Mutable Tactics, a British robotics autonomy startup, has raised £1.6 million in a pre-seed round led by Seraphim Space, with participation from the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund, Koro, Entrepreneurs First and Transpose. The funding will accelerate development of software that allows unmanned systems, such as aerial, maritime or ground drones, to operate and make decisions even when communications are lost or unreliable.
Defence forces are deploying increasing numbers of unmanned systems across land, sea and air, but autonomous operating decision-making has not scaled at the same pace as sensors and platforms. As a result, deployments often rely on one operator controlling one system, limiting how many drones can be used effectively at any given time. In contested environments where communications are degraded, denied or disrupted, systems that depend on constant human control quickly reach their limits.
Mutable Tactics is addressing this challenge by enabling mixed fleets of drones to operate together as a coordinated team rather than individually piloted platforms. It is building a decision layer that sits between the human operator and the robot, translating a commander’s high-level intent and constraints into locally executable actions so drones can adapt to changing conditions and coordinate with one another even when communications or GPS are unreliable.
Decisions are made locally at the tactical edge within boundaries set by the human operator, allowing one operator to supervise and direct multiple unmanned systems rather than manually controlling each one. This removes the human bottleneck and allows forces to make use of larger numbers of drones in complex and contested environments while maintaining meaningful human control.
The pre-seed funding will be used to expand the engineering team in Cambridge and accelerate development of the decision-layer software. The funds will support development and validation of the technology in collaboration with two European governments, integration work with unmanned-system partners, and preparation for live demonstrations in demanding environments.
Mutable Tactics was founded in August 2024 by former British Army officer Colin MacLeod and robotics AI specialist Enrique Muñoz de Cote. MacLeod served on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he saw how technology performs under operational pressure and focused the business on challenges such as limited human attention, degraded communications and systems that must continue functioning predictably when conditions deteriorate.
Increasingly, the constraint is no longer hardware but human attention. We can deploy more drones than ever before, yet we still ask operators to control them one by one, often in environments where communications are unreliable. True autonomy breaks that one-to-one link, allowing humans to supervise and direct teams of systems rather than individual machines. That shift is essential for supporting modern military missions, where scale, speed and resilience matter, and where operators must remain focused on intent and outcomes rather than manual control.
There is no single AI technique that solves autonomy. Deep learning allows systems to operate in uncertain, real-world environments, while deterministic AI ensures their behaviour remains explainable and aligned with a commander’s intent. Combining both enables autonomy that is resilient in contested environments while preserving meaningful human control – critical for military deployments. That fusion sits at the core of Mutable Tactics, and the UK’s leadership in probabilistic inference provides an essential foundation for this work
Mutable Tactics is building drone autonomy for modern conflicts: contested, jammed, and often GPS-denied environments. Most autonomy assumes clean communications and high-end platforms. Mutable’s software lets low-cost drones operate as coordinated teams when communications degrade, giving operators faster decisions and better outcomes without upgrading every platform. As space investors, we like that the system is designed to keep working across satellite, alternative navigation, and manual modes without changing kit. Colin and Enrique bring a rare mix of battlefield insight and true robotics autonomy expertise.
We are delighted to invest in Mutable Tactics, a UK company that is addressing a critical bottleneck with an approach designed for real operational constraints. Mutable Tactics’ technology ensures that the UK remains a leader in the development of resilient, explainable and strategic autonomy that can operate in the most challenging environments.
