Beechat Network Systems Unveils MAVLink Over Reticulum: Toward Zero-Trust Drone Command & Control

Beechat Network Systems is proud to unveil a pioneering integration of the MAVLink protocol over Reticulum, introducing cryptographically secured, zero-trust mesh transport for drone command and control. This novel architecture enables a Ground Control Station (GCS) to communicate securely with a flight controller over an encrypted, zero trust, multi-hop Reticulum mesh, while preserving the MAVLink protocol.

Key Innovations and Features

• Authenticated, Encrypted Mesh Transport
  Every packet transmitted over the Reticulum layer is cryptographically authenticated and encrypted, eliminating the possibility of malicious route injection, spoofing, or unauthorised interception.
• Identity-Bound Communication
  Addresses in the mesh correspond directly to public keys, tying each node’s identity to its cryptographic key. GCS, mesh nodes, and the flight controller each present a unique identity and verify peers continuously.
• Protocol-Agnostic Overlay
  MAVLink frames are encapsulated over Reticulum, allowing upstream and downstream components to function without awareness of the underlying transport changes.
• Modular Hardware Integration
  The architecture may be instantiated using Kaonic SDR radio nodes, which bridge between serial interfaces (UART for C2) and the Reticulum mesh. This enables seamless compatibility with off-the-shelf flight controllers.
• Zero Trust by Design
  Unlike traditional perimeter security models, this architecture follows Zero Trust principles: “never trust, always verify.” There is no implicit trust of any link or node, and lateral movement is minimized.

Upcoming In-Flight Demonstration

Beechat’s engineering team is currently preparing for live flight tests of this MAVLink-over-Reticulum architecture. In the near term, we will demonstrate:

1. 1. End-to-end MAVLink telemetry, command, and parameter exchange over multiple Reticulum hops.
2. 2. Failover and route recovery under node loss or dynamic topology changes.
3. 3. Real-time telemetry under movement, interference, and challenging RF conditions.

QGroundControl App connected to a Flight Controller over radio through Reticulum

“We believe this is a significant step toward truly secure, resilient UAV command links”, said Nicholas Quinn, CEO of Beechat. “By marrying MAVLink with Reticulum’s cryptographic routing, we can bring zero-trust security down to the radio layer and make drone operations much harder to compromise.”

Use Cases & Impact

The integration of MAVLink over Reticulum opens doors to:

• Secure drone swarm fleets in contested or adversarial environments
• Resilient command & control in communications-denied or signal-degraded areas
• Mission continuity despite node failure or jamming
• Modular, transport-agnostic links all backed by a unified security model

Beechat will publish a technical whitepaper and open-source reference implementation following the demonstration flights. We invite interested parties, such as drone developers, security researchers, and governmental agencies, to engage with us for collaborative evaluation and field trials.

The reference implementation is available on GitHub.
https://github.com/BeechatNetworkSystemsLtd/rns-mavlink-rs