Closed tender

Project OLCHAR

Details

Value
£2,000,000
Published
7 March 2026
Submission
30 March 2026

Tender description

Project OLCHAR The Authority is undertaking preliminary market engagement to understand and assess the availability and maturity of industry’s capability of contributing to the development of a sovereign, safe by design Fuzing System incorporating an Electronic Safe & Arm Device (ESAD), intended for use across a range of armed uncrewed systems. The requirement concerns a common, platform agnostic safety and arming solution over which the Ministry of Defence will retain full intellectual property rights to enable future manufacture, modification and competitive integration. This exercise seeks high level information on industry capability, readiness and constraints in readiness to support such a requirement. Detailed compliance evidence is not required. The Authority is particularly interested in suppliers who can enable design activity, prototyping, early safety documentation or component level contributions. Insights gathered will inform refinement of the developing Statement of Requirement (SOR) to ensure that any future competition is aligned with realistic industry capability, capacity, technical feasibility and timescales. Attached to this opportunity listing is the further detail on the Project OLCHAR requirement which may be of interest to those who are considering providing a response to the RFI. Registration MS Forms link - https://forms.office.com/e/FsyzvHQcWb RFI MS Forms link - https://forms.office.com/e/GudffESMNy

Timeline

  1. Completed: Tender published7 March 2026
    Current notice
  2. Completed: Submission date30 March 2026

About the buyer

The Ministry of Defence is a ministerial department that runs its acquisition and procurement activity through a dedicated commercial function, led by the Director Commercial. Defence Equipment & Support buys, supports and supplies equipment such as jets, warships and armoured vehicles for the armed forces. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation plans, builds and maintains the defence estate separately from equipment procurement. Suppliers can register on the Defence Sourcing Portal, the department's end-to-end eProcurement system for contract opportunities. Many purchasing agreements sit on the MOD Framework Library, its central list of framework routes to market.

Procurement spend from central entities makes up 66% of overall UK public spend.

Over the past 5 years, most of the Ministry of Defence's contract awards have been in IT services, architectural and engineering services and repair and maintenance.

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Decision makers

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