Defence Online

Type of document: Contract Notice
Country: United Kingdom

1. Title: FUTURE FLIGHT: STRATEGIC GROWTH – FUNDING
2. Awarding Authority: Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with Department for Transport (DfT), GB Email: support@iuk.ukri.org.
3. Contract type: Service contract
4. Description: The awarding authority to invest up to £3 million in new innovation projects.
These projects will be to demonstrate progress towards commercialisation or achievement of routine Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations, building on current state of the art approaches.
The aim of this competition is to accelerate the development of the UK drone sector, creating growth and meeting the objectives of the DfT ‘Future of Flight programme’.
Your project must deliver either:
tangible outcomes in new use cases previously at a demonstration phase, or scaling up of existing commercial use cases; these must have strong end user involvement
or
tangible developments in support of the regulatory policy concepts, or concepts of operation being developed by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to enable Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS); you must be willing to share data and outputs with the CAA
Proposals do not have to include aircraft flights but if they do then these need to be performable within existing regulatory approvals or demonstrate very clear understanding of how this will be achievable within the project duration.
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly but we are still unable to fund it.
This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct competition information.
5. CPV Code(s): 73000000, 73100000, 73210000
6. NUTS code(s): UK, UKK, UKK1, UKK14
7. Main site or location of works, main place of delivery or main place of performance: United Kingdom, South West (England), Gloucestershire, Wiltshire And Bristol/Bath Area, Swindon.
8. Reference attributed by awarding authority: Not provided.
9. Estimated value of requirement: UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £3 million for the development of next steps in integrated Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) usage. This funding is from Innovate UK and Department for Transport
Project size
Your project’s total eligible grant funding request must be between £250,000 and £500,000.
10. Competition closes: 11.6.2025 (11:00:00).
11. Address to which they must be sent: For further information regarding the above contract notice please visit:
12. Other information: Dates
12 May 2025 Competition opens
19 May 2025 Online briefing event: join at 11am
Briefing slides will be available to download from Supporting Information after the event.
11 June 2025 11:00am Competition closes
3 July 2025 Applicants notified
1 September 2025 Project start on
TKR-2025512-EX-1843623