As Ukraine turns into a real life laboratory for both Russian missiles and complex drone warfare strategy, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) continues to spend on emerging technology capabilities – including a fresh £20 million on a unique digital wargaming platform powered by AI.
MOD recently agreed the deal with UK company Hadean – a venture capital-backed startup that has landed customers like Sony and the Francis Crick Institute, as well as other defence specialists like BAE Systems.
“Defence Digital have recognised a need to test… the capabilities of Hadean through this R&D enterprise agreement” it said on November 20.
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Hadean, founded in 2015, raised $30 million in a Series A round in September 2022 led by Molten Ventures and joined by Epic Games, 2050 Capital, Alumni Ventures, Aster Capital, Entrepreneur First and InQTel.
Initially focused on the “metaverse” it has helped underpin game-based battles as well as created a “city-sized digital replication of Estonia.”
It’s in “synthetic operating environments” that it appears to be really coming into its own, however. “The Hadean Platform provides out-of-the-box simulation augmentations and orchestration capabilities that are easy to develop, deploy and integrate with any system; from legacy simulators through to cutting-edge AI and LLM” as it puts it.
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A Hadean whitepaper notes that “new innovations in training environments enable AI to simulate complex drone swarms, refining autonomous decision-making algorithms using mission-specific data. By using these environments to train AI-driven drones to adapt in real time, organisations can ensure their future operations benefit from seamless coordination between human oversight and machine intelligence.”
The MOD test case comes as Ukraine continues to transform how military strategists think. As Canadian national security specialist Wesley Wark recently noted in an article for the Centre of International Governance Innovation (CIGI) think tank: “Increasingly sophisticated EW [electronic warfare] defences used by Russian forces have required Ukrainian drone teams to adapt by channel-hopping across signal frequencies to keep command and control of their drones alive. However, this cat-and-mouse game of signal detection and evasion is likely only a temporary measure.
Wark added: “Future systems of drone offence will increasingly rely on AI-embedded miniature targeting systems carried by drones, to cut the reliance on a signals channel, and make them truly autonomous weapons. They may also rely on mass attacks by drone “swarms”... Future systems of drone defence may well include networked laser weapons, of the sort that Israel is currently experimenting with, designed to address the drone swarm problem. Science fiction is fast overtaking reality.”
