MoD Q&A on its Avengers AI swarming competition says licensed model weights may only be used in the UK and Ukraine

The Ministry of Defence has published written answers to industry questions on its TF RAID "Avengers" AI swarming competition, adding a Q&A and a presentation to the GOV.UK competition page on 20 October 2026. This follows our 27 September piece on the launch of the competition, which offers up to 12 UK companies initial access to Ukraine's battlefield-data platform.

The Q&A says Taskforce RAID is publishing the answers "Following the industry briefing call". All points below are from that Q&A unless stated.

Where the models can go, and who decides

• Territory. "The AI model weights licensed through the Avengers Labs framework may only be used within the UK and Ukraine territories, in accordance with the relevant licence conditions."
• Deployment. Asked whether companies can receive assurances that models will be applied "safely, securely, and with clear human accountability", the answer says: "The deployment and operational use of developed AI model weights will be determined by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence in accordance with Ukrainian law, military policy and operational requirements." It adds that the UK and Ukraine "remain committed to the responsible development and use of AI-enabled capabilities within their respective legal and governance frameworks."
• Ownership. "AI model weights trained within the platform shall be owned by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence and accessible via the UK MOD sublicence arrangements". The sublicence is described as "non-exclusive and revocable", and the Q&A says it "does not provide unrestricted global commercial rights over the original Outputs".

The data

• "As of now, approximately 5 million frames have been annotated across EO and IR." The accompanying presentation gives the figure as "5M+ bounding boxes from the daylight and thermal cameras", a different unit.
• Sensor types: "EO/IR only at present. Other modalities (e.g. acoustic) are on the roadmap for future stages."
• Location: "the platform does not provide geolocation metadata for the footage." The Q&A says Ukraine's Ministry of Defence "has planned this for next year to support GNSS-denied use cases."
• Labels: "All labels and annotations are reviewed and validated by a human before being included in the dataset." Labels are in "multi-object tracking (MOT) style".
• The dataset "includes thousands of unique interceptions from Ukrainian interceptor-drone operations", but "The metadata does not indicate whether an engagement was successful."

Compute and code review

• "Each team gets GPU time at roughly the level of one NVIDIA A100 (80 GB)." The Q&A says there are "no restrictions on model size" and extra resources are reviewed "case by case".
• Access to code repositories is limited to the company's own team and "a small number of authorised Avengers Labs reviewers". It says: "Code is reviewed by platform staff solely to prevent leakage of the dataset through the training process."
• "integration with external APIs is not supported."

Security and money

The Q&A says it is "strictly forbidden" to involve contractors or individuals with a connection to "Russia, offshore zones or countries subject to applicable Ukrainian, UK, EU or international sanctions regimes", and that Ukrainian intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have "the unconditional right to revoke access" at any time "for security reasons".

On Phase 2, it says: "Approximately £1.25 million (excluding VAT) is available for up to five (5) contracts." The competition overview document published on 25 September stated no sum.

Dates

• Submissions close "11:59pm BST on 22 October 2026" (a Thursday), according to the GOV.UK page.
• Selected companies for Phase 1 access are to be notified "by 6 November 2026" (a Friday).

Background

In a written answer dated 19 October, the MoD said Taskforce RAID has contractually committed £8.1 million.

Why it matters

On our reading, the Q&A sets out terms that the 25 September competition overview document did not: licensed model weights may only be used in the UK and Ukraine, their deployment will be determined by Ukraine's Ministry of Defence, and Phase 2 now has a stated budget of about £1.25 million (excluding VAT) across up to five contracts. The answer to the question on human accountability refers to Ukrainian law and both countries' frameworks, and does not set out further terms.