School of War The Future of Warfighting Technology Is Now with Aviv Shapira
31 snips
Apr 17, 2026 
Aviv Shapira, co-founder and CEO of Xtend and former Israeli Air Force officer, built AI-enabled drone and robotics software from competitive drone racing to defense tech. He talks about drone swarms, human-guided autonomy, VR teleoperation, tunnel and degraded-comm operations, skills-based swarm architecture, control ratios, ethical safeguards, and how this tech is deployed and protected.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Shift Operators To Intent Driven Commands
- Use AI to shift operators from low-level control to intent-driven commands so novices can perform complex drone tasks.
- Examples: AI watches ISR feeds, recognizes objects, and executes operator intent like "pick this and drop there".
AI At The Edge Makes Drones More Discriminate Than Missiles
- AI pilots let drones continue missions during jamming or lost comms, making missions more resilient and potentially more discriminate than dumb munitions.
- Drones can abort a strike if a target changes from vehicle to human, reducing collateral risk.
How Earthquake Rescue Shaped Tunnel Drone Solutions
- Xtend's tunnel work began in earthquake search-and-rescue in Turkey, where they trialed fiber-tethered drones, relay-node chains, and autonomous agents.
- Fiber gave video but short endurance; node chains scale but cost; AI agents can explore and return on breadcrumb paths.