ASCA EDT Decision Advantage

ASCA EDT P2ISR — Persistent and Pervasive Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance

Funds Australian companies and universities developing sensing, edge processing, and ISR technologies for persistent Defence situational awareness.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The ASCA EDT P2ISR program is a contract round run by the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator within Australia's Department of Defence, under the ASCA EDT stream. EDT invests in long-term partnerships with industry and universities to nurture research and development capability aligned with Defence's future needs. P2ISR focuses on the persistent and pervasive collection, integration, and exploitation of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data across all five domains — air, land, sea, space, and cyber — to deliver continuous situational awareness.

The Request for Proposal sought solutions to five opportunity statements: (1) resilient deployable low size-weight-and-power edge processing so sensor data can be analysed, compressed, and transmitted while reducing bandwidth and cognitive burden; (2) communications network technologies for sensors at the edge in congested, contested, and complex electromagnetic environments; (3) persistent and pervasive sensing capabilities (active or passive) to identify and monitor objects, people, and signals; (4) trusted automated ISR systems operating in difficult and dangerous environments with minimal human intervention; (5) capabilities to identify, deceive, or deny adversary ISR capabilities. Proposals were required to address at least one of the five statements.

Eligibility covers Australian for-profit companies (industry) and Australian universities and research institutions. A virtual marketing briefing for industry and academia was held on 16 April 2026. Award amounts are not published at the program level — terms are set per contract under an Other Transaction-style flexible arrangement, not a conventional grant.

The RFP opened on 8 April 2026 through AusTender and closed on 18 May 2026. Evaluations are underway as of June 2026. The program is currently between cycles — the RFP has closed and no contracts have been announced yet. Once contracts are awarded, the program would move to active. A future round may follow the same model.

To engage with future P2ISR rounds or other EDT activities, monitor asca.gov.au/opportunities and AusTender. ASCA cannot accept unsolicited proposals.