Shield AI and Destinus Partner to Integrate Hivemind AI Across Platforms for Ukraine and European Defense
- MM24 News Desk
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Credit: Destinus
U.S. defense tech firm Shield AI and European aerospace company Destinus have announced a strategic partnership to integrate Hivemind, Shield AI's battle-proven autonomy software, across Destinus's unmanned aerial systems.
This collaboration, reported by the companies, aims to create the first scalable, cross-platform autonomy architecture jointly developed by American and European defense leaders, accelerating the delivery of AI-enabled systems to Ukraine and bolstering Europe's defense resilience.
The core of the partnership involves installing the Hivemind software onto Destinus’s unmanned platforms, specifically the Ruta and Hornet aircraft. These systems will then be able to team with Shield AI’s own V-BAT drone, sharing information and coordinating behaviors in real-time to form a seamless reconnaissance-strike network.
By combining Shield AI's advanced AI with Destinus's industrial manufacturing capacity in Europe, the alliance is designed to rapidly field intelligent, collaborative systems where they are needed most. Joint flight demonstrations to showcase this operational interoperability are already planned for 2026.
“Integrating Hivemind across diverse aircraft architectures like Ruta, Hornet, and V-BAT demonstrates how a unified autonomy framework can enable distributed mission execution,” said Nathan Michael, Shield AI Chief Technology Officer and Head of the Hivemind Business Unit.
“By allowing platforms to perceive, decide, and act together in real time, Hivemind delivers scalable autonomy that enhances coordination, survivability, and mission success across the battlespace.”
The Hivemind software is described as a highly modular, platform-agnostic system that enables heterogeneous teaming. This allows different types of reconnaissance and strike assets to operate as an intelligent, unified team, drastically speeding up the process of detecting and engaging targets—a critical capability known as closing the reconnaissance-strike loop.
The companies emphasized that the AI is designed to augment human decision-makers, operating within clear command frameworks to ensure reliability and governability.
For the European partner, this collaboration is a step toward strategic independence. “For Europe to achieve true technological sovereignty, we must unite world-class AI autonomy with industrial scale,” said Mikhail Kokorich, CEO of Destinus. “This partnership strengthens that effort by pairing Destinus’s platforms and AI avionics with Shield AI’s combat-proven mission autonomy.
With Destinus platforms, we are engineering the backbone of a distributed, intelligent, and resilient autonomous strike architecture for Europe and for Ukraine.” This joint effort signals a significant shift in how next-generation defense technology is being developed and deployed through transatlantic cooperation.