WGPlus (Archive)
A weapon of mass destruction with indiscriminate after-effects |
The UK has launched a £2m competition alongside the US in a joint-mission to safely eliminate chemical & biological devices on the battlefield. The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), part of the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory and UK MoD, has launched the ‘Don’t Blow It!’ competition, the first joint UK-US industry competition run by DASA and funded by the MOD and US Department of Defense. Competitors have been asked to identify innovative concepts or adapt current technologies to access, disable and destroy chemical & biological devices. This includes chemical & biological munitions, improvised explosive devices containing lethal agents or containers of bulk quantities of chemical or biological agents discovered on the battlefield or in other austere and resource-limited environments. Although it is over 100 years since the first large-scale use of chemical weapons, the threat from both chemical and biological weapons persists. This has been demonstrated by the recent rise in the use of such deadly weapons on the battlefield and in targeted attacks. The competition has an initial £500,000 to fund multiple proof-of-concept proposals at low Technology Readiness Levels. Based on the outcome of the initial funding phase, an additional £1.5m of funding could be released. |
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