UK launches competition to better utilise Ukraine’s Avengers platform

The UK has launched a competition calling on industry to exploit the “operationally derived datasets” from Ukraine’s Avengers Labs to develop “AI-enabled swarming capabilities”.  

Successful companies will gain “unprecedented” access to the labs, which contain “curated datasets” of real-world footage that can help to train AI machine-learning algorithms, the UK Ministry of Defence said on 25 September. 

The UK became the first international country to secure access to the Avengers Labs through the UK-Ukraine AI Partnership, a joint collaboration announced in August to bolster AI development in both countries. 

Proposals, submitted under the competition managed by the UK defence ministry’s Rapid AI Delivery Taskforce (TF RAID), should outline how to enhance autonomous drone swarming for both the UK and Ukraine.  

What is the drone swarming competition seeking?  

TF RAID says that proposals submitted in the competition should cover one or more of the following areas:  

• Adaptive mission execution, such as AI approaches that enable multiple autonomous systems to coordinate actions  
• Autonomous target recognition, including AI-enabled detection, classification, prioritisation, and tracking of objects in contested environments 
• Collaborative sensing and information fusion across multiple platforms to bolster situational awareness  
• Distributed decision-making that enables multiple systems to adapt routes, priorities, and behaviours  

Proposals should include a “credible pathway” from machine learning model development to operational experimentation.  

How will the competition be run?  

The competition will be run in two phases. The first phase will see an initial 12 companies selected to access the Avengers Labs database and demonstrate the “operational value” of their proposals. The companies participating in this phase are expected to bear any associated costs.  

Five of the initial companies will then be chosen to enter the second phase of the competition, expected to begin in early 2027, at which point contracts funded by the defence ministry will be awarded.  

The competition is only open to UK-based companies and the deadline for proposals is 22 October.