The future of autonomous warfare is unfolding in Europe

Linking all these elements together is Altra, the company’s so-called “­recce-strike software platform,” which served as part of the collective brain in the ASGARD trials. It’s the key piece. “These kill webs are competitive in attack and defense,” says General Richard Barrons, a former commander of the United Kingdom’s Joint Forces Command, who recently coauthored a major Ministry of Defense modernization plan that champions the deterrent effect of autonomous targeting webs. Barrons invited me to imagine Russian leaders contemplating a possible incursion into Narva in eastern Estonia. “If they’ve done a reasonable job,” he said, referring to NATO, “Russia knows not to do that … that little incursion—it will never get there. It’ll be destroyed the minute it sets foot across the border.” 

With a targeting web in place, a medley of missiles, drones, and artillery could coordinate across borders and domains to hit anything that moves. On its product page for Altra, Helsing notes that the system is capable of orchestrating “saturation attacks,” a military tactic for breaching an adversary’s defenses with a barrage of synchronized weapon strikes. The goal of the technology, a Helsing VP named Simon Brünjes explained in a speech to an Israeli defense convention in 2024, is “lethality that deters effectively.” 

To put it a bit less delicately, the idea is to show any potential aggressors that Europe is capable, if provoked, of absolutely losing its shit. The US Navy is working to establish a similar capacity for defending Taiwan with hordes of autonomous drones that rain down on Chinese vessels in coordinated volleys. The admirals have their own name for the result such swarms are intended to achieve: “hellscape.”

The humans in the loop

The biggest obstacle to achieving the full effect of saturation attacks is not the technology. It’s the human element. “A million drones are great, but you’re going to need a million people,” says Richard Drake, head of the European branch of Anduril, which builds a product range similar to Helsing’s and also participated in ASGARD.

Drake says the kill chain in a system like ASGARD “can all be done autonomously.” But for now, “there is a human in the loop making those final decisions.” Government rules require it. Echoing the stance of most other European states, Estonia’s Tikk told me, “We also insist that human control is maintained over decisions related to the use of lethal force.” 

Helsing’s drones in Ukraine use object recognition to detect targets, which the operator reviews before approving a strike. The aircraft operate without human control only once they enter their “terminal guidance” phase, about half a mile from their target. Some locally produced drones employ similar “last mile” autonomy. This hands-free strike mode is said to have a hit rate in the range of 75%, according to research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (A Helsing spokesperson said that the company uses “multiple visual aids” to mitigate “potential difficulties” in target recognition during terminal guidance.) 

HELSING

That doesn’t quite make them killer robots. But it suggests that the barriers to full lethal autonomy are no longer necessarily technical. Helsing’s Brünjes has reportedly said its strike drones can “technically” perform missions without human control, though the company does not support full autonomy. Bordes declined to say whether the company’s fielded drones can be switched into a fully autonomous mode in the event that a government changes its policy midway through a conflict. 

Either way, the company could loosen the loop in the coming years. Helsing’s AI team in Paris, led by Bordes, is working to enable a single human to oversee multiple HX-2 drones in flight simultaneously. Anduril is developing a similar “one-to-many” system in which a single operator could marshal a fleet of 10 or more drones at a time, Drake says.