The Spanish Ministry of Defence has launched the FENIX project to develop and validate an autonomous control and coordination system for heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicle swarms, with UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía providing the core technical foundation.
Framed within the COINCIDENTE Programme, the national R&D plan for innovative defence solutions, the initiative is led by Alpha Unmanned Systems utilizing its existing rotary-wing UAV platforms. UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía’s core technical foundation provides advanced guidance, navigation, and control autopilot technology. The development process will also benefit from the institutional support of the Advanced Aerospace Technologies Centre and the Association for Research and Industrial Cooperation of Andalusia at the University of Seville.
The primary objective of FENIX is to build a technological demonstrator through simulation and flight test campaigns that endows UAV swarms with collective intelligence aligned with military doctrine. The system is designed to optimize efficiency and robustness during surveillance and reconnaissance tasks in complex, contested environments. Key technological developments include a real-time coordination and planning system capable of dynamic replanning during unforeseen events, alongside a cooperative perception system that integrates multisensor data to maintain tracking accuracy despite adverse weather or physical occlusions.
Furthermore, the system introduces critical mission capabilities, allowing the swarm to identify and map areas facing global navigation satellite system jamming or spoofing, operate within chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threat scenarios, and conduct precise target acquisition and search and rescue operations. Operators manage the swarm through a single human-machine interface by defining the overall mission objectives. The system then automatically decomposes the mission into simple tasks, allocates them based on individual vehicle capabilities, and generates safe, physically feasible trajectories that respect communication ranges and energy limitations.
