Tewkesbury business one of four selected in first AUKUS Innovation Challenge

Projects from four UK organisations, including Tewkesbury based cyber security business Amiosec, will share £2 million in the inaugural AUKUS Pillar 2 Electronic Warfare Innovation Challenge.

Australia, the UK and the US are pooling the talents of their defence sectors to develop at pace the delivery of advanced capabilities. Four UK companies have been selected by the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) to receive a share of the AUKUS Pillar 2 funding to develop solutions in electromagnetic targeting and protection. 

Amiosec's project is seeking to create fake radio activity, masking the true location of friendly military forces to support missions. The research will focus on extending previous work on AI-generated traffic to boost realism to defeat adversary EW systems. It will be delivered by Amiosec in conjunction with its Australian defence technology partner, Penten.

Kent business, Roke Manor Research Ltd is aiming to develop the ability to transmit and receive on identical frequencies simultaneously has been an operational and technical challenge for decades. The Smart STAR Jammer project sets out to combine a Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (STAR) Transceiver jointly developed by Roke and the University of Bristol.

The other two organisations who have won research funding are Cambridgeshire-based Autonomous Devices and the University of Liverpool.

AUKUS is a landmark security and defence partnership to support a free and open Indo-Pacific by strengthening regional global security. A major part of the partnership, named Pillar 1, is helping Australia to acquire its first conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine fleet.