Rheinmetall has entered into an agreement to collaborate with Auterion, a supplier of drone operating platforms, to advance the development of standardised software components for uncrewed aerial systems (UAS).
Through this alliance, the expertise of both entities will be leveraged to establish a industry benchmark for the command and management of uncrewed systems across air, land, and maritime domains.
The collaboration will encompass joint efforts in product innovation and market strategies for uncrewed platforms.
The anticipated outcome is a unified operating system that is expected to offer a tactical edge to military operators.
Auterion CEO Lorenz Meier said: “In the future, drones will be used in large quantities and, like computers and smartphones, they need a common operating system to make this happen.
“AuterionOS allows the customer to combine all drones on a common basis and to integrate different manufacturers into a common architecture. Our software stack has already been tried and tested in operation and thus enables software-defined defence.”
Leveraging its manufacturing experience with drones such as Luna NG and Aladin, Rheinmetall will integrate insights from operational deployments into this collaborative effort.
The Düsseldorf-headquartered company's drone technologies have been actively used by the German Armed Forces and have seen recent deployment in Ukraine over several months.
The Luna NG UAS is designed for real-time surveillance, detection, and tracking, and is the latest addition to the LUNA family of systems.
In 2023, the company announced supply plans of the Luna NG to Ukraine.
Rheinmetall chief digital officer Dr Timo Haas said: “We see over two hundred different aerial unmanned systems in Ukraine. This makes military training very costly and time-consuming, and system interoperability is not guaranteed.
“Co-operation with Auterion and the development of a homogeneous operating system will enable the efficient and scalable deployment of unmanned systems. With our approach, there will be no need for system-dependent user training or system-specific integration into an overall system network in the future.”
