Honeywell Aerospace flies its first Hivemind autonomous aircraft, then runs a two-aircraft ISR mission

Shield AI

Honeywell Aerospace's autonomy team trained on Shield AI's Hivemind Enterprise software and made its first autonomous flight about six weeks later. On October 8 near Phoenix, two aircraft running Hivemind completed an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission, with one passing a target to the other to deliver a payload.

• Training started in late April 2026; the first autonomous flight came in mid-June, on a BFD-SE8 multirotor owned by Honeywell
• Honeywell's engineers estimated the autonomy work would take about 54 weeks on their own; with Hivemind Enterprise it took about six weeks
• October 8 mission: a scout aircraft used cameras and Honeywell's AI model to detect, identify and track a target, then handed the location to a second aircraft
• The second aircraft flew to the target on its own, delivered a payload and returned to base with the scout
• Hivemind has been flown on more than 40 platforms, including F-16s, jet uncrewed aircraft, helicopters and surface vessels; Honeywell's team built its own detection and tracking model on top