NATO-backed Scaleout Systems adapts AI for autonomous drone recon and attack

As European militaries adapt to the use of AI and drones in modern warfare, a NATO-backed startup is helping to deploy AI-driven target detection and selection that can run on small drones for surveillance and attack missions.

The company Scaleout Systems was originally founded by researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden in 2018, and initially focused on training and deploying machine learning models directly on the hardware available in commercial trucks and other vehicles. But once Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the company pivoted toward defense applications.

“With the war in Ukraine and a shifting world, we realized that this technology can be very important to operationalize edge data and sensor data for machine learning to make sure that NATO allies have found that strategic advantage,” Andreas Hellander, cofounder and CEO of Scaleout Systems, told Ars.

Instead of using frontier AI models from OpenAI or Anthropic, Scaleout is harnessing leaner ones, such as machine learning models that can perform computer vision tasks on the hardware of drones or computers used at forward bases. “They need to fit on forward-deployed hardware and edge hardware, which can vary quite a bit from small embedded devices to quite powerful edge workstations,” Hellander said.

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