Salisbury, UK, 13/09/23 – A consortium of UK SMEs has received a 4-year contract to develop a Field Army specific version of their decision support tool, Forge. The group consists of Defence software enablers, Hadean, Simulation specialists, ST Engineering Antycip and Data analytics experts, Cervus.
Leveraging their understanding of Army Experimentation and their natural synergies as disruptive and innovative SMEs, the companies will combine their expertise to offer a simulation toolbox that harnesses the transformative power of adaptive simulation, analytics and cloud native technologies.
This builds on an initiative which was kickstarted by Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) funding in 2021 to develop a ground-breaking digital decision support tool, called “Forge”, for the British Army. Empowering Front-Line Commands to make decisions at the speed-of-relevance, Forge integrates Hadean’s metaverse platform, MAK’s VR Forces constructive simulation with the data analytics platform of Cervus, Hive, accelerating the exploitation of data sets. Forge rapidly simulating the outcomes of over 42 courses of action, at the same time, with an actual run-time period 1512 hours of Schemes of Manoeuvre simulated in 15 hours, an efficiency gain of over 100%.
Forge was identified by Field Army’s Operational Research Branch (OR Branch) in the Land Warfare Centre in Warminster, early on in the DASA process, validating it as an effective exploitation path for the initial MoD investment of £300K. Over 4-years, through Dstl’s enabling framework, ASTRID, the OR Branch and the consortium will continue to focus Forge as a ‘best-in-class’ Field Army-focused decision support tool to support experimentation and transformation.
“The development of Forge for the Army will place OR Branch at the forefront of the Field Army’s transformation effort, through; standardised experimentation at scale, that is future proofed for Collective Training Transformation Programme (CTTP) and Defence Digital change and demonstrates the importance of securing data as a strategic asset.”
Principal Analyst- OR Branch, Land Warfare Centre
Cervus Managing Director, Alan Roan, spoke on half of the consortium and said:
“This next step for Forge will unlock the potential of next-generation decision support for British Army customers with a simulation tool kit which allows users to look at a wider breadth of factors, as opposed to one or two instances at a time, improving decisions taken in wargaming scenarios or concept prototyping and evaluation, at a lower workforce and financial cost. It will help accelerate the Field Army’s ability to adapt in both the near term and future. It will also help sustain local jobs in the rural Wiltshire area and develop careers for Army Veterans.
It is a fantastic example of what can be achieved with a forward-thinking customer combined in collaboration with a frontline focused SME consortium.”
About ST Engineering Antycip
Since 1996, ST Engineering Antycip supported customers across the globe, in defence, academia, commerce and industry, to become better at what they do. As an expert provider of simulation, analysis, modelling, display and virtual reality solutions, ST Engineering Antycip combines its in-house technical expertise with an unrivalled range of products from software and hardware providers. ST Engineering Antycip is a subsidiary of ST Engineering. For more information, visit : www.steantycip.com.
About Hadean
Hadean is a UK-based scale-up that’s modernising the military training and simulation ecosystem. Our technology provides the spatial compute infrastructure that enables allies, domains, systems and technologies to deliver next generation multi-domain training, decision support, test and evaluation, and wargaming. Our customers and partners include BAE Systems, UK Ministry of Defence, British Army, Microsoft, Cervus. For more visit: https://defence.hadean.com/
About Cervus
Founded in 2013 by three Army veterans, Cervus has been at the forefront of analytics in defence training and experimentation. Today, Cervus provides licensable AaaS to the International Defence Market and has a customer base that spans NATO, the UK, the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. For more, visit: www.Cervus.ai