Aviation's impact on society would probably not have been as fast and as great without the presence of cash prizes that spurred innovation, so from that viewpoint the UK's Ministry of Defence's Grand Challenge competition should be applauded.
But that applause becomes something of a slow hand clap when we learn that the Grand Challenge prize is just a trophy, even if it is made of recycled Supermarine Spitfire. Talking to the MoD's innovation director's military adviser at the Challenge's 14 August media day it emerged that there is a "legal problem with prizes". Yet the MoD is expecting contenders, many of which are small companies, to dig deep into their pockets and develop innovative robotic systems. What makes the situation worse is some competitors obtained MoD funding and that raises questions about how fair the competiton is.
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This legal problem with cash prizes is a reflection of a UK procurement process that is organised for large-scale weapon systems designed to take part in fighting massed forces in non-urban environments. That is, huge costly programmes with development andin-service durations measured in many decades and completely irrelevant for today's soldier's combatchallenge.
That challenge is the ingeniousness of insurgents who use the urban terrain to negate conventional forces' traditional advantages of scale and firepower to inflict sustained low casualty rates that degrade thecivilian government's will to fight.
To give modern soldiers the tools they need for urban warfare requires an entirely different procurement process that can spread the net wide for ideas that could come from any quarter. Unmanned air vehicles are a common solution to the urban situational awareness challenge and in the USA military competitions offer a research contract to the winner.
The UK MoD should take a leaf out of this American play book, even if it takes an Act of Parliament, and change the way it works in favour of a more flexible research funding approach.
One option would be to offer funds for small feasibility studies and hardware demonstrations in response to annual calls for solutions to tactical difficulties,with candidate technologies evaluated by an advisory board. Making such a change is the defence ministry's own grand challenge.
Source: Flight International