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Autonomous Systems

The Ministry of Defence headquarters in Whitehall, on Taskforce RAID funding for UK military AI

UK Funds Taskforce RAID With £100 Million To Fast-Track AI Into The Military

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Taskforce RAID has four problems to work on, from sorting intelligence to controlling uncrewed vehicles, and the Ministry has opened a channel for companies to offer solutions.

 

The UK’s Ministry of Defence put £100 million behind Taskforce RAID, the unit it set up in June to get AI tools to British forces faster than standard defense procurement allows. The figure appeared for the first time on a page the Ministry published on August 25. 

The money comes from the Defence Investment Plan, the Ministry’s spending plan for military equipment. When Taskforce RAID launched on June 10, the Ministry said the unit would answer directly to the head of the Armed Forces, named the Bristol engineering company Rowden as its first industry partner, and set out the problems it would work on. At the time, it did not provide a funding figure.

 

Taskforce RAID has four problems to solve

The original June announcement listed four key areas the task force addresses. The first is using AI to sort and analyze the intelligence the military collects. The second is combining information from separate sensors and sources so that commanders get one account of what is happening in an area rather than several partial ones. The third is using AI to draw up military plans faster and redraw them once an operation has started. The fourth is using AI to control uncrewed vehicles.

The Ministry originally published the same four on June 10 in a Defence-wide paper called Putting Artificial Intelligence at the Heart of UK Defence, where it described the fourth as “delivering operational impact through AI-enabled swarms.”

 

Companies can now offer technology solutions, and the Ministry says a submission is not a sale

The page opens a submission channel the Ministry calls the Industry Front Door, where a company can send in ideas, concepts and technologies. The Ministry then writes that the channel “is intended solely to support engagement, horizon scanning and the exchange of ideas” and “does not constitute a procurement process, competition, request for proposal, or commitment to future commercial activity.” The Ministry says it will run and announce any contract through its usual contracting process.

The Ministry adds that it will review every submission but expects to receive too many to reply to each one, and will make contact only where a submission lines up with work the taskforce is already doing.

 

The Ministry has not said what the £100 million buys first, what the taskforce has delivered since June, or when anything sent through the Industry Front Door might lead to a contract.

BOREALIS logo with a maple leaf lit by northern lights, Canada's defense innovation program behind the new drone hub

Canada Launches BOREALIS Hub to Accelerate Military Drone and Autonomous Systems Development

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The new center in Quebec will receive C$29.6 million over two years to help government, researchers, and industry test uncrewed and autonomous systems in secure environments.

 

Canada launched a new defense innovation hub focused on military drones and autonomous systems as part of a broader effort to speed the adoption of new technologies by the Canadian Armed Forces.

The Department of National Defence announced Tuesday that a consortium organized by Quebec aerospace innovation group Espace Aéro will receive C$29.6 million over two years to establish and operate Canada’s new Uncrewed Systems Defence Innovation Secure Hub, or UxS DISH. The project will be based primarily at the YMX Innovation Centre in Mirabel, Quebec.

The consortium’s proposal, known as the National UxS Capability Acceleration Hub, or NEXUS, will create secure facilities where companies, researchers, and the military can develop and test drones and other autonomous technologies.

BOREALIS is Canada’s defense innovation program. It is building a network of secure facilities where government agencies, companies, researchers, and the military can work together on emerging technologies and move projects from research into operational use.

Officials said the UxS DISH will allow companies, researchers, and the military to test autonomous technologies in secure, realistic conditions before they enter service.

The project is sponsored by the Canadian Joint Forces Command, which coordinates military capabilities across land, sea, air, space, and cyber operations and will help ensure the research remains tied to operational needs.

The UxS DISH builds on a pilot program announced in late 2025 and is part of BOREALIS, which received C$68.2 million last year. While the new hub focuses on drones and other autonomous systems, the government plans to establish additional secure hubs dedicated to artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, space, and Arctic operations.

Abstract blue and white visualization accompanying Google's AI Control Roadmap and AI agent governance announcement.

Google DeepMind Creates Blueprint To Police Its Own AI Agents

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The company is making its AI Control Roadmap public to help other frontier AI labs corral rogue AI agents before they become more capable and autonomous.

Google DeepMind published a new framework designed to help AI companies control and monitor their own increasingly capable AI agents, releasing what it calls an “AI Control Roadmap” as the industry races toward more autonomous systems.

The roadmap focuses on ensuring advanced AI agents continue to act as intended, even as they gain access to more tools, data and decision-making authority.

Rather than concentrating on external cyber threats, the framework examines how AI developers can prevent their own systems from behaving in unexpected or undesirable ways. Google DeepMind describes the effort as part of a broader field known as AI control, which seeks to develop safeguards capable of detecting, constraining and correcting problematic AI behavior.

The company argues that traditional oversight methods will become less effective as AI systems become more autonomous. Developers may need additional mechanisms to ensure agents remain aligned with their intended objectives.

The roadmap outlines several areas of research, including methods for monitoring AI behavior, identifying deceptive actions, limiting an agent’s ability to cause harm, and creating systems that can safely intervene when problems are detected. The company said these approaches could eventually provide a foundation for managing risks associated with highly capable AI agents.

Google is sharing its work publicly. The company said the roadmap is intended to help other frontier AI developers pursue similar safeguards and encourage greater collaboration across the industry.

Google DeepMind noted that significant research is still needed before effective AI control mechanisms can be deployed at scale. However, the company argues that work on those safeguards should begin well before the most capable AI agents become widely available.