US nonprofit Dronecode Foundation has brought together 14 defense and commercial companies to test whether military drones and their equipment can work across vendors using the new MAVLink-Military (MAVLink-M) communications protocol.
The three-day hackathon, hosted in partnership with Auterion at its facility in Manassas, Virginia, involved 38 government and industry representatives.
Demonstrations tested MAVLink-M across different flight controllers, payloads, and ground control stations, with each implementation validated using a neutral test payload.
The event also received support from the Drone Dominance Program, a US Department of Defense initiative worth approximately $1 billion that aims to expand domestic production of small military drones while reducing reliance on foreign supply chains.
“In less than 48 hours, members of the Dronecode community integrated their drone platforms, proving that competing vendors can solve interoperability problems faster in the open than any of them can alone,” said Ramón Roche, executive director of the Dronecode Foundation.
“With MAVLink-M, we are building toward a future where cross-vendor plug-and-play payloads are the default, not a custom integration project.”
Providing ‘Common Language’
First developed in 2009, MAVLink is a lightweight, open-source messaging protocol that acts as a universal language to connect drones, flight controllers, command systems, related ground stations, and onboard hardware across low-bandwidth networks.
MAVLink-M expands the protocol to military UAS platforms, allowing equipment from different manufacturers to communicate through a common standard instead of relying on proprietary integrations.
The approach is designed to reduce vendor lock-in and make it easier for operators to combine platforms, payloads, and control systems from different suppliers.
MAVLink-M also preserves full compatibility with the civilian MAVLink configuration, which is used across more than 1 million platforms.
“MAVLink was created to give robotic systems a common language that builders could rely on,” said Lorenz Meier, CEO of Auterion and creator of MAVLink.
“MAVLink-M brings that same foundation to defense, where every integration delay slows down capability for the operator. Payload interoperability has to move at mission speed, giving warfighters trusted capabilities they can integrate, validate, and field faster.”
