The Pentagon has tapped Shield AI to integrate its Hivemind autonomy software onto the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System to enable the fielding of drone swarms, the company announced yesterday.

The Defense Department's research and engineering office wants Hivemind to serve as the “AI pilot” for the LUCAS program, allowing the one-way attack drones to operate en masse and largely without human intervention, the press release stated.

The software is intended to help LUCAS systems “coordinate, maneuver and adapt together to changing conditions in real time, based on warfighter input,” according to Shield AI. Still, a single human operator will be in control of any decision to strike targets.

“The effort marks a major step toward operationalizing collaborative autonomy: teams of autonomous systems working together in dynamic and communications-constrained environments under the supervision of a single operator,” the company wrote.

Swarming would eventually be used in battle to confuse or overwhelm enemy defenses while also providing the military with more robust capability at scale.

The company is planning to test its swarming capability, and ultimately the integration between Hivemind and LUCAS, via an operational demonstration in the fall. During that event, one operator will command the swarm of autonomous LUCAS drones operating together, Shield AI said.

“Hivemind simplifies the operation of networked unmanned systems by enabling a single operator to command multiple platforms at once for complex coordinated operations,” the software firm added. “Humans remain in control of strike decisions while autonomy manages navigation, coordination, and execution. The result shortens the time from detection to action across the kill chain.”

LUCAS drones are a reverse-engineered version of Iran’s Shahed drone, which reportedly cost under $50,000 per tail to produce and are small enough to be launched from the back of a truck.

The plan to foster LUCAS swarms comes as the Pentagon is asking for nearly $55 billion in fiscal year 2027 alone to rapidly ramp up drone production and autonomy development under the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group.

“The Hivemind AI pilot enables platforms to sense, decide, and act independently, without human intervention,” Shield AI said. “Unlike traditional autopilots that cannot deviate from preplanned routes, Hivemind dynamically reroutes mission plans, responds to unexpected conditions, avoids obstacles, and executes complex tasks safely and effectively.”