Germany’s Rheinmetall and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) operating system supplier Auterion, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, have signed an agreement to jointly develop standardised software-based components for unmanned systems, the two companies announced on 9 December 2024.
The two partners are combining their expertise in order to create a military industry standard for controlling and operating unmanned aerial, land and naval systems, with co-operation including joint product development and sales activities for unmanned platforms. The resulting homogeneous operating system is expected to provide military users with a significant advantage.
As an unmanned platform manufacturer, Rheinmetall is drawing on the operational experience gained from the Luna NG and Aladin UAV systems and incorporating it into its work with the customer. Various unmanned systems from the Düsseldorf-based technology group have already been in service for many years with the Bundeswehr and have been deployed in Ukraine for several months.
“We see over two hundred different aerial unmanned systems in Ukraine,” explained Dr Timo Haas, Rheinmetall’s chief digital officer, in a joint press release. “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.”
Lorenz Meier, CEO of Auterion, added, “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.”
