By: Dawn Zoldi
When Russia’s full‑scale invasion shattered Ukraine’s sense of normalcy, Blue Arrow co‑founder and CEO Sergii Tereshchenko decided that his Kyiv‑based IT company would stop building training tools for civilian industries and start building technology to help defend his country. “We started thinking about how to use our expertise in the best way,” and urgently pivoted from virtual reality and digital twins for energy and logistics clients to training Ukrainian servicemembers to prepare drones for missions and model the battlefield itself.
That wartime inflection point gave rise to Blue Arrow, a dual‑nation startup with two Ukrainian and two American co‑founders, focused on delivering a scalable command and control (C2) stack for asymmetric warfare. At its core sits RII (pronounced “ree,” from the Ukrainian word for “swarm”), a command‑layer system that lets a single operator manage many drones and missions at the tactical edge. The company has also developed MZK, a compact hardware “brain” to carry that software into harsh, GPS‑denied environments. This is their story.
Born in Asymmetric War
The Russian‑Ukrainian conflict has rolled out as a textbook case of asymmetric warfare. “Russia has more armored vehicles, more munitions and more people than us,” noted Maryna Tymchenko, Blue Arrow’s Director of Partnerships. “We can’t match them tank‑for‑tank, so we need to be creative and innovative,” she said.
That imbalance shows up most acutely in the demand for skilled drone pilots. Training takes time, and the operators themselves remain priority targets on the battlefield. “We aim to make it possible for one operator to manage multiple drones at once,” Tymchenko noted, to reduce both the cognitive load and the number of highly specialized pilots needed at the front. The goal is not to take humans out of the loop, she emphasized, but to give them tools to manage large, complex missions more safely and effectively.
Tereshchenko’s earlier work in digital twins and simulation became a foundation for that ambition. Before 2022, his teams built virtual and augmented reality training solutions for sectors like energy, nuclear and logistics. After the invasion, he repurposed that same know‑how to create digital replicas of the battlefield and to train perception models that help drones navigate, identify targets and execute missions under fire.
“We understood that technology is changing the frontline every week,” he said. In his view, enabling one person to operate “hundreds or thousands of drones” is not just about winning today’s battles. It is about giving smaller nations a defensive tool that can deter future ground wars, or help them win the ones that nevertheless get started.
Inside RII: Swarm‑Grade Command and Control
RII sits above individual flight controllers and radios to provide what company co-founder Olga Pogoda calls a command layer for battlefield management. “Beyond just a swarming capability, RII enables us to have a command layer on top of the operation level,” she explained. “You may need to manage an entire mission, or multiple missions, at the same time.” From a single interface, a commander can:
- Plan and launch multiple large‑scale missions in parallel, rather than serial sorties.
- Task different classes of drones (think: ISR assets, bombers, FPV platforms) into coordinated roles in the same operation.
- Maintain continuous ISR coverage while strike assets execute terminal phases of an attack.
“You could send 10 ISR drones this way, 10 that way, then have bomber drones come in for a specific reason, and your FPV drones for the last‑mile strike,” Pogoda elaborated. While those missions unfold, ISR aircraft stream data back into RII, building a dynamic digital twin of the battlefield that feeds the next round of planning. Under the hood, key capabilities include:
- GPS‑denied navigation, leveraging advanced visual navigation techniques refined with partner KEF Robotics.
- Target tracking and identification modules that help operators find, fix and follow vehicles and infantry in real conditions.
- A terminal guidance solution and ballistic calculator, in development to ship alongside the main C2 system.
Blue Arrow designed these features to reduce the physical and cognitive burden on each operator so they can safely manage many vehicles at once, even under intense jamming and attrition.
MZK: The “Brain” at the Tactical Edge
To get RII to the front quickly, Blue Arrow pairs its software with a dedicated hardware module called MZK (short for “Mozok,” Ukrainian for “brain”). Marketed as MZK, the unit bundles all major software components in a single, fieldable payload. MZK carries visual navigation for GPS‑denied environments; object detection and tracking; fleet and group management services; plus terminal guidance and a ballistic calculator, plus other mission critical modules.
In early deployments, Blue Arrow will sell MZK as a combined hardware‑software offering to enable rapid testing with Ukrainian units near the front. For the longer‑term, Tereshchenko said, “Our ultimate goal is to sell only software and be totally hardware agnostic,” compatible with different autopilots, flight controllers and communication links.
Operating in Ukraine gives the team real, current combat data, which Western competitors often lack. By recording how vehicles and infantry actually look and move in theater, they can refine visual navigation and targeting models for reliability “in real conditions,” not just in synthetic environments.
From Grant Program to Frontline Evaluation
The Blue Arrow team candidly admitted that RII is not yet “fully” battle‑proven. The system is in the final stages of development ahead of a first operational evaluation with a paired Ukrainian unit in the second quarter of this year.
Through programs such as BRAVE1, the company is able to gather direct end-user feedback, accelerate field validation, and support deployment in real-world operational conditions.
“Our first step when we launch this product is actually not to sell it,” Pogoda noted. “We will be delivering it to the appointed unit for their evaluation first.” She sees that brutally honest feedback loop as key. “These guys are brutal. They’re going to tell us if it sucks.” The team is confident that will not be the case, however, and that frontline feedback will provide them with a competitive edge in an otherwise crowded C2 and autonomy market.
Blue Arrow has already tested prototypes roughly 15 kilometers from the front and used those exercises and Brave1’s input to finalize the RII stack and MZK hardware. The next milestone is delivery to the partnered unit, then scaling module production for broader distribution to drone manufacturers and end users.
Simultaneous U.S. Push and Capital Raise
Even as they prepare for Ukrainian frontline evaluation, Blue Arrow’s founders are moving aggressively to establish a presence in the United States and with NATO partners. The company recently briefed its solution to the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and gathered feedback on how RII could support operations in the Indo‑Pacific theater.
“We are trying to make headway in the U.S. market simultaneously while we’re testing at the front lines,” Pogoda said. The team is actively engaging with U.S. and European militaries and expects to be on the ground at several key events this year, including SOF Week in the United States, UK Defense Tech Week / Defense Tech Forum in London and Latitude 59 in Estonia, a major regional innovation and defense‑tech gathering.
Partnerships remain central to the strategy. Blue Arrow is “always seeking partnerships with aircraft manufacturers,” Pogoda stressed, to integrate RII and MZK directly into platforms and deliver what is “really needed in the current market.”
On the financing side, the company is raising a seed round to move from prototype to scaled deployment. The founders are selective about who they want around the table. “We’re looking for very strategic investors,” Pogoda noted, people who have “spent time in defense,” understand long procurement cycles and recognize both the difficulty and the impact of getting war‑fighting technology right.
Human in the Loop, Deterrence in Mind
For all the talk of swarming, Blue Arrow’s leaders reemphasized where they draw the line. “We are not aiming for full autonomy and for autonomous swarms,” Tymchenko foot-stomped. “We want to keep the human in the loop in terms of the decisions that are made, but we want to make it much, much easier for humans to operate large missions.”
Tereshchenko linked that philosophy to a broader strategic vision. As technology accelerates, he argued, systems like RII can serve not only as force multipliers for under‑resourced defenders but as deterrents that “really stop this war and prevent new wars from starting.” If a smaller nation can credibly field one‑to‑many drone capabilities, he suggested, aggressors may think twice before rolling armor across a border.
In a conflict where innovation cycles are measured in weeks at the tactical edge, Blue Arrow has bet big that its combination of swarm‑grade C2, hardened edge hardware and data‑rich AI models, grounded in real Ukrainian combat experience, will define the future of battlefield management globally.
If you’re an aircraft OEM, a unit wrestling with drone‑pilot shortages or a defense‑savvy investor looking for battle‑driven innovation in swarm‑era C2, Blue Arrow wants to talk. As Tymchenko put it, “We need to be creative and innovative.” At the asymmetric tactical edge, creativity of companies like Blue Arrow may very well decide what tomorrow’s battlefield looks like.
Blue Arrow’s team will be meeting operators, acquisition leaders and investors across the U.S. and Europe throughout the year. You can connect with them at various upcoming events (mentioned above) and through their online at their website, where you can learn more about the company, its leadership team and its technology stack: https://www.bluearrow.co/.