Defense Science and Technology Laboratory Experts (Dstl) have a key role in supporting the Army Warfighting Experiment Sustain and Protect (AWE S&P) Exercise at His Majesty Portsmouth Naval Base (HMNBP). Dstl Scientists from a variety of disciplines including sensing, platform survivability, humanities, autonomy and performance employed to operate and evaluate a variety of technologies such as novel robotics and data fusion.
The purpose of AWE S&P is to identify current, emerging and novel technologies from industry partners to inform current and future equipment programs and foster closer collaboration between governments, allies, partners and industry to make the army more lethal, agile, resilient and enduring. AWE puts these technologies in the hands of the user, providing the ability to develop sufficient evidence to:
- Reduce risk in large concept and equipment programs – by identifying and evaluating candidate systems to inform future requirements and investment decisions
- Enhance relationships with industry, partners and allies – through engagement, collaboration and burden-sharing where appropriate
- Accelerate army transformation – through focused hypotheses, integration of related technologies and further exploitation through spiral development and concept capability demonstrators.
The Portsmouth exercise is part of phase two of the AWE Urban series, which focuses on how the Army can support and protect a brigade (and below) in the urban environment through the use of intelligent logistics, novel medical extraction and autonomous vehicle extraction. It also aims to assess the implementation of physical and non-physical barriers involving Unmanned Airborne Systems (C-UAS) and Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities (C-CEMA) to ensure automated platforms on the modern battlefield in are survivable in a c2030 time frame.
Dstl Experts were involved in down-selecting the 159 systems originally submitted by industry AWE S&P concrete hypotheses. More than 20 throughout the process Dstl Staff worked closely together to support QinetiQ, DE&S and Army Trials and Development Units (TDUs) in their system evaluations.
Ultimately, approximately 20 technologies reached the final stage, the integrated experimental evaluation, in November 2022 at the Portsmouth Naval Base. This simulated live fire event involved troops from 2 YORKS and 3 PARA and allied partners from elements of the Dutch Army Robotics and Autonomous Systems Unit and the US Army Experimentation Force utilized the industrial technologies in representative platoon-level urban force-on-force scenarios . Staff observed the use of these technologies in activities, provided feedback to military suppliers and AWE organizers, and helped develop future capabilities for use in the city.
Lt. Col. Arthur Dawe, Commanding Officer, Infantry Trials and Development Unit, said: “Dstl constantly strives to improve the effectiveness of the UK Armed Forces by identifying and evaluating emerging technologies. These new technologies will provide operational benefits in a number of areas such as: B. improved detection to identify and track opponents, or by increasing the speed and compatibility of data, allowing commanders to make faster and more effective decisions.”
Dstl supports trials and experiments for all armed forces, including multinational exercises such as Project Convergence and the Contested Urban Environment.
