On 14 July, at Farnborough International, the Minister of Defence Procurement, Phillip Dunne MP, announced the two SME winners of the phase 2 Persistent Surveillance and Mission Training Innovation Challenges. Close Air Solutions are delighted to have received the award for funding for their Hyper Real Immersion Project. Close Air Solutions now have the funding to develop an innovative technology using Augmented Reality to support the British Military in their training with a potentially ground breaking cost saving solution.
Tom Ball, Technical Director and Co-Founder, Close Air Solutions said: We are delighted to have received the award for phase 2 of this competition. The funding and support from CDE will continue enabling us to develop industry-leading technology that has enormous potential to save money and increase the effectiveness of the British armed forces. This technology has already been identified as a potential ‘game changer’ for Defence and we are both honoured and excited to be at the forefront of its development. The association and support of UK Defence Solutions Centre (UKDSC) is providing us with a unique opportunity to support the British Military as well as contribute to UK Exports.
CDE (part of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) ran the series of Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) themed competitions against which industry and academia submitted their innovative ideas. The first of these competitions was on the subjects of agile and immersive training and persistent surveillance. Organisations successful in these 2 competitions then had the opportunity to bid for further funding to take their ideas forward. CDE, together with the UKDSC, helped to form new relationships and encouraged collaborations that will be useful for future exploitation of the outputs.
Jim Pennycook, Head of Operations at CDE says: Putting follow-on funding into the CDE process and working closely with the defence industry through UKDSC means even more opportunity for our bidders and an increased likelihood of exploitation into a defence capability for MOD and UK exports. We had a difficult task to make a selection from the range of quality phase-2 proposals submitted by the phase-1 winners and it’s been great to see the success of these projects.
About Close Air Solutions (CAS):
Close Air Solutions is a single source for international training and simulation services for all aspects of Close Air Support, Air Land Integration and Joint Fires communities. We design and integrate synthetic training systems and deliver training courses meeting NATO /US accreditation standards. Our flagship product is iCASSTM (immersive Close Air Support Simulator). iCASS is a registered trademark of Close Air Solutions Ltd.
www.closeairsolutions.com