DE&S to award contracts on £1 billion framework to develop UK’s first hypersonic missile
Britain’s development of a sovereign hypersonic strike capability is taking a substantial leap forward with a new agreement to facilitate collaboration on cutting edge tech.
Ninety organisations – large and small – from across industry and academia have secured a place on a £1 billion transformational Hypersonic Technologies & Capability Development Framework (HTCDF) agreement set up to rapidly develop advanced hypersonic missile capabilities for the UK.
The organisations accepted onto the eight-lot Framework, which is led by MOD’s Team Hypersonics (UK), will now be eligible to bid for contracts; the maximum value of the Framework across the next seven years is up to £1 billion.
The award of contracts on the Framework will be managed by commercial experts at DE&S.
The Framework was announced late last year after the UK Government indicated its intent to accelerate the development of a sovereign UK Hypersonic Strike Capability, whilst bolstering AUKUS collaboration with Australia and the United States.
The HTCDF has been designed to provide a responsive, agile route to market to facilitate capability realisation at pace. Uniquely it will be used to select suppliers to deliver services and supplies to support the research, development and testing of hypersonic technologies right through to a capability.
Intrinsically linked with MOD’s ambition to transform acquisition, the Framework enables focussed research to be spirally developed through varying Technical Readiness Levels (TRLs) onwards to a capability. The maturity of the services and supplies provided under the resulting Call Off contracts will be TRL 1 – 9.
