in the area of resilient hardware. Funding (up to £80k per project) – closes 3rd April

  I hope that some of this is relevant to some of you – please comment to help steer what you would like to see.

  David Murray replied 2 years, 9 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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