Harnessing Emerging Technology for National Security

In September 2021, the former Head of Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police, Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, noted in an article the success of his organisation and its partners in disrupting 29 plots in the preceding four years. The persistence of terrorist groups and their desire to cause harm to the UK’s citizens illustrates the continuing challenge to the UK’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

In the same article, AC Basu noted that “the pace of change and how quickly national security sometimes needs to pivot” drives a need for directing “teams, systems, equipment and techniques to an entirely new problem”. This need to rapidly adopt, implement and adapt novel technology is driven by the increasing accessibility of advanced technologies to adversaries, such as criminal gangs and terror organisations. Ranging from data analytics, artificial intelligence and encrypted communications, the proliferation and availability of technology lowers the barrier to entry for those who seek to infringe upon our personal freedoms and way of life.

The need for creative approaches to tackle adversaries drives a requirement for diversity of thought, meaning that law enforcement must engage with a broad spectrum of innovators to gain access to the very best ideas. Leveraging the pace and scale of innovation in established industry, small businesses and academia is critical.

However, there are limitations to the adoption of commercial capability in a law enforcement setting. The operating environment of security end-users has nuances that differ from commercial entities – whether these be physical, legal or regulatory. It is therefore necessary to engage end-users throughout the innovation life-cycle: from novel idea, to proof of concept, to prototype and finally to fully-fledged capability. This collaboration helps innovators to focus not just on their technology, but also on other critical success factors to ensure the development of useful, usable capability.

Recognising the need for a better avenue to access innovators and their novel ideas, the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) was established in 2016 as a key pillar of the UK’s effort to tackle security challenges. DASA finds and funds exploitable innovation, working with government stakeholders to support the generation of new capabilities for security end-users.

Funding is available via the Security Rapid Impact Innovations lane of the DASA Open Call, a unique channel for innovators to pitch their ideas to government. Innovators can get support to submit their proposal by engaging with DASA’s Outreach team of Innovation Partners, who are based in each of the UK’s economic regions, as well as an international partner.

This programme enables government to work in partnership with the private sector and academia aligning innovators ideas to security end-user needs, and competitive funding to support the development of the best ideas. Teams from across the Home Office, Policing, Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI), Department for Transport and wider government work closely with DASA colleagues to assess the ideas submitted and directly support the development of those that are funded.

Examples of innovation projects funded by DASA include:

• Solutions to improve crowd resilience
• Weapons and explosives detection capability
• Autonomous micro unmanned aerial systems for rapid surveillance

Funding through DASA is open to suppliers from across the globe, ensuring we have access to world leading ideas that give the UK’s frontline services a strategic advantage through cutting edge capability that protects our people and our places.

With full funding and supplier retention of their intellectual property, DASA’s offer is deliberately targeted to ensure that we can attract ideas from the broadest possible range of sources. But our offer goes beyond simply providing money for research and development. DASA’s post-contract services support commercialisation, scale-up and routes to market.

This support includes deep dives into specific market areas to help suppliers understand routes to procurement and relevant regulations, introductions to end-users and their supply chain, and showcase opportunities to help suppliers promote their matured idea. Noting that many suppliers that are funded through DASA are small or micro enterprises, DASA has developed a business mentoring programme that helps small organisations think about how they can scale up. This includes pitch training and supporting suppliers to access wider funding including venture capital.

DASA recognises that it can be difficult to understand which innovation projects might align with security requirements. We are running a series of webinars with government stakeholders to help innovators to understand the operations of organisations such as CPNI and Counter-Terror Policing. To find out more about these webinars, see our Eventbrite page.

With the support of DASA and the innovation community, the UK’s law enforcement agencies can continue to harness emerging technology to improve national security.

If you would like to contact DASA to discover more about engaging with us, then please e-mail [email protected], or complete an enquiry form on our website.