The Hornet is designed for counter-UAS missions against loitering munitions, drone swarms and hostile uncrewed threats at scale. The companies said the demonstration showed how the capability can help operators respond more quickly to large-scale unmanned threats.
The milestone follows two earlier integration phases. Phase 1 established Hivemind platform control on Hornet in under two months, while Phase 2 demonstrated V-BAT and Hornet multi-platform teaming in flight.
During the latest phase, the Segovia campaign executed a complete operational concept developed for the Destinus Ruta. Ruta is a low-cost turbojet strike platform designed for terrain-following penetration in GNSS-denied and contested environments.
Hornet served as the initial integration baseline across the Destinus family because it shares a flight control architecture with other systems. The companies said this is intended to accelerate Hivemind integration across additional Destinus platforms and reduce technical risk before the planned transition to Ruta.
“Autonomous systems must be able to sense threats, adapt, and act at the edge — especially in contested environments where direct command and control is degraded or denied,” said Christian Gutierrez, senior vice president of Hivemind at Shield AI. “What we demonstrated in Segovia is a repeatable, fieldable autonomous capability that closes the reconnaissance-to-strike loop at the speed the threat demands.”
Phase 3 exercised the full mission sequence aligned with the Ruta operational concept. This included autonomy-assisted mission planning through a ground control station, radio testing, autonomous terrain following, in-flight target updates and autonomous terminal maneuver execution on operator command.
The next phase will move these capabilities to the Destinus Ruta platform in Ukraine. The follow-on work is intended to enable coordinated strike behaviors between V-BAT and multiple Ruta systems.
The next evaluation will focus on repeatability, reliability and integration with existing operator command-and-control architectures. The companies said the work is part of a broader effort to move autonomy from demonstration toward fielded use.
“Destinus platforms operate on our own flight control architecture, and Hivemind validated that we can integrate third-party autonomy without surrendering system design authority,” said Tim Moser, chief technology officer at Destinus. “Repeatable integration, clear command authority, fieldable capability — that is how autonomy moves from a demonstration to something operators can rely on in the field.”
The Destinus Hornet is a multi-role autonomous platform capable of counter-UAS, strike, reconnaissance, data relay and security operations. Hornet systems form part of a broader layered air-defense architecture designed to protect high-value sites and critical infrastructure.
The Hivemind AI pilot enables platforms to sense, decide and act independently within operator-defined parameters under established command authority. Shield AI said that, unlike traditional autopilots that cannot deviate from preplanned routes, Hivemind can dynamically reroute mission plans, respond to unexpected conditions, avoid obstacles and execute complex tasks safely and effectively.
