British defense companies will gain access for the first time to Ukraine’s Avengers AI Labs platform, which is used to train AI models for unmanned systems based on real battlefield data. The United Kingdom has become the first international partner of Ukraine to join the platform.
Up to 12 British companies will be admitted to the program. They will work within a secure perimeter at Avengers Labs without the ability to directly download the dataset. The British Ministry of Defence has already launched a competition to develop AI models for a new generation of combat drones.
Avengers Labs is built around an annotated dataset containing more than 5 million frames, most of which were collected directly on the battlefield. The data comes primarily from unmanned systems through the DELTA battle-management system and also includes sensor information on more than 6 million detected objects. These include tanks, artillery, air defense systems, infantry, Shahed drones and reconnaissance UAVs, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.
The data is anonymized and released with a delay to avoid creating risks for military personnel who continue to carry out combat missions.
As part of the first competition, British companies are expected to propose solutions that will enable unmanned systems to operate more effectively when communications with human operators are limited or global navigation systems are unavailable. This includes target recognition, distributed decision-making, coordination of autonomous systems, and combining information from different platforms and sensors.
The selection of companies is expected to be completed within several weeks. After the Ukrainian side completes export-control procedures, the companies will be able to access the platform.
