NATO-Backed Startup Puts Small AI Models on Drones for Battlefield Target Detection

A NATO-backed startup is helping European militaries put AI-driven target detection and selection onto small drones for surveillance and attack missions.

Scaleout Systems was founded in 2018 by researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden and first worked on training and deploying machine learning models directly on hardware in commercial trucks and other vehicles. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the company shifted toward defense applications.

CEO and cofounder Andreas Hellander said the war in Ukraine and a shifting world showed the technology could be important for operationalizing edge and sensor data for machine learning, giving NATO allies a strategic advantage.

Rather than frontier AI models from OpenAI or Anthropic, Scaleout uses leaner models, including ones that handle computer vision tasks on drone hardware or computers at forward bases. Hellander said they need to fit on forward-deployed and edge hardware, which ranges from small embedded devices to powerful edge workstations.

Scaleout joined NATO's Defence Innovator Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) Challenge Program in 2025, where it has worked on the Federated Aerial Intelligence for Recon project to adapt machine learning models for edge computing hardware in drones, drone pilot tablets, and field command posts.

Source: Ars Technica