DSEI 2025: Helsing and Systematic partner on swarming recce-strike C2 system

Helsing HX-2 loitering munitions at one of the company's Resilience Factories. (Helsing)

Germany's Helsing and Denmark's Systematic have partnered to create a swarming recce-strike command-and-control (C2) software, the companies announced in a joint statement on 10 September at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) 2025 exhibition held in London.

The partnership integrates Helsing's Altra software with Systematic's SitaWare C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) system. The main aim of the collaboration is for “less operators and more drones” to be involved in recce-strike missions, according to Helsing's co-CEO and co-founder Gundbert Scherf.

The companies said the Altra-SitaWare integration has the capability to significantly reduce the time needed to carry out missions. “We're talking about 10 times faster, compared to the current paradigm where you have a single operator, with a single drone, reviewing imagery after the mission to understand what happened,” said Maxwell Adams, director of Product Management at Helsing.

Helsing's Altra, which uses artificial intelligence (AI), will generate swarm plans. Deployment teams within an ISR company will then prepare unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and launch them in swarms to execute a mission. While these swarms are executing their missions, the AI onboard the platforms will generate situational awareness (SA) and send it, using Systematic's SitaWare, up the chain of command. The AI onboard the platforms processes the sensor data in real time.

Altra also runs Helsing's UAS ground stations. A number of the ground station functions have been developed in “close collaboration with the Ukrainian end-user”, said Adams without elaborating further. These include the capability to upload a mission to a UAS, take control of it, and designate a target.