Cervus ST Engineering Antycip and Hadean awarded 4-year contract to transform decision support for British Field Army.

A consortium of British 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.
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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 (Picture source: 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 simulates the outcomes of over 42 courses of action, at the same time, with an actual run-time period of 1,512 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 (ORBranch) 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.

Principal Analyst- OR Branch, Land Warfare Centre: “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.”

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.”

Defense News September 2023