The Ukraine conflict has proven a very useful testing ground for new technology, none more so than the V-BAT surveillance drone, made by US defence and autonomous systems company, Shield AI.
Flying 60km inside Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory in August last year, Ukrainian troops asked the V-BAT operators to take a closer look at a particular location.
And there, previously unnoticed, was a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile system. Far behind the frontlines the SAM may have been, but it was within range of a Ukrainian HIMARS missile.
“The Ukraine forces were watching over it and say ‘hey can you go scan that thing’. Our operators flew over and scanned and what they saw was a Russian SAM missile,” Vice President of Hivemind Solutions at Shield AI, Christian Gutierrez, told ADM at the Avalon Air Show.
“The Ukrainian forces then took over and said give us the target information. They relayed that to a HIMARS which launched a missile, and they took it out.”
“The Ukraine forces intel didn’t have a SAM in that location. So, it was a huge success.”
Though a US company based in San Diego, California, Shield AI now has a strong Australian connection, acquiring Melbourne-based Sentient Vision Systems in April last year.
Sentient Vision, in conjunction with the Royal Australian Navy, developed wide area surveillance technology, most recently ViDAR (Visual Detection and Ranging) for maritime surveillance.
“We are looking to expand into the Australian market. We have the Sentient team and we want to expand that team to take on the Hivemind business here in Australia,” Gutierrez, said.
Shield AI was founded in 2015 by former US Navy SEAL Brandon Tseng, now the company president, and his brother Ryan as Chief Executive Officer.
Shield AI started out essentially as a garage company starved of funds.
“In the early days…Silicon Valley was not interested in investing in defence technology. They were told no a ton of times. After years of being told no they finally found an investor,” he said.
“Now we are a US $5.3 billion company with 1000 people globally.”
Hivemind is the company’s AI autonomy software package system, adaptable to any platform, whether unmanned aircraft, sea or ground system.
“In that journey they met a lot of the big primes. It was still too early for them to want to put an AI pilot on their systems. They took a step back and said we need our own platform and that was where V-Bat came in, so they bought Martin UAV,” Gutierrez said.
That was in 2021. Martin UAV had developed the V-BAT vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS which has been selected by the US Coast Guard for ISR operations, Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) and has been successfully deployed in Ukraine.
Since 2019, V-BAT has deployed with every US Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and has helped to interdict billions of dollars of drugs in the Caribbean.
V-BAT is propelled by a ducted, thrust-vectored fan, powered by a heavy fuel engine. Endurance is more than 12 hours with a payload of 18 kg, typically an EO/IR sensor with Sentient Tracker, or synthetic aperture radar. Communication is by way of satcom, with a Starlink connection under development.
Being VTOL, V-BAT can take off and land unassisted from any clear open area such as a warship helicopter deck in conditions as high as sea state six.
During trials in Ukraine, V-BAT also demonstrated very high resistance to electronic warfare jamming by both Russian and Ukrainian systems.
“What the customers really want is what we did in Ukraine. They want to be able to provide long range fire support. They can shoot further than they can see. They want ISR deep in denied territory, flying in contested environments and then being able to relay back that target information,” Gutierrez stated.