Software group Auterion to ship 33,000 AI drone ‘strike kits’ to Ukraine
Pentagon-backed deal aims to help combat mass attacks by Russia
US-German software company Auterion will send tens of thousands of its artificial intelligence drone “strike kits” to Ukraine to help it combat mass attacks by Russian drones.
Lorenz Meier, Auterion chief executive, said the company would ship 33,000 of its AI strike systems to Ukraine before the end of the year under a new contract with the US Pentagon.
The company’s software is already being used in Ukrainian drones operating combat missions against Russia, but the new commitment, Meier told the Financial Times, was “10 times in scale”.
“So we’ve shipped thousands and we’re now shipping tens of thousands,” he said, adding that the scale was “unprecedented”.
Russia’s air campaign has escalated in recent weeks, with hundreds of Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones used in each attack. A single bombardment now frequently surpasses the number of drones previously launched over the course of a month. Major cities are being targeted with increased frequency and scale.
The swarm tactics are also breaching Ukraine’s air defences more often, with strikes hitting targets at roughly three times the usual rate in recent months, according to official data.
Auterion’s “strike kits” — miniature computers known as Skynode that run the company’s software and include a camera and radio — can transform manually controlled drones into “AI-powered weapons systems” that cannot be jammed and can track a moving target from as far away as 1km, said Meier.
The commitment comes after Auterion, which is headquartered in Virginia in the US, secured a contract worth close to $50mn from the Pentagon to deliver the systems. The contract is part of the US government’s security assistance to Ukraine, said Meier. It was not part of a drone “mega-deal” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week said he was discussing with his US counterpart Donald Trump, with the aim of boosting industrial co-operation between the two countries.
But Meier said that his company had “pioneered” US-Ukrainian co-production.
“It’s basically acknowledging that the battle-hardening that has happened in Ukraine of drone products is relevant. That it’s a way to support Ukraine, but it’s also technology that . . . Nato countries want to get their hands on.”
The company, he added, was “not trying to compete with what’s already in Ukraine”.
“They have a fantastic drone industry. What we want to contribute are things that they do not have already and that are more software-defined warfare-centric.”
Zelenskyy told reporters on Thursday that Ukrainian production of interceptor drones was already under way but that more financing was needed to scale up operations.
“On the plus side, four companies are solid, and 10 will have the capacity. I say ‘will have’ because, so far, they have only manufactured individual units, and they lack the money for this,” said the president. “The production costs vary — some are more expensive, some are cheaper, with slightly different capabilities accordingly.”
At present, the overall cost of this effort was $6bn, he added.
Meier said he expected further deals for Auterion software with European countries. The company also has offices in Munich.
Germany, which this year committed to unlimited borrowing to fund higher defence spending, is the second-largest supplier of military support to Ukraine after the US.
On Monday, German defence minister Boris Pistorius said that Berlin was financing the production of long-range drones in Ukraine to help improve its defences.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Ukraine has become a test bed for cutting-edge military technology. Kyiv is regarded by many as the drone capital of the world, with a large supply chain for drone parts.
Auterion’s software, said Meier, would enable the “next evolution in warfare”, allowing swarms of autonomous drones to communicate with each other.
“What we are providing is leapfrogging what’s on the battlefield right now, which is to go to AI-based targeting and swarming”. Humans would always select the targets, though, he added.