UK Ministry of Defence goes to tender for TacCIS programme, includes GBP £14.5 million for Augmented Reality training

In Augmented Reality News

August 20, 2019 – The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has gone to tender for a GBP £3.2 billion programme aimed at delivering the next generation of land environment tactical communications and information systems (TacCIS) to the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

Known as ‘Morpheus’, the MOD states that the program’s objective is to provide a single information environment through a fully integrated operational information system, which is seamless from the barracks, headquarters, through to the individual soldier, and based on an open, delaminated architecture. As part of the tender – and as a means of providing the MOD with a greater flexibility to evolve the system in line with changes in technology, policy and the operational environment – the MOD will be the design authority with the ability to procure system elements in a modular fashion via a disaggregated supply chain.

Part of the Morpheus contract is for the provision of a ‘training delivery upgrade’, to enhance the training delivery solution for the Morpheus system. The MOD foresees that this could potentially involve a change from classroom-based training to training that utilizes augmented reality technology. The MOD has assigned a value of up to GBP £14.5 million for an augmented reality training integration to the Morpheus program, according to the tender.

Based on the tender information, the MOD is looking for a single ‘Systems Integrator’ (SI) to which it is expected to award the entire contract. However, within the Morpheus future operating model, the SI will interact with the MOD, as well as several managed service providers in a multivendor environment. The Morpheus SI will then manage the system on behalf of the authority, but will be dependent upon various service providers for the provision of multiple system components – augmented reality being one of these. The MOD will be providing overarching strategic direction and governance to system development.

For more information on the MOD tender, please get in touch at contact@auganix.org.

Image credit: Ministry of Defence/Royal Navy

About the author

Sam Sprigg

Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.