Ministry of Defence

Supports United Kingdom defense innovation through ministry programs and secure technology growth.

The UK Ministry of Defence is the central government department for defence policy and the armed forces. Its innovation funding does not sit in the department itself; it is delivered through UK Defence Innovation, which now handles competition-based R&D support, loans, and themed calls after absorbing DASA in February 2026. That makes the MoD an umbrella funder with a military and technology mandate rather than a conventional grants body.

The named routes in this entry include R-Cloud, UKDI Themed Competitions, Innovation Support to Operations, Defence Innovation Loans, the Defence Technology Exploitation Programme, and the Defence Innovation Fund. Award sizes run up to £5 million for R-Cloud, £1 million for Innovation Support to Operations and Defence Innovation Loans, and £500,000 for DTEP. The sectors span defence, biotech, medtech, AI infrastructure, synthetic biology, robotics, aerospace, hardware, edge devices, semiconductors, materials, and cyber hardware.

Applicants are usually SMEs, startups, universities, or collaborators able to work to a defence problem statement and deliver quickly against operational need. The best-fit proposals are practical, technically credible, and aligned with the UKDI competition brief rather than open-ended research.