HF-1

The HF-1 is a long-range one-way attack drone produced by Helsing in partnership with the Ukrainian manufacturer Terminal Autonomy. Helsing, the Munich-based defence software company best known for its battlefield AI platform, moved into hardware with this system in 2024, marking its first fielded strike drone. The HF-1 was designed for and around the war in Ukraine: announced in mid-2024 with an initial order of around 1,800 units committed to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the system is built specifically for the deep-strike missions Ukraine has pursued against Russian logistics, command nodes, and air-defence sites well behind the front line.

Mechanically the HF-1 is a fixed-wing, propeller-driven loitering munition in roughly the same class as the Iranian-supplied Shahed-136 that Russia fires at Ukraine, though Helsing has emphasised that the comparison ends at the airframe. The distinguishing feature is the onboard software. Helsing’s autonomy stack handles terminal guidance and target recognition without depending on a stable GPS lock or a continuous radio link, which matters in a theatre where Russian electronic warfare routinely jams satellite navigation and command channels along the line of contact. The drone is launched against a designated target area, navigates autonomously, and identifies and prosecutes its target in the final phase using onboard computer vision. That makes it more resilient against the jamming environment that has degraded other Western precision systems in Ukraine.

Production sits with Terminal Autonomy inside Ukraine — a deliberate choice to put manufacture close to the customer, shorten delivery cycles, and keep the supply chain inside a country that can iterate on combat feedback. Helsing supplies the autonomy software, sensors, and integration; the Ukrainian partner builds, assembles, and ships. Helsing announced a follow-on tranche later in 2024, expanding the committed order book substantially, and the HF-1 has been used operationally against Russian forces, though the details of specific strikes are not made public by either side.

The HF-1 marks a wider shift inside Helsing from a pure software vendor to a vertically integrated drone-maker, a move the company has since extended with the larger HX-2 strike drone aimed at European customers. In the Ukrainian context the HF-1 sits in the same operational niche as domestically produced long-range systems such as the FP-1 , but is differentiated by its autonomy stack and its tight coupling to a Western defence-tech firm with substantial venture backing — one of the clearest signs to date that Europe’s new generation of AI-defence companies intend to ship hardware, not only software, into the fight.