Auterion's AI turns Ukrainian FPV drones into “fire-and-forget” weapons

Ukrainian operators have already destroyed plenty of Russian armored vehicles and even helicopters using inexpensive Shrike strike drones costing around $400. Now thousands of these craft are getting an artificial-intelligence system capable of tracking moving targets on its own and homing in on them.

Since mid-July, Ukrainian troops have begun receiving Shrike drones made by SkyFall, fitted with Skynode S autonomous guidance kits from the American firm Auterion. Over the coming months, the parties intend to deliver 50,000 such drones.

How it works

The operator manually flies the FPV drone into the combat area, marks a target at a range of up to half a kilometer, and then “switches the craft into terminal guidance mode on a fire-and-forget basis,” said Auterion co-founder and chief executive Lorenz Meier. As long as the radio link holds, the strike can be canceled or the target changed, but if the signal is lost — because of terrain, buildings, or enemy jamming — the drone will continue the pursuit on its own.

Guidance relies solely on the image from the drone's main camera, without GPS. On the modern battlefield, where satellite signals are jammed everywhere, this is a crucial advantage. According to the Kyiv Independent, Shrike drones have already downed two Russian Mi-28 helicopters, each worth up to $19 million.

Cheap intelligence

Auterion replaces the ordinary flight controller, which lacks computing power, with avionics that carry a microprocessor and AI on board. The whole system is optimized for a Western-made Arm chip costing just $18. A Shrike drone with such a kit runs about $2,000, versus $400 for a manually controlled craft. By comparison, Western armies, according to Meier, buy precision-guided munitions at six- and seven-figure prices per shot.

The order for 50,000 drones is funded by a $100 million contract; Reuters reports that the money was provided by Germany and that the order is being filled by Auterion's Munich division. The company had earlier committed to delivering 33,000 kits under a $50 million contract with the Pentagon.

Swarms and the human in the loop

Software updates will eventually let a single operator control an autonomous swarm. The Nemyx system has already been demonstrated at Camp Blanding in Florida: one pilot directed three drones at three separate targets. The swarm distributes strikes on its own so as not to expend several craft on one target, and it reassigns targets as they are destroyed.

Training an operator, Meier claims, takes literally 60 seconds — it's enough to guide the drone toward the target and select it on screen. At the same time, the company insists that the decision to use a weapon must be made by a human — “at least until the enemy forces a shift to clashes between autonomous systems.”

Meier, who has visited Ukraine eight times, singled out the local culture of rapid iteration: Ukrainian firms show up not with a perfect product but with something that works better than nothing, and they refine it through a string of battlefield failures.

Source: Ars Technica