The FLAVIIR project forms part of the BAE
Systems strategy to concentrate its funding on a few selected universities,
to increase company involvement in these university programmes, to
facilitate a greater degree of cooperation between university partners
and to include system integration into the research agenda. Future UAVs
will be necessarily cheaper, more modular and will rely on designs that
consider many cross-discipline interactions and trade-offs. The FLAVIIR
programme, and others like it, is therefore necessary to ensure that
BAE Systems understands both the emerging technologies and how they can
fit together to deliver suitable systems in the future.
The FLAVIIR project direction is overseen by an
Independent Steering Group (consisting of members from the MoD,
European Industry, Academics and senior BAE Systems staff). Technical
Audit is provided by a Technical Committee (consisting of key academics
from the project and selected BAE Systems staff).
Day to day running of the project is undertaken
by the Project Director (a Cranfield Professor) and a Project Manager
(from BAE Systems).
This level of management allows flexibility for
BAE Systems to change the project direction as company needs dictate,
whilst providing a level of audit to ensure that novelty and research
elements remain a high priority.
Why this project is different and exciting
The focus on building and flying a demonstration
vehicle ensures that not only are the various technologies developed
further than would be considered normal at a university, but also that
the inter disciplinary interaction between different universities (and
single university departments too) is enhanced. Both of these provide
great benefit to the overall outcome.
Furthermore, in order to build in added
flexibility to the programme £0.5M has been reserved for topics not
considered at the outset - so called ‘seedcorn’ projects.
Such projects will kick off at various stages during the FLAVIIR
programme at wherever the most innovative and relevant ideas stem from
within the partnership.
This unusual addition to the project at the
outset is designed to increase the innovation and hence the success of
the project overall.
