Building the Open Standard for Military UAS: Applied Aeronautics and MAVLink-M

The future of military unmanned aircraft systems will depend on more than the capabilities of any single drone, payload or software platform. Increasingly, it will depend on whether those technologies can work together.

That is the problem the MAVLink-Military (MAVLink-M) working group is working to solve.

Led through the Dronecode Foundation, MAVLink-M is an open extension of the MAVLink protocol designed to address the growing requirements of military and government uncrewed systems. The goal is straightforward but consequential: create a common, openly governed standard that allows aircraft, payloads, command systems and other technologies from different manufacturers to communicate and integrate more easily.

Applied Aeronautics is proud to be part of that effort.

Our Founder and CEO, Ryan Johnston, participates in the MAVLink-M working group and serves on the Board of Directors of the Dronecode Foundation, while our engineering team is actively contributing to the development and real-world implementation of the standard. Ryan was elected to the Dronecode Board in January 2026 as a Silver Member representative, joining a group responsible for helping guide one of the most important open-source ecosystems in autonomous systems.

Why Military UAS Interoperability Matters

The UAS industry has matured rapidly, but integration remains one of its most persistent challenges.

A new sensor may work exceptionally well. A new aircraft may offer greater range or endurance. A new communications system may provide better resilience. But combining those technologies often requires custom engineering for every new aircraft-and-payload combination.

At scale, that model becomes expensive and slow.

It can also create vendor lock-in, duplicated engineering efforts and fragmented ecosystems in which otherwise capable technologies cannot readily operate together.

MAVLink-M is intended to provide another path.

Built as an open MAVLink 2 dialect, MAVLink-M gives command systems, aircraft and payloads a common language while remaining compatible with the broader MAVLink ecosystem. Its current development has placed particular emphasis on payload command and control, while the working group is also addressing areas such as multi-platform coordination, authorization, identity and richer representation of the operating environment.

For defense and government operators, the implications are significant.

Instead of treating every integration as a bespoke engineering program, open standards create the possibility of an ecosystem in which platforms and payloads are designed from the outset to work together.

From an Idea to Working Hardware

The MAVLink-M working group officially launched in Washington, D.C. in May 2026, bringing together leaders, integrators and engineers from across the autonomous systems industry.

Its mandate extends beyond simply writing a new protocol. The working group is responsible for reviewing and ratifying the specification, creating processes for releases and future changes, establishing transparent contribution rules and ensuring that the standard remains grounded in practical implementation.

That emphasis on implementation became especially visible this summer.

At the MAVLink-Military Integration Hackathon hosted by the Dronecode Foundation and Auterion in Manassas, Virginia, engineering teams representing 14 organizations came together to test the emerging standard on real systems.

In less than 48 hours, the participating teams completed seven working integrations, connecting flight controllers, payloads and ground control systems across vendors before demonstrating those integrations to government and industry attendees. Applied Aeronautics was among the participating companies.

For us, the event represented exactly what open-source collaboration can accomplish.

Working alongside our partners at IS4S, the Applied team helped substantially expand the MAVLink-M repository and demonstrate a two-platform integration during the event.

Competitors became collaborators. Engineers who normally build different products worked against a common interface. Problems that might otherwise have required weeks or months of isolated development were being solved together in days.

That is the value of an open standard.

Open Architecture Has Always Been Part of How We Build

Applied Aeronautics has spent more than a decade building unmanned aircraft for customers operating across defense, government, research and commercial markets.

Throughout that time, we have seen the same requirement emerge again and again: customers want the freedom to choose the right technology for their mission.

That means avoiding unnecessary dependence on a single payload, software provider, communications link or subsystem.

It also means designing aircraft as platforms rather than closed products.

Our approach to UAS development has therefore increasingly centered on open architecture, modular integration and adaptable systems. MAVLink-M takes those principles beyond any individual aircraft manufacturer and applies them to the wider defense UAS ecosystem.

A truly interoperable market allows an aircraft manufacturer to focus on building exceptional aircraft. A sensor company can focus on building exceptional sensors. A communications provider can focus on resilient networks. Software developers can build better autonomy

.

And the operator gains the ability to combine them.

That is a much healthier model for innovation.

Ryan Johnston and Investing in the Open-Source UAS Community

Applied's involvement with MAVLink-M is also part of a broader commitment to the open-source community.

For Ryan Johnston, that commitment has always been about more than adopting open-source technology in our own products.

It means contributing.

Ryan has spent years working within the PX4 and Dronecode ecosystem, helping other developers and manufacturers solve problems, sharing what we have learned building and deploying real aircraft, and advocating for an industry in which good ideas can move between organizations rather than remaining trapped inside proprietary systems.

That philosophy was one of the reasons Ryan was elected to the Dronecode Foundation Board of Directors in 2026. Dronecode described his approach as one centered on leadership, ingenuity, mentorship and a commitment to an open and interoperable future in which the entire community can move faster.

It is also very much how Ryan operates inside Applied.

There is tremendous value in building a successful product. But there is another kind of value in helping build the infrastructure, standards and community that allow an entire industry to become more capable.

We believe companies should do both.

What Comes Next for MAVLink-M

The work is not finished.

Following the first integrations, the MAVLink-M working group is moving toward stabilizing the current draft and establishing a neutral process for validating cross-vendor implementations between flight controllers and payloads. Additional demonstrations are also planned as the specification continues to mature.

Those next steps matter.

An interoperability standard becomes valuable not simply when companies say they support it, but when manufacturers can build against it with confidence, systems can be independently validated, and operators can expect technologies from multiple vendors to work together in the field.

That is the future MAVLink-M is working toward.

And it is a future Applied Aeronautics is proud to help build.

For an industry moving as quickly as unmanned aviation, no single company can—or should—solve every problem alone. Open standards give us the opportunity to build on one another's work, reduce duplication and get new capabilities into the hands of operators faster.

When we build together instead of in silos, everyone moves faster.