Rheinmetall and Auterion sign agreement on common unmanned operating system

A Rheinmetall Luna NG UAS on display in preparation for the DSEI defence exhibition on 18 September 2023. Luna NG has been sent to Ukraine and will form part of Rheinmetall's operating system partnership with Auterion. (Rheinmetall)

German defence company Rheinmetall has signed an agreement with US-headquartered software company Auterion on developing a military operating standard for unmanned aerial, land, and naval systems, Rheinmetall said in a press release published on 9 December.

The unmanned systems industry has experienced extensive growth since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“We see over 200 different aerial unmanned systems in Ukraine. This makes military training very costly and time-consuming, and system interoperability is not guaranteed,” said Timo Haas, chief digital officer at Rheinmetall, in the press release.

The co-operation between the two companies aims to overcome this with “the development of a homogeneous operating system”, which in turn will “enable the efficient and scalable deployment of unmanned systems”, according to Haas.

Rheinmetall said in the release that it would draw on the operational experience gained from its existing unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), including Luna NG and Aladin, with various others already in service for years with the Bundeswehr and having been deployed in Ukraine for several months.

“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 [operating system] allows the customer to combine all drones on a common basis and to integrate different manufacturers into a common architecture,” Lorenz Meier, CEO of Auterion, said in the same press release.