The UK Defence Academy (UKDA), headquartered at Shrivenham (Cranfield University campus) with satellite campuses at the Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC, Watchfield) and the College of Management and Technology (CMT), trains ~5,800 military and civilian students annually across the UK Armed Forces. The Defence Academy also hosts the Conflict, Stability and Security Research Centre (CSSRC), Defence Studies Department, and Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) outreach. This proposal offers DEFONEOS as an open-source AI-OS research platform and curriculum substrate across 5 research lines and 3 curriculum tracks, jointly governed with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and Cranfield University.
Funding pathway: UKRI / EPSRC £1.2M, Dstl £800K (joint call), Cranfield University £600K, NATO STO CPoW €400K = total £3.2M / 3 years.
2. The 5 Research Lines
#
Research Line
Lead
Duration
Deliverable
RL1
Sovereign AI-by-Design for Defence — formal verification of AI control planes against JSP 936 / AUKUS Pillar II ITAR-exemption claims
Dstl Porton Down + Cranfield
36 months
3 published peer-reviewed papers + 1 open-source tool (defoneos-formal-verify)
RL2
Federated Coalition SIGIL Chain — Byzantine Fault Tolerance across 5-nation classification domains (UK/US/AU/CA/NZ) with REL-TO-FVEY marking
9 modules — Strategic AI Context / Sovereign Compute Geopolitics / CLOUD Act / FISA 702 / ITAR vs Open-Source / AUKUS Pillar II / Five Eyes / NATO AI Strategy / Procurement Pathways
DEFONEOS-Certified Commander (DFO-CC) — for OF-6+ in pipeline
4. 5 Student Categories & Pricing
Category
Per Student / Cohort
Annual Cohorts
Year-1 Target
UK Regular Military (UKRM) — fully subsidised
£0 (covered by MOD training budget)
4 cohorts × 24 students
96 students
FTRS / Reservists — 50% subsidised
£2,500
2 cohorts × 16
32 students (£80K revenue)
UK Civil Service — commercial rate
£4,950
2 cohorts × 20
40 students (£198K revenue)
International (FVEY + NATO) — premium rate
£15,000
1 cohort × 12
12 students (£180K revenue)
Industry prime primes — sponsor-rate
£25,000
1 cohort × 8
8 students (£200K revenue)
Year-1 revenue:
~£658K from tuition
5. Defence Academy Location & Resource Use
Site
Use
DEFONEOS asset deployed
Shrivenham (Cranfield campus)
Main curriculum delivery + research labs
M2 + M4 sovereign compute nodes, 30-MCP federation on air-gapped enclave
Royal College of Defence Studies — strategic executive education
CT-3 invited lectures + DEFONEOS wargaming week
6. 7 Red Lines (immutable for DEFONEOS research at UKDA)
NO kinetic-targeting research — research is limited to ISR, sensing, fusion, decision-support, NOT strike-package generation or kill-order automation
NO personal-surveillance research — no face-rec, no track-individual, no locate-phone at the individual level
NO human-replacement research — BFT-33 council, HITL/HOTL/HIC enforcement; no autonomous lethal decision
NO foreign-controlled compute — research runs only on UK sovereign compute (Telehouse London / Equinix Manchester / Heriot-Watt Edinburgh) or REL-TO partner compute with written MOU