Ukraine-tested spy drone passes French electromagnetic warfare test

A drone equipped with an airborne signals intelligence system successfully detected, classified, and geolocated every high-priority radio frequency emitter in a French military exercise earlier this month, demonstrating a capability that could fundamentally change how ground forces find and track adversary communications equipment, drone operators, and jammers without putting soldiers within range of the threats they are hunting.

The exercise, organized by France’s Cyber Defence Command and held under the name GALENE, saw Sky Spy’s SkyAgent 001 signals intelligence system integrated onto Evolve Dynamics’ Sky Mantis 2 rotary-wing drone in an electromagnetic capture-the-flag scenario designed to test real-world airborne spectrum collection against realistic threat emitters.

Signals intelligence, commonly called SIGINT, is the practice of collecting and analyzing electromagnetic emissions to identify, locate, and characterize enemy communications, radar systems, and electronic devices. On the modern battlefield, those emissions come from an enormous range of sources: radio communications between commanders and troops, the control links between drone operators and their aircraft, the radar and jamming systems that shape the electromagnetic environment, and the navigation signals that guide precision weapons. Finding and fixing those emitters gives a military force the ability to disrupt them, attack them, or simply avoid them, and the difficulty of that task has grown dramatically as adversaries have become more sophisticated in how they use and protect their electromagnetic signatures.

Ground-based signals intelligence systems face a fundamental geometric constraint: they can only collect emissions that reach them above the horizon, which in practice means they struggle to detect and precisely locate emitters that are far away or shielded by terrain. An airborne system operating at altitude looks down over a much larger area and can collect emissions from sources that are invisible to any ground-based sensor, extending the collection range significantly and improving the precision of geolocation calculations because the geometry between the sensor and the emitter is cleaner. Mounting that capability on a small rotary-wing drone, rather than a large fixed-wing aircraft requiring a runway and a large support footprint, makes it deployable at the battalion or brigade level rather than requiring theater-level assets.

Sky Spy’s SkyAgent 001 is described by the company as a lightweight, GPS-independent signals intelligence system capable of autonomous operation, meaning it can collect and process data without requiring continuous operator input or a reliable satellite navigation signal. That GPS independence is operationally critical because adversaries have invested heavily in jamming and spoofing GPS signals across contested battlespaces, and a system that fails to operate when GPS is unavailable is precisely the system that will fail at the moment it is most needed. The company’s CEO, Arsenii Hurtavtsov, described the pace of development and the operational grounding of the system in direct terms:

“Our partnership with Evolve Dynamics demonstrates the interoperability of Sky Spy’s platform with leading UAS manufacturers, and its ability to give military users an advantage in spectrum awareness. We have gone from concept to live demonstrations in less than two years and are now supporting European armed forces with systems shaped by lessons from Ukraine. We are excited to continue this collaboration as we work together to develop and deploy systems at the pace required by allied forces.”

Sky Spy, established in 2024, describes itself as an American-Estonian company, a origin that reflects the company’s operational context. Estonia, as a Baltic state bordering Russia, has been among the most active small nations in developing and deploying electronic warfare and signals intelligence capabilities, and its defense technology ecosystem has been shaped directly by proximity to the threat that Ukraine has been fighting since 2014. Sky Spy states that its systems have been used on active front lines in Ukraine across multiple combat missions, giving the company a validation record that most defense technology startups simply cannot claim.

Evolve Dynamics, the British UAS manufacturer whose Sky Mantis 2 platform hosted the SkyAgent 001 system during the GALENE exercise, brings its own Ukraine-connected operational experience to the partnership. Tom Redman, Evolve Dynamics’ CEO, described what that combination produces:

“In embarking on this partnership with Sky Spy, we combine shared frontline experience from Ukraine with our expertise integrating new capabilities into UAS for modern operators. Through joint trials led from our Kyiv facility and recent NATO demonstrations, we’ve integrated advanced electronic sensing capabilities onto our platforms, enabling operators to detect and locate hostile RF activity, including drone operators and jammers. The result is a new layer of battlefield awareness for forces operating in contested environments.”

The mention of drone operators as specific targets for detection reflects one of the most urgent tactical problems that both Ukrainian and Russian forces have grappled with throughout the conflict. A drone operator controlling an FPV attack drone produces radio frequency emissions from their control link that, in principle, can be detected and located by a sufficiently capable signals intelligence system. Finding and neutralizing drone operators before they can launch attacks is a higher-value objective than simply intercepting the drones themselves, because removing the operator removes the threat at its source rather than addressing each individual weapon after launch.

Lieutenant-Colonel Élie Fontana, head of the GCEM Unit at France’s Cyber Defence Command, provided the operational assessment that gives the demonstration its weight:

“During the GALENE exercise, Sky Spy demonstrated a lightweight airborne SIGINT capability, able to detect, classify, and geolocate multiple emitters in complex electromagnetic conditions. The system shows clear operational potential for tactical spectrum awareness in modern military operations, proving the team skills and highlighting the need for complete and efficient solutions in armed forces.”

The partnership will now expand to integrate Sky Spy’s signals intelligence systems onto smaller tactical drones including Evolve Dynamics’ Wolfe-NATO platform, scaling the capability down to the smallest and most widely distributed unmanned systems in allied inventories.