David ‘Bull’ Kirkendall
Account Director, INDOPACOM
David.Kirkendall@Auterion.com
During JPMRC 26-1 in Hawaii, the U.S. Army’s premier large-scale training exercise in the Indo-Pacific, the challenge was clear: rapidly field, scale, and operationalize autonomy in real-world conditions. After rising to the top of 375 competitors in the Army’s XTechDisrupt competition, Auterion was selected as one of eight winners and invited to bring our autonomy solution to JPMRC.
24-Hour Integration of Auterion’s Skynode S
The Auterion team arrived on Oahu ready to integrate our open-architecture Dragon Strike Kit, powered by Skynode S and Nemyx swarming software, into Lightning Labs’ “Kestrel” drones, a 5-inch quadcopter designed and manufactured locally by the 25ID. Integration was complete in under 24 hours.
Swarm Training in Under Two Hours
Within three days, Auterion engineers and soldiers from Lightning Labs had 20 Kestrels flying with Nemyx. Soldiers from 25ID 2nd Brigade were trained to operate the swarm using Auterion Mission Control , our intuitive ground control interface.
Within two hours of training, soldiers were flying coordinated, strike swarms of their owndrones, from a single device, with no prior piloting experience required. In less than one week, Auterion integrated our system-agnostic autonomy into a locally produced system, and trained five soldiers to employ swarms enabled by Nemyx to generate effects in the battlespace.
The Results at JPMRC
By the end of the week, the swarm was operationalized in the live exercise. In one simulated engagement, a swarm of Kestrels targeted four light vehicles. Once designated using Nemyx’s Pixel Lock feature, the drones independently navigated to, engaged, and neutralized their targets without further operator input.
The figure above is a screenshot showing the four vehicles discovered by the operator. The inlay in the upper right shows the operator designating one of the vehicles using Pixel Lock.
Field-Proven Swarming Delivered at Speed
In less than a week, Auterion integrated autonomy onto a new platform, scaled a 20-drone swarm, trained warfighters to operate it using a single control system, and delivered live-fire effects during a premier joint exercise.
This is battlefield-ready autonomy that amplifies the operator’s effectiveness, reduces workload, and ensures mission success even in contested environments. Nemyx transforms drones from isolated tools into a connected, battle-ready system.