Electronic warfare and communication denial have increasingly complicated modern unmanned warfare, rendering single-operator drone tactics vulnerable on the frontlines. To overcome these operational bottlenecks, Ukrainian-Estonian defense-tech startup NORDA Dynamics and US-based Palladyne AI (NASDAQ: PDYN) have announced a strategic partnership to integrate their autonomous systems, enabling synchronized, multi-target drone swarm operations without centralized control.
The collaboration connects Palladyne AI’s SwarmOS™ collaborative autonomy platform with NORDA’s combat-proven Underdog terminal guidance module. Together, the integrated system allows groups of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to autonomously detect, classify, prioritize, and engage multiple ground and naval targets simultaneously in heavily contested environments.
Modular Autonomy: From Group Coordination to Precision Strike
The integrated architecture divides operational phases between the two platforms while keeping human-in-the-loop oversight for engagement decisions:
Collaborative Reconnaissance & Target Allocation (SwarmOS): Palladyne AI’s software manages group-level autonomy. Multiple unmanned systems collaboratively scan sectors, detect and classify targets, distribute assignments among individual platforms, and track multiple moving or stationary objects concurrently.
Terminal Guidance & Strike Execution (Underdog): Once targets are distributed via SwarmOS data handoff, NORDA’s Underdog module takes control of the final phase. It ensures precision tracking and terminal guidance for each drone to its designated target, functioning reliably even during complete communications blackout caused by electronic warfare (EW).
The companies plan to deploy and integrate the combined software stack across one or more unmanned platforms, followed by a joint live demonstration pending required government approvals.
Executive Perspectives
“We built the NORDA ecosystem to provide autonomy across all mission stages: navigation when GPS is unavailable, target recognition when communication is jammed, and terminal guidance when manual control is impossible. Underdog is the most battle-hardened part of this ecosystem, tested across tens of thousands of real combat deployments. Palladyne AI’s SwarmOS has demonstrated that unmanned platforms can operate as a unified team without centralized control. Integrating our technologies means that each platform in a group can reach its designated target while the entire group adapts to the situation together. Proven precision plus proven collective autonomy is exactly what operators need right now”.
— Nazar Bihun, Co-founder and CEO of NORDA Dynamics
“NORDA has proven in practice that its terminal guidance system can operate in real combat conditions, specifically under EW and without GPS. SwarmOS complements this technology by enabling diverse drone types to act collaboratively: simultaneously detecting and tracking multiple targets, distributing them among themselves, and then passing that data to the NORDA system for precision terminal guidance. This eliminates the need for continuous communication or a dedicated operator for every single drone. This is the pathway from a single weapon surviving combat to a swarm winning it”.
— Ben Wolff, President and CEO of Palladyne AI
Key Numbers and Milestones
Public Market Backing: Palladyne AI is a publicly traded US company on NASDAQ (PDYN) developing embodied AI and collaborative autonomy for defense and commercial sectors.
Over 200 Military Units: NORDA Dynamics’ technologies are actively deployed by more than 200 units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
93% Mission Success Rate: According to an analysis of over 1,000 combat reports, NORDA’s Underdog 0.8 module achieves a 93% mission efficiency rate.
100,000+ Combat Missions: NORDA’s solutions have been integrated with dozens of Ukrainian drone manufacturers and utilized in over 100,000 real combat missions.
About the Companies
About NORDA Dynamics
Founded in 2024 with roots in volunteer support for the Ukrainian military dating back to 2014, NORDA Dynamics is a Ukrainian-Estonian defense-tech company developing an autonomous drone ecosystem. Its core platform, Underdog CORE, provides GNSS-denied navigation, target recognition, terminal guidance, and on-board decision-making. The company’s portfolio includes strike quadcopters, fixed-wing UAV platforms, and heavy-lift hexacopters for logistics and emergency response.
Learn more: www.norda.tech
About Palladyne AI
Palladyne AI (NASDAQ: PDYN) is an American technology company specializing in patented embodied artificial intelligence and collective autonomy software for defense and industrial applications. Designed for complex, contested, and multi-domain environments (air, land, sea), the technology enables decentralized mission execution, resilient operations during communication loss, and multi-agent coordination with human oversight.
Learn more: www.palladyneai.com
