Questions from the Ministry of Defence:
Supporting and protecting our people
S&T Skills – The complex challenges faced by Defence requires a multidisciplinary approach. However of particular interest is access to those specialist skills relating to nuclear, energetics and explosives, autonomy, aerodynamics, big data and cyber. There will a continuing demand for systems engineering skills to harness and integrate technology for military advantage. Within Defence there are opportunities for engineering and scientific apprenticeships, industrial placements and summer student placements which all provide the opportunity to work on challenging but exciting problems.
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Supporting and protecting our people
Managing careers - Where the need for people/human capital endures, how do we build fulfilling Defence careers, particularly in scarce skill disciplines where traditional military hierarchies, structures and approaches do not attract people with the skills we need for the future? How do we encourage a broader range of people to work in challenging roles and environments?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Supporting and protecting our people
Human performance - Are there opportunities to improve or augment human performance to reduce cognitive or physical burden? How do we cope with the impact of changes in climate impact on human performance? How do we design clothing and equipment to mitigate these constraints?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Supporting and protecting our people
Future skills - We assess that the world of tomorrow will be increasingly automated. How could we determine the different blend of skills needed by Defence in the future? With other sectors competing for the skilled labour, how could Defence ensure it can attract an agile workforce with the required skills?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Reducing the long term costs of military capability
Affordable space – How can Defence achieve affordable access to space? How can we harness advances in the commercial sector and maximise our use of space based services? How do we improve our situation awareness of space? Where are the opportunities to reduce the size, weight and power of space based capabilities?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Reducing the long term costs of military capability
Training – Preparing our people for operations with appropriate training can be costly. How do we harness advances in synthetics and simulation to reduce the need for real training? What technological advances will improve our ability to train and prepare for dangerous situations without exposing our people to unnecessary risks? How do we reduce our burden on the physical environment? What is the optimum blend of real/synthetic training? How do we measure the effectiveness of team and collective training?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Reducing the long term costs of military capability
Cost - Traditional complex military capability is designed and built to counter technologically sophisticated military adversaries. What low cost, simple solutions exist to address the future spectrum of potential adversary capabilities? How can we ensure military units and capabilities are sufficiently agile to fulfil a range of potential roles and counter the spectrum of adversaries? How do we introduce asymmetric capability to our advantage? How do we integrate new technologies into complex systems at affordable cost?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Maintaining advantage through enhanced technology
Self-sustaining forces - When the UK deploys forces overseas it has to ensure that they are supported by an appropriately robust and effective logistics infrastructure that ensures the timely delivery of consumables and other materiel. MOD is interested in all aspects of technology, or alternative ways of working, that minimise the logistic infrastructure particularly that exposed to risk. Interests span technology for reducing the logistic footprint itself for example through the use of renewable or alternative energy sources, through to the use of additive manufacturing that might reduce the need for a large holding of spares in-theatre.
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Maintaining advantage through enhanced technology
Materials and structures – Understanding material selection and performance, ageing, shock and impact resistance, corrosion, design and lifeing aimed towards reducing the long term cost of military equipment across a range of platforms, weapons and application areas. How do we pull through promising materials quickly and at low enough cost to enable early adoption?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Maintaining advantage through enhanced technology
Exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum - How do we develop approaches to maximise the use of the electronic spectrum in congested environments to ensure commanders are able to access the information they need? How can we improve secure transmission of information? How do we integrate new and emerging technological solutions with legacy equipment to achieve this communications edge?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Maintaining advantage through enhanced technology
Energy and power – Defence is interested in understanding how advances in energy generation and storage and smart materials may promote more efficient energy consumption, reduce logistic footprint, soldier burden and support high power future sensing and weapons systems.
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Information, big data and autonomy
Integrating autonomous systems - Defence is interested in addressing the integration challenges of operating these new autonomous systems with legacy military capabilities. From a people perspective - what are the opportunities, costs and risks of introducing autonomous systems? How do we effectively integrate people with autonomous systems and define the boundaries and interfaces?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Information, big data and autonomy
Autonomous systems – What are the ways Defence could exploit autonomy and autonomous systems in military operations and potentially at lower cost than traditional high-end military platforms? What is the range of potential benefits of utilising autonomous systems in Defence; greater areas covered, persistent effects, or removing personnel from immediate danger? How can we reduce the need for human involvement in difficult, mundane and dangerous tasks such as bomb disposal, force protection or decontamination?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Information, big data and autonomy
Data Science and Decisions - How can MOD harness the benefits of data science? How do we build trust in automated systems? How do we integrate multiple sources of information with differing levels of uncertainty and represent this effectively and efficiently to busy decision makers?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Information, big data and autonomy
Reducing Cognitive Load - Greater access to data, information and services will challenge the cognitive loading on personnel. How can new technology help reduce this burden through, for example, autonomous software agents? Which functions could be carried out by machine and, conversely, what decisions will still need to be taken by human operators to ensure compliance with legal and ethical standards? How do we integrate these advances into our command and control systems?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
Information, big data and autonomy
Ubiquitous sensing and processing - in the future, sensors will become smaller and cheaper leading to their wide availability both in civilian applications and in defence. They will also be available to our adversaries. How they are deployed and how the information they generate is managed and used will be key. We need to understand how they will be networked and how automation could be exploited to task and manage them.
Ministry of Defence, 2018
The rapidly evolving operating environment
Human engagement - For future operations, are there alternatives to the use of hard/physical power? How can we best predict behaviour in response to our actions? How do we best engage with diverse communities, particularly where our adversaries may be hiding within the civilian populations? How do we work effectively with our Allies?
Ministry of Defence, 2018
The rapidly evolving operating environment
Determining intent – In complex environments involving a range of military and civilian actors, from a variety of cultural backgrounds, we need to be able to determine the intent of adversaries from posture, movement, emissions and stance prior to overt aggressive action.
Ministry of Defence, 2018
The rapidly evolving operating environment
Sensors – The basic human need to know and understand your environment is of particular imperative to the Armed Forces. Defence is interested in the development of small, low-power, light-weight, multi-modal sensing capabilities for example to detect explosive and chemical substances, and radio frequency emissions.
Ministry of Defence, 2018