Description of how these justifications apply
The contract will extend mission-autonomy capability created under Project LOW following Dstl’s competitive procurement. It will further develop, integrate, test and assure the existing technical baseline as a prototype capability for heterogeneous uncrewed systems.
Direct award to Applied Intuition is justified because it is the existing supplier of the proprietary products, interfaces, simulation models and assurance artefacts that form the Project LOW baseline. Changing supplier at this stage would result in an incompatible solution and require integration, testing, training and assurance activity to be recreated, causing disproportionate technical difficulty, cost, risk and delay. Applied Intuition’s continued involvement is therefore necessary to complete this limited development phase and support the required testing at NATO Exercise STEADFAST DEFENDER 2027 in February 2027.
The requirement also concerns novel goods and services being developed at MOD’s request to test suitability for military use, assess potential scalability and undertake further research and development. The award is confined to the software, integration, testing, technical support and assurance needed for this prototype and development phase; it does not cover production, fleet-wide deployment or enduring support. Evidence generated will inform MOD’s future requirements and procurement strategy, supporting interoperability, MOD ownership and future competition while avoiding technological or commercial lock-in.
Applicable direct award grounds:
Schedule 5, paragraph 7 – Additional or repeat goods, services or works
Applied Intuition is the existing supplier of the Project LOW mission-autonomy baseline, including its proprietary Axion and Acuity products, compute modules, swarm behaviours, interfaces, simulation models and assurance artefacts. Project CARRION is an extension to, and partial replacement of, those existing goods and services.
Changing supplier would result in MOD receiving a different and incompatible autonomy and mission-control environment. It would require interfaces to be redesigned, integration and simulation work to be recreated, testing and user training to be repeated, and safety, assurance and configuration evidence to be rebuilt. This would cause disproportionate technical difficulties in operation and maintenance, materially increasing cost, risk and delay.
The conditions in Schedule 5, paragraph 7 are therefore met: the requirement is an extension to, or partial replacement of, existing goods and services supplied by Applied Intuition; a change of supplier would produce an incompatible solution; and that incompatibility would create disproportionate technical difficulties. Direct award to the existing supplier is necessary to complete the limited development phase without duplicating work or creating unacceptable technical, safety and schedule risk. Any production, fleet-wide deployment or enduring support requirement will be subject to a separate commercial assessment and procurement strategy.
Schedule 5, paragraph 2 – Prototypes and development
The conditions in Schedule 5, paragraphs 2 and 3 are met. The contract concerns novel goods and services designed and developed at MOD’s request to produce a prototype mission-autonomy capability for heterogeneous uncrewed systems; it is not the routine purchase of a mature, production-ready solution.
The work is for the statutory purposes in paragraph 2: to test the capability’s suitability for military use through simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop and live trials; to assess the viability of developing and supplying it at scale; and to undertake further research, experiment and development of swarm behaviours, platform interfaces, mission control, safety and assurance.
Further development and validation are necessary because integration, regulatory and technical dependencies remain unresolved. The capability is therefore experimental and requires evidence to determine its suitability, scalability and route towards operational use.
The scope is limited to the software licences, compute modules, engineering, integration, testing, technical support and assurance necessary for this prototype and development phase. It excludes production, fleet-wide deployment, enduring support, air vehicles and wider enabling equipment, infrastructure and certification activities.
The contract therefore falls within Schedule 5, paragraph 2 because it concerns a prototype and novel goods and services supplied for testing, scale-viability assessment and further research and development. Any subsequent production, deployment or enduring support requirement will be subject to a separate commercial assessment and procurement route.