Skynode S: Auterion autonomy kit lets attack drones fly through jamming
Just announced on Thursday but already quietly combat-tested in Ukraine, the palm-sized Skynode S card makes small drones much less dependent on an uninterrupted wireless link to a human remote controller.
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
on June 28, 2024 at 2:49 PM
WASHINGTON — The Ukraine war has shown the lethal power of drones. It’s also proven their vulnerability to even brief disruptions in their wireless links back to their human operators, with Ukraine losing thousands of drones a week to electronic warfare.
But now Auterion, a US-Swiss firm that works for the US, Britain, Holland and Ukraine, with production lines in Texas and Kyiv, says they’ve solved a big part of that problem. The company’s Skynode S upgrade kit, announced Thursday but already combat tested in Ukraine, is meant to make small drones smart enough to perform some crucial functions on their own.
“We’re not picking targets autonomously, because that is a whole new set of ethical considerations,” said Lorenz Meier, Auterion’s founder and CEO, in a call with Breaking Defense. You designate the target, [that] is a human decision, but everything from there is fully automated. … The whole terminal guidance is all fully automated and can’t be jammed, doesn’t rely on GPS, and also works on moving targets.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/06/skynode-s-auterion-autonomy-kit-lets-attack-drones-fly-through-jamming/
