Advancing Less Lethal Weapons

Overview

This Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) competition is seeking proposals for innovative technologies that allow law enforcement officers to safely prevent the escalation of conflict in serious or violent circumstances from a distance.

Scope

This competition’s challenge is to identify and develop technologies that allow law enforcement officers to safely prevent the escalation of conflict in serious or violent circumstances from a distance.

The primary focus will be on solutions for distances between 5m and 50m (but solutions for distances between 0m and 70m will be considered).

The ability for the police to be able to initiate and/or maintain communication and visual contact with the subject is important and should form part of the technical solution or concept of operation; this could be via voice communication at closer ranges.

The police and other stakeholders for this project are developing an operational requirement that aligns with the below key criteria. The operational requirement will be shared with successful suppliers. The key criteria LLW systems will need to meet include:

• the system should be able to accurately, reliably and temporarily stop a violent or armed individual from causing harm with a primary focus on solutions for distances between 5m and 50m (but solutions for distances between 0m and 70m will be considered)
• the system must be effective against a moving target
• the system must be of a size and weight commensurate with, or can be adapted to be carried / used for, normal policing duties including routine patrol, public order and firearms
• the system must be reliable in use and consistent when activated
• the system must have second or multiple applications readily available
• the system shall be able to operate within weather conditions typical for the UK, including rain
• the ability for the police to be able to initiate and/or maintain communication and visual contact with the subject is important and should form part of the technical solution or concept of operation; this could be via normal voice communication at closer ranges

Additionally, it would be desirable for the possibility to use the system in any Crown Dependencies or in support of international deployments.

The ability to mark a subject in order to ‘identify’ them at a later time would also be desirable for a system, especially for use in public order situations where the perpetrator of a crime may not be easy to apprehend at the time of the offence.

Exclusions

For this competition DASA are not interested in proposals that:

• constitute consultancy, paper-based studies or literature reviews which just summarise the existing literature without any view of future innovation
• are an identical resubmission of a previous bid to DASA or MOD without modification (excluding market exploration proposals)
• offer demonstrations of commercially available off-the-shelf products requiring no experimental development (unless applied in a novel way to the challenge)
• offer no real long-term prospect of integration into security capabilities
• offer no real prospect of out-competing existing solutions

Funding Costs

Phase 1, Track 1 – Low TRL entry

• Track 1 will develop and validate the proposed technology to proof of concept stage over 3 months of research ending March 2021.
• The upper-limit for a single proposal in Track 1 is £70k (ex VAT).
• DASA anticipate proposals to be in the range of £30k to £50k (ex VAT) and they will be rejected if they exceed £70k (ex VAT).
• Suppliers successful at Track 1 may have the opportunity to enter a potential Phase 2 funded competition for further development of their solutions to provide a prototype demonstrator.

Phase 1, Track 2 – Mid TRL entry

• Track 2 is offered for research and development of mid-TRL solutions to provide a prototype demonstrator after 3 months of research ending March 2021.
• The upper-limit for a single proposal in Track 2 is £100k (ex VAT).
• DASA anticipate proposals to be in the range of £40k to £70k (ex VAT) and they will be rejected if they exceed £100k (ex VAT).

You can find the full competition document here.