DSEI 2025: Helsing and Systematic join forces to revolutionise drone recce-strike missions
According to Helsing, the HX-2 can engage artillery, armoured and other military targets at beyond-line-of-sight range. (Photo: Helsing)
The partnership will integrate Helsing’s AI-powered systems with the Systematic SitaWare suite of C4ISR currently used by more than 50 nations, enabling faster data exchange between ISR UAVs and Helsing’s HX-2 loitering munitions.
German AI startup Helsing and Danish software company Systematic signed a formal partnership at DSEI 2025 to provide Europe with sovereign AI-powered swarm capabilities integrated with existing C2 systems and processes, which will, according to Helsing, “revolutionise the recce-strike complex”.
Recce-strike is an approach that uses an intelligent combination of surveillance capabilities with artillery and other strike assets to find the enemy as far forward as possible, driven by new technologies as well as strategies within the armed forces.
Through the Helsing-Systematic partnership, the companies aim to strengthen Europe’s “digital defence industrial base” by providing the “capability and capacity required for quicker decisions, state-of-the-art targeting, and precision mass strike capabilities”, with the HX-2 loitering munition.
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The addition of SitaWare to the loitering munition allows users to complete essential tasks, such as “target lists, creating plans and orders, tasking strike assets, deconflicting airspace to ensure safe operations, and delivering fused friendly and enemy force pictures”.
Helsing describes the HX-2 as a software-defined and mass-producible system that can host various payload options, including multi-purpose, anti-structure and armour-penetrating-shaped charges.
The HX-2 system is widely used in Ukraine, with Helsing announcing in February 2025 that Germany would supply 6,000 units, a procurement that Shephard Defence Insight estimates has cost Germany US$600 million.
Additionally, Germany has acquired the system to test, trialling it and the OWE-V in April 2025, with an MoD spokesperson noting that the systems would inform a much larger future loitering munition procurement programme that Shephard Defence Insight values at $118.7 million.
Shephard’s DSEI 2025 coverage is sponsored by:
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