United Kingdom Defense Training for Land Forces
The UK MOD is seeking representative human terrain training for Land Forces to enhance military capability.
The UK MOD is seeking novel and innovative proposals from industry and academia that will help deliver a credible, complex, and representative human terrain training to British Army personnel and to other Land Forces operating in the land environment. British Army doctrine describes this human terrain as A3E: Audiences, Actors, Adversaries and Enemies.
People are at the heart of conflict; it is their decisions, actions and behaviors that determine how conflict is shaped. People are the context in which decision makers must set and adjust objectives, and in which Land Forces must conduct operations. Since warfighting is an escalation from operating below the threshold of war, effectively training in the environment below the threshold of war will hopefully avoid conflict which could have otherwise been averted.
To prevail in an environment below the threshold of war, the British Army seeks to establish training that will deliver an environment that contains a free-thinking A3E capability and that delivers cues, stressors and frictions across the human, physical, environmental and information domains. This training must be seamlessly blended across Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) options, and be realistic, dynamic and adaptable to the developing exercise.
The MOD’s Future Collective Training System (FCTS) is looking to fund proposals from industry and academia that develop a genuinely transformative A3E capability that will represent the full human terrain in which Land Forces will have to operate, from local nationals and key leaders to non-state actors as well as allied, friendly and opposing forces. The proposals also need to represent the breadth of effects likely to be used by these actors, including weapons, vehicles and electronic/information systems. The representation of these effects needs to be delivered in the context of multi-domain operations across and within the LVC environments, to provide complex, challenging training for units ranging from 100 to many thousands of personnel.
The FCTS is eager to select multiple proposals for funding that will address its training challenges. The FCTS will fund credible proposals between $125k and $400k but may consider higher proposal values on a case by case basis. The total possible funding available for this project is $3.5m.
The FCTS is seeking proposals ranging from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 to 6 that address any element of the A3E challenge. This challenge includes, but is not limited to:
• A representation of threats, from a peer+ threat to actions below the threshold of conflict.
• Systems that deliver a seamless A3E blend across and within the LVC environments.
• Maneuverable mechanized forces, supported by wheeled/tracked vehicles and massed fires.
• Massed indirect fires capability including the use of deep fires, counter-battery.
• Ground and air autonomous systems that represent a full spectrum of capabilities.
• An electro-magnetic spectrum including background clutter and hostile capabilities.
• Hostile Information Maneuver activities, including social media.
• Live and synthetic representation of “pattern of life” entities, such as tribal leaders/elders, local military/security forces, other government agencies, non-governmental organizations, media, industry, infrastructure and services.
If you would like to submit a novel and innovative proposal that will deliver a complex and representative training environment to the British Army or if you are looking for information on other opportunities in the UK defense and security market, please contact PJ Menner at the U.S. Embassy London via PJ.Menner@trade.gov.