DE&S and British Army launch the Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE) 20 experimentation project

2 Sep 2019 03:22 PM

The latest in the AWE series will engage with all suppliers to explore emerging technology in Agile Command, Control and Communication.

The Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE) series (previously URBan EXperimentation or URBEX) has been an ongoing Army experimentation programme for the last 10 years. It has consistently delivered high quality evidence for the army and invaluable military feedback to industry. It explores technology suitable for exploitation in the short-to-medium term. It pushes the boundaries of technology and military capability, testing a range of prototype systems by putting them in the hands of the user while giving invaluable military feedback to industry.

Agile C3 has been identified as one of the 9 fundamental deductions and insights judged most critical to guide strategic, joint and command force development.

AWE18, code named Autonomous Warrior, saw more than 50 companies from large primes to one-man, garden shed innovators engage with DE&S in a bid to secure an opportunity to showcase their products to the military.

AWE20 is expected to surpass that both in scale and level of industry engagement. The topic provides a broad scope, looking at all aspects of battlefield headquarters from deployable infrastructure, data aggregation and analytics to HQ resilience and decision support.

The project aims to:

• engage with industry technology providers of all sizes to explore what innovative approaches to traditional issues can be leveraged to give the army a competitive edge
• expose capability and knowledge gaps
• explore technology ready for rapid exploitation
• create a community of industry partners that will encourage a collaborative approach to problem solving

AWE20 seeks to answer the following questions:

How can technology:

• improve data exploitation for situational awareness and understanding
• enable us to make faster and better-informed decisions
• reduce the detectability and improve the resilience and agility of HQs at all levels in order to enhance their survivability
• enable more efficient deployment and employment of our HQs on operations
• improve command on the move and facilitate dispersed HQs

For more information on the AWE20 project and the requirement to provide solutions to the AWE20 questions check the British Army website.