Reil: AI algorithms already enable robust GPS-free drone navigation on frontlines
Torsten Reil · Building Defense Technologies to Protect Democracies | Torsten Reil, Helsing · Aug 26, 2026 · at 6:13
Torsten Reil, co-founder of defense tech unicorn Helsing, explains how modern military drones overcome frontline GPS jamming using vision-based AI navigation.
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“Pretty much the whole frontline is GPS jammed, so you can't use your GPS receiver, so you need to find a different way to navigate and know where you are. You either do that with a human trying to recognize where they are, just almost like a pilot of a plane does, or you do it with AI that tries to do the same thing. And those algorithms now are very robust. They work in, in daylight, at night you know, in the snow even with, Kind of deformed terrain, which obviously happens quite a lot with the shell impacts. So that technology already exists.”
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