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Introduction

MilUX is excited to invite innovators to the second in its series of monthly Defence BattleLab Hackadays, taking place on Wednesday, 24 September 2025. This one-day hackathon-style event is designed to bring together the Ministry of Defence (MOD), academia, and industry in a shared space for rapid collaboration and innovation. The Hackaday promises a high-energy environment where people with diverse expertise co-create practical solutions to real-world problems. Whether you’re a MOD insider, an academic researcher, a startup technologist, or a student eager to apply your skills, this event is open to all who want to contribute.

Connect, Collaborate, Innovate

MilUX’s is running this Hackaday in order to help connect problem owners with solution providers. We want to connect, collaborate and innovate on pressing defence challenges. We were founded to help close the gap between the military user’s needs and capability delivery, by events like this, we can create a forum where those who face operational problems can work side-by-side with those who have the tools and ideas to solve them. 

The connect–collaborate–innovate ethos ensures that new ideas are grounded in real user needs while leveraging the creativity and agility of the broader tech and research community.

Event Information

Location: Defence BattleLab

Date: 24 September 2025 

Time: 09:00 to 16:30

Problem focus: Persistent Sensing and Situational Awareness

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What you’ll experience:

Throughout the day, attendees will get:

Hands-on introduction to structured problem solving: MilUX facilitators will introduce participants to design thinking and user-centred solution design methods.

Side-by-side collaboration with experts: You’ll work in mixed teams with subject matter experts, military personnel, and peers from across the defence ecosystem, gaining insights from each other’s perspectives.

A dynamic, creative environment: The format encourages experimentation, quick prototyping of ideas, and shared understanding, plenty of whiteboarding, brainstorming, and sketching concepts in a supportive atmosphere.

After a full day of creative effort, teams will share their concepts and outline next steps for testing or development. The event follows a complete innovation cycle, from problem framing and user needs definition, through ideation and early prototyping, to a final testing and feedback session. By the end of the Hackaday, participants will have not only generated innovative ideas for persistent sensing and situational awareness, but also developed tangible outlines (low-fidelity prototypes, sketches, or action plans) that could form the basis of real solutions.

Why Should You Attend

The Hackaday is designed to deliver value both to the organisations sending teams and to the individual participants. In just one day, meaningful progress can be achieved on a real problem, something that might otherwise take weeks,  thanks to the event’s intense focus and structured process. Here’s what attendees can expect to gain:

Benefits for organisations:

• Practical Innovation: A platform to work on real-world defence problems (not theoretical exercises), producing concrete ideas that address genuine needs.
• Speed and Focus: The hackathon format brings a challenge into sharp focus and yields results within hours, accelerating development cycles and decision-making.
• Cross-Sector Collaboration: Opportunities to build connections and networks with experts and innovators from across Defence, Industry, and Academia, seeding future collaborations.
• Tangible Outcomes: Teams leave with sketched solutions and actionable next-step plans that can be taken forward immediately after the event.

Benefits for individual participants:

• New Skills and Tools: Experience a structured, repeatable innovation process, learn how to move from ambiguity to clarity using design thinking techniques.
• Confidence in Collaboration: By working in mixed teams under time pressure, participants build confidence in their ability to collaborate and solve problems in a team setting, a critical skill back in their day jobs.
• Better Pitching: The final share-out requires distilling and communicating ideas persuasively; attendees get to practice pitching concepts concisely to an audience.
• Fresh Perspectives: With diverse peers comes a cross-pollination of ideas, people walk away with new insights and inspiration from different domains that they might never encounter otherwise.
• Renewed Momentum: Perhaps most importantly, participants return to their organisations energised and motivated, armed with ideas and strategies they can put to use right away.

The Hackaday offers a high-return learning and networking experience. It’s not just about the solutions generated in one afternoon, but also about equipping attendees with innovative mindsets and methods that have lasting benefits beyond the event.

Join Us

If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and think differently, MilUX wants to hear from you. Spaces for the 24 September Hackaday are limited, so interested participants (whether from the MOD, industry, or academia) are encouraged to sign up soon via the Defence BattleLab’s Co-Creation Portal. This community-driven event is a call to action for anyone eager to drive innovation in Defence, a chance to be part of turning ideas into impact in just one day. 

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