NATO-backed startup demos drones that strike autonomously offline, but the numbers are its own

Scaleout Systems, a Swedish company backed by NATO's DIANA accelerator, demonstrated a loitering munition whose onboard AI detects and identifies targets, generates coordinates and drops explosives with no external compute.

The demo sits inside the ALMA affordable loitering munition project led by BAE Systems Bofors. In a June test at a Swedish air base, the company also showed a federated-learning setup: when the forward node lost contact with the central node, local devices kept running AI inference and active learning, syncing models back once the link returned.

All performance claims come from the company's own demo materials and an interview with its CEO; there is no independent verification or combat record.