Honeywell Aerospace has completed a coordinated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) mission with two aircraft running Shield AI’s Hivemind software, according to a Shield AI announcement. The aircraft shared target data and split mission tasks without human direction.
From training to first flight
Honeywell’s autonomy team began training on Hivemind Enterprise in late April. Shield AI’s platform covers the development, deployment and operation of autonomous systems. By mid-June, the team had flown a company-owned BFD-SE8 multirotor autonomously for the first time.
The first official demonstration took place on July 8 in Plymouth, Minnesota. The aircraft took off on its own, followed a planned route, diverted around a no-fly zone and returned to base.
The Phoenix mission
Work on the second demonstration began straight after the July flight. Over three months, Honeywell trained its own target detection and tracking model, built the mission in simulation and tested it in Minnesota and Arizona.
On Oct. 8, a scout aircraft used onboard cameras and Honeywell’s AI model to detect, identify and track a target. Hivemind passed the location to a second aircraft, which flew to the target autonomously and delivered a payload. Both aircraft then returned to base. Each carried Honeywell’s o480 inertial navigation system.
Industry context
Tom Schaefer, Shield AI’s vice president of Hivemind Enterprise, said Honeywell’s engineers achieved in weeks what their leads expected to take a year. Hivemind handled the autonomy basics, he said, which freed the team to focus on its own detection model.
Todd Giles, Honeywell Aerospace’s chief technology officer, said open architectures are speeding up aerospace innovation. He described the work as a scalable foundation for future autonomous aircraft.
The tests follow a July 2026 memorandum of understanding between the companies. Next, they will define how Hivemind connects with Honeywell’s avionics, navigation and sensing systems. They also plan to apply the work to larger uncrewed aircraft and commercial aviation. Hivemind has already piloted more than 40 platforms, including F-16s, helicopters, uncrewed surface vessels and a satellite in low Earth orbit.
Learn more on Shield AI’s website
