Expression of Interest – Land Autonomous Collaborative Platform Industry Day

Expression of Interest will close 1159 on 11th August

Introduction

The British Army is pleased to invite you to apply to participate in the Land Autonomous Collaborative Platform (LACP) industry workshops, which will take place on 21 August 2025 at the Defence BattleLab Dorset. This in-person only collaborative event reinforces Defence’s transformative relationship with industry to support the Army’s modernisation efforts. This Army event is a progression on the National Armaments Director Group engagement (13-14 Aug 25) and will focus specifically on the LACP problem set.

 The ‘Problem’

The British Army seeks to develop an Uncrewed Air System (UAS) to pair with the Apache AH-64E attack helicopter as an ACP. The ACP will operate in a highly autonomous, ‘commanded not controlled’ manner to perform multi-mission tasks in contested battlespace, including reconnaissance, target acquisition, strike, countermeasure defeat, and integration with Launched Effects (LE). The ACP will enhance the lethality and survivability of the crewed platform and do so with a smaller logistic footprint and lower maintenance requirement relative to the crewed platform.

Focus areas

These workshops are a key opportunity for Defence stakeholders to engage with industry partners to explore innovative and novel solutions that leverage advancements in autonomy, modularity, and manufacturing scalability. The Army is seeking to develop understanding of technology readiness and industrial capability to inform the User Requirements. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Uncrewed Air Systems (UAS) – A system including the platform, the supporting network and equipment. A Vertical Take-off and Landing (VToL) UAS able to carry c.200kg+ payloads are most likely to satisfy the operational use case.
• Autonomous systems – Solutions that enable varying levels of autonomy, or the fully autonomous command and control of UAS. Transversal capabilities such as AI-based decision making, digital twins, synthetic environment, digital, data and security standards.
• Certification and regulation – working with civilian and military regulators to navigate regulatory challenges and support industries to test and evaluate platforms.
• System integration – the challenges of integrating a system of systems and the adoption of modularity.
• Modular payloads.
• Other Defence Lines of Development (DLoDs) considerations to include safety, communications, cyber, navigation, interoperability.

Industry Engagement Approach

Conduct of the day will be a collaborative endeavour with United Kingdom Defence Innovation (UKDI), Defence & Security Accelerator (DASA), Futures Lab and Dstl supported by Team Defence Information. The event will be hosted at the Defence BattleLab where military challenges intersect with industry solutions. To cohere the day’s interaction, three core workshops are planned with additional scope to accommodate emergent topics through the day.

Workshop 1 – Platforms – the Uncrewed Air System (UAS)

Workshop 2 – Autonomy solutions

Workshop 3 – Integration, comms and navigation systems.

Please note: There are physical restraints on the numbers of participants so do not delay in registering your interest, successful attendees will be notified on 12th August