admin The Charter of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic – or DIANA – was accepted by Allied foreign ministers on Thursday, April 7, 2022 in Brussels hostel by Imperial College of London. This would be world’s greatest initiative towards defence technologies. According to Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO “Working with the private sector and academia, Allies will ensure that we can harness the best of new technology for transatlantic security”.
To address important defence and security concerns, DIANA is expected to bring together defence personnel with the alliance’s best and brightest start-ups, scientific experts, and technology firms. DIANA’s programmes will give innovators access to a network of dozens of accelerator locations and test centres spread throughout more than 20 Allies. NATO has come up with the decision to build regional offices for DIANA in Europe selected from a joint Estonian-United Kingdom bid, and in North America, where Canada is actively looking for hosting the regional office. And another 60 innovation sites.
Certain emerging and disruptive Technologies have been identified as priority by NATO, which include, AI, Big Data Processing, quantum-enabled technologies, biotechnology, autonomy, innovative materials and space. For now, DIANA will focus on these technologies.
A framework for a transnational NATO Innovation Fund has also been agreed upon by allies. This is the first multi-sovereign venture capital fund in the world. It plans to invest 1 billion euros in early-stage companies and other deep tech funds that correspond with its strategic goals.
Imperial College is expected to host the DIANA headquarters and a DIANA accelerator at the Translation and Innovation Hub (I-HUB) in the White City Innovation District, which also houses the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), major defence contractors, and the US Department of Defence’s Tri-Service Office. The decision was taken by the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) on April 5th.
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