DND IDEaS Program Invested $75.8M in 2022-2023

The IDEaS (Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security) program annual report for 2022-2023 has been released and shows that $75.8M was invested. Overall, the program has invested $330.2M in the five years since its inception.

Between April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023, the federal government fiscal year, DND reports that $75,839.971 was invested, meaning funds either committed or spent, for the 10 challenges available and that 92 projects were signed.

They also report that an additional eight challenges launched from the IDEaS’ fifth Call for Proposals. The challenges launched during this fiscal year included.

• Do You Copy? Establishing and Maintaining Broadband Connectivity in Remote and Hostile Areas
• The Needle in the Haystack: Space-Based Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (SB-ISR) Imagery for Decision Making
• Sub-Zero Infrastructure, Security, and Sensors: Safekeeping Assets in the Arctic
• Under the Sea: Real-Time Detection of Marine Mammals During Sonar Operations
• Land to sea with low GHGs: Arctic eco-safe transit of personnel and cargo from ship to shore
• Loud and clear: Assured naval radio communications in complex electromagnetic environments
• Best of both worlds: Human autonomy teaming for effective decision making
• Under pressure: Just-in-time medical resupply in austere environments

One of the challenges of interest to the space community was The Needle in the Haystack: Space-Based Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (SB-ISR) imagery for decision making.

For this challenge the was “seeking innovative solutions for locating adversaries outside of commonly monitored areas of interest in order to enhance military foresight for decision-making.”

Ten projects were selected for the challenge and $2,275,447.78 was invested. The funding went to these projects:

• TrackGen Solutions Inc. ($229,917.20) – CHADisr: Coordinated Space-Asset Tasking & Multimodal Data Processing for Robust Large-Area Concealed Human Activity Detection.
  
• Space Strategies Consulting Ltd ($225,641.50) – APSIS™ Analytical Monitoring and Exploitation Capability for detecting and monitoring underground activities in low coherence environments across large areas of remote, inaccessible and varied terrain.
  
• GALAXIA Mission Systems Inc.($210,507.50) – Fast and Light CONvolutional neural network (FaLCON): Sensor agnostic change detection from space using edge compute capable.
  
• SceneSharp Technologies Inc. ($229,901.56) – AI based SB-ISR technology to monitor a large swath of land to detect concealed human activities using EO & SAR data.
  
• Thales Digital Solutions ($229,519.88) – FEWTCHA – Multi-channel representation learning and fine-tuning based change detection from satellite-based imageries.
  
• ASL Environmental Sciences Inc. ($230,000.00) – Detection and Classification of Anomalous Features (DeCAF).
  
• Mission Control Space Services ($229,979.88) – Perception and Exploration of Topography and Sub-surfaces (PETS).
  
• ADGA Group Consultants Inc. ($229,980.26) – Artificial Intelligence for Mission Planning and Change Detection from Space.
  
• Sparkgeo Consulting Inc. ($230,000.00) – Magnetic North.
  
• EarthDaily Analytics Corp. ($230,000.00) – Earth Data Store Enhanced Monitoring, Triggering, and Exploitation (EDS EMOTE).

Earlier this month the IDEaS program released a new Call for Proposals which included a challenge for Wildfire Intelligence.

You can download or read the full report online below.