Sky Spy and Orqa Demonstrate Portable UAV-Based SIGINT System at NATO's Exercise Spring Storm

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On 29 June 2026, Sky Spy and Orqa announced the results of a live demonstration conducted during Exercise Spring Storm, Estonia's largest annual military exercise. The event drew more than 12,000 NATO personnel from over 20 nations and provided the venue for what the companies describe as the first confirmed operational demonstration of their combined UAV-based SIGINT system with NATO forces.

The technical core of the demonstration was the integration of Sky Spy's SkyAgent 001 autonomous passive RF sensor onto Orqa's MRM2-10 FPV UAV platform. The testing was hosted by the Estonian Defence Forces' Force Transformation Command and conducted in a simulated electromagnetic attack scenario with Estonia's 131st Infantry Battalion. According to both companies, the system successfully identified hostile emitters in the exercise area at ranges that exceeded the reach of conventional ground-based RF sensors.

The operational problem the system targets is well-established. The modern battlefield is increasingly saturated with RF emitters — radars, jammers, UAV control stations, and other electronic signatures — while ground-based sensors remain constrained by terrain, range, and line-of-sight limitations. Legacy SIGINT systems, meanwhile, tend to be too heavy, static, or slow to support fast-moving operations. By elevating a passive RF sensor onto a small, rapidly deployable UAV, Sky Spy and Orqa are attempting to push spectrum intelligence down to the battalion level.

The SkyAgent 001 is a passive system — it does not transmit any RF energy of its own, making it difficult for adversaries to detect its presence. Onboard signal processing autonomously classifies detected emissions into categories such as radars, jammers, and drone control stations, then pushes actionable intelligence directly to frontline units without requiring a specialist operator to interpret raw data in real time. The integrated system creates a compact airborne electronic intelligence capability that can be carried, deployed, and operated by a single soldier within minutes.

The exercise scenario was explicitly shaped by lessons from Ukraine. Sky Spy, founded in 2024 as an American-Estonian company, states that its systems have been used on active frontlines in Ukraine across multiple combat missions — a validation record that informs both the design of the SkyAgent 001 and the tactical doctrine around its use.

Sky Spy CEO Arsenii Hurtavtsov framed the Spring Storm demonstration as a key milestone: "As a company with roots in Estonia, this exercise with Orqa and the Estonian Defence Forces is an important milestone for Sky Spy. It demonstrates the operational relevance of our technology for allied armed forces and shows how lightweight UAVs can become part of a wider spectrum intelligence network."

Orqa co-founder and CEO Srdjan Kovacevic emphasised the platform's modularity and Orqa's open-systems approach: "Orqa is committed to working with leading western players on the creation of third party additions for our latest generation of products specifically designed to support bespoke customer developments. As the largest drone manufacturer in the EU to build both integrated systems and components, we are proud to support the Estonian Defence Forces."

The Spring Storm demonstration is the second major NATO-aligned exercise at which the SkyAgent 001 has been publicly validated in 2026. In May, Sky Spy and Evolve Dynamics demonstrated the same sensor payload — integrated onto Evolve Dynamics' Sky Mantis 2 rotary-wing UAS — during France's GALENE exercise, organized by France's Cyber Defence Command. That test saw the SkyAgent 001 detect, classify, and geolocate all high-priority emitters in an electromagnetic capture-the-flag scenario. The growing roster of host-nation exercises points to a deliberate multi-platform integration strategy by Sky Spy.

Sky Spy has also stated that its modular, drone-agnostic architecture is enabling rapid integration across drone manufacturers. The SkyAgent 001 connects via a standardised interface rather than being embedded in any single airframe, allowing the same sensor package to migrate to new platforms as requirements evolve and to be rapidly adopted by allied forces operating different UAV types.

Technical Breakdown

Platform: Orqa MRM2-10 — a multi-role FPV multirotor UAV built around a 10-inch propeller configuration in a carbon-fibre airframe. Classified as a small UAS (Group 1 class).

NDAA / Compliance: Fully NDAA-compliant, with no Chinese-manufactured components in the bill of materials; also compliant with Berry Act and Section 889 requirements. Designed and manufactured in Osijek, Croatia.

Payload capacity: Up to 3.5 kg across a propeller disc configuration designed to accommodate larger payloads without centre-of-gravity compromise.

Propulsion: 2814-series brushless motors at 880 kV, 10-inch props.

C2 / Communications link: Orqa IRONghost EW-resilient dual-channel sub-GHz command link, enabling a 1 km operator stand-off via a mast-mountable IRONghost QS ground module connected over a single CAT5 cable. A 5.8 GHz analogue video transmitter provides FPV feed.

Autonomy / flight controller: H743-based core supporting ArduPilot, iNav, and Betaflight firmware; full MAVLink support with ATAK integration via the Orqa Tac.Ctrl tactical controller.

SIGINT payload — SkyAgent 001:

• Sensor type: Passive RF only (no emissions; covert by design)
• Mass: Just over 500 grams
• Processing: Fully onboard signal classification — detects, classifies, and geolocates radars, jammers, drone control stations, and other RF emitters in real time without external compute or analyst intervention
• GPS dependency: Designed to operate in GPS-denied and jammed environments using proprietary filtering algorithms and custom RF hardware
• Interface: Standardised, platform-agnostic integration connector; compatible with any COP/C2 infrastructure
• Autonomy level: High — autonomous signal detection, classification, and geolocation with minimal operator input required

System footprint: Man-portable; single-soldier deploy-and-operate within minutes.

Industry Impact

For UAV manufacturers: The SkyAgent 001's drone-agnostic, standardised interface architecture creates a new class of payload integration opportunity for small-UAS platform builders. Orqa's open-systems philosophy — evidenced by the MRM2-10's modular airframe and MAVLink/ATAK support — positions it as a preferred carrier for third-party defence payloads. Competitors building NDAA-compliant platforms will face pressure to match similar open-integration commitments.

For defence operators and armed forces: The demonstration establishes a proof point for pushing SIGINT capability to the battalion or even company level, displacing reliance on theatre-level or specialist-operator-dependent assets. The Spring Storm and GALENE demonstrations together show that the system can cross NATO partner boundaries and integrate with different host-nation exercises, lowering the barriers to allied procurement.

For the SIGINT and EW industry: The SkyAgent 001's onboard processing model — running a full signal classification pipeline on the edge, without cloud or remote compute — represents a design direction that legacy SIGINT vendors will need to respond to. Traditional airborne SIGINT systems optimised for large platforms (fixed-wing ISR aircraft, manned helicopters) are being challenged by sub-kilogram payloads that deliver comparable emitter-identification functions at a fraction of the cost and logistics burden.

For integrators and programme managers: Sky Spy's rapid two-exercise validation tempo across two NATO nations in a single calendar year (France in May 2026, Estonia in June 2026) signals an accelerating integration roadmap. The company has indicated it is actively integrating with additional drone manufacturers, and has previously confirmed a pipeline into smaller platforms such as Evolve Dynamics' Wolfe-NATO. Programme managers evaluating electromagnetic spectrum management at the tactical edge now have a credible, exercise-validated data point for procurement decisions.

For investors: Sky Spy raised $1.6 million in a pre-seed round in late 2025, with investors citing technical depth and rapid end-user validation. The pace of publicly confirmed NATO exercises — combined with Sky Spy's stated frontline validation record in Ukraine — provides the kind of credible, primary-source evidence trail that de-risks early-stage defence tech investment. Orqa, meanwhile, raised a $14.7 million Series A in early 2026, bringing total funding past $23 million, and has scaled annual production capacity to 280,000 drones at its Osijek facility.