Ukrainian drone operators have used $400 Shrike drones to destroy Russian armored vehicles and helicopters. Now, thousands of these drones are being upgraded with AI systems for autonomous targeting. In mid-July, the Ukrainian military began receiving Shrike drones made by SkyFall, equipped with AI-powered autonomy hardware and software from Auterion. The companies plan to deliver 50,000 drones with Auterion’s Skynode S strike kits in the coming months. This allows operators to manually fly the drones into a battlefield area, designate a target up to half a mile away, and then switch to fire-and-forget mode. Operators can abort strikes or change targets as long as they maintain a radio connection with the drone. If the connection is lost, the drone can still autonomously track and attack targets, relying solely on visual data from its onboard camera. This eliminates the need for GPS, which is crucial in environments where GPS jamming is common. The upgrades could improve the success rate of Shrike drones, which have already struck many vehicle-sized targets since Russia’s invasion in 2022, including tanks, artillery, and rocket launchers. Shrike drones have reportedly taken down two Russian Mi-28 helicopters, each worth up to $19 million, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Auterion focused on creating AI-powered capabilities for cheaper, shorter-range FPV drones that are common on the frontlines in Ukraine. The company developed a tightly integrated flight control system and terminal guidance system optimized to run on a Western-made Arm system-on-a-chip costing just $18. Each Shrike drone with such capability costs about $2,000, compared to the $400 drones that rely only on manual piloting. Auterion’s strike kits are part of a $100 million contract backed by an unnamed European country, with Germany reportedly funding the order. The company also previously committed to delivering 33,000 drone strike kits to Ukraine in July 2025 under a $50 million Pentagon contract. The 50,000 Shrike drones equipped with Auterion’s strike kit represent the largest delivery order to date for the company.
The AI upgrades also enable future software updates that could allow a single human operator to command an autonomous swarm of drones to attack targets. Auterion demonstrated such swarming capability during a live-fire exercise at a US military range in Florida, where a drone pilot commanded three autonomous strike drones to take out three separate targets. The Nemyx system allows drones to autonomously prioritize targets and adjust on the fly, without human input after the initial direction. This reduces the piloting skill required and could help Ukraine deploy more drones with a limited number of operators. Auterion’s systems are also valuable for countries without large numbers of trained drone operators. Meier emphasized that Auterion believes in keeping a human in the target selection process, as autonomous systems may eventually face adversaries with similar capabilities. Source: arstechnica
