Future Flight: Strategic Growth

Overview

Helping the UK Drone Sector Take Flight

Innovate UK, part of UKResearch and Innovation, is working with the Department for Transport (DfT) to invest up to £3 million in new drone innovation projects.

These projects will show real progress towards commercialising Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations— taking what’s already possible and moving it closer to everyday use.

This funding competition aims to accelerate the growth of the UK drone sector, supporting the ambitions of the DfT’s Future of Flight programme.

Your project must deliver one of the following:

• New real-world use cases that build on earlier demonstrations, or scale up existing commercial applications — with strong involvement from end users. Meaningful progress on regulatory and operational concepts that support the Civil Aviation Authority’s work on Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS). You must be open to sharing your findings with the CAA

You don’t have to include flight activity in your proposal. But if you do, it must either fit within current regulatory approvals or clearly show how safe, legal flights will be achieved during the project.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the development of the UK drone sector, creating growth and meeting the objectives of Department for Transport (DfT) Future of Flight Action Plan.

Your project must demonstrate progress towards commercialisation or achievement of routine Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations, building on current state of the art approaches.

Your project must deliver either:

• tangible outcomes in new use cases previously at a demonstration phase, or scaling up of existing commercial use cases; these must have strong end user involvement

or

• tangible developments in support of the regulatory policy concepts, or concepts of operation being developed by the Civil Aviation Authority to enable Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS); this can include data, testing, concepts of operation or other relevant development and you must be willing to share data and outputs with the CAA

You must include the participation of UK registered end users or operators in your project.

Your project can include flight activities where this adds benefit to your project.

Applications that focus on strategically important use cases, for example; medical delivery, inspection of critical infrastructure, maritime, agriculture, support to front line public services, are particularly welcomed.

Your project must be developing further maturity against Future Flight Challenge Phase 3, or other industry work. It must not be a repetition of previous work already completed by yourselves or others.

You must detail clearly in your application any dependency on regulatory approvals. You must demonstrate that any required approvals are either already granted or obtainable by a clear and supported route within your project timeline.

To support industry progress and government and regulatory frameworks, it is expected that the key learnings from your project are shared openly.

Key themes and topics

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• use cases that deliver economic and social benefit regulatory areas; Electronic Conspicuity (EC), Detect and Avoid (DAA), Multiple Simultaneous Operations (MSO), Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) or Atypical Air environments (AAE)‍

Project duration

Between 6 and 7 months

Must start by 1^st September 2025

End by 31^st March2026

Award value 

Must have a grant funding request of between £250,000 and £500,000

Funding rates

For industrial research projects, purposeful research that builds new knowledge and skills to improve or develop products, processes, or services—often through prototypes or system components that validate ideas in realistic settings, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
 
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects, which use existing knowledge to shape and refine new or improved products, processes, or services—through prototyping, testing, and validation, not routine upgrades and are nearer to market, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
 
• up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research organisations can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs

Eligibility criteria

• Projects must be collaborative and led by a UK registered business of any size
• Projects must include at least one grant claiming SME
• Collaborator scan be a UK registered business of any size; an academic institution; a charity; a not for profit; a public sector organisation; or a research and technology organisation (RTO)
• Subcontractors must be preferably UK-based with fully justified and appropriate costs
• All funded project work must be carried out within the UK intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Subsidy control and state aid rules apply