WARDEN
For flight partners · UK BVLOS operators

You fly the aircraft.
We make it procurable.

Warden isn't a drone, an autopilot or a rival ground station. It's the command-and-accountability layer that sits downstream of yours — the governance a Fire & Rescue Service needs before it can lawfully put your aircraft over an incident.

For BVLOS operators Integration a data feed Adds zero airworthiness surface Status Design concept
Read this first

Warden is a design concept, and this page describes an intended way of working with flight partners — not an existing commercial relationship. Nothing here implies a partnership with, or endorsement by, any named operator. It's written to show how the accountability layer would plug into a licensed operator's existing service.

01 Where the line sits

One rule defines the whole system: the connection is one-way.

Warden is strictly downstream of your ground control station. Thermal video and telemetry flow in; no command of any kind flows back out. Warden cannot arm, steer or land the aircraft, because it has no path to. Flight safety, airworthiness and your CAA Operational Authorisation stay wholly yours — integrating Warden adds nothing to your safety case.

Yours The aircraft & the flight

The airframe, the payload, the autopilot, the C2 link, the licensed remote pilot and the CAA Operational Authorisation. Warden never touches any of it.

Ours The command & the record

The operating-picture console the commander watches, the role-gated human authorisation, and the tamper-evident record of every decision. The governance — not the flying.

02 Why a public body can't buy flights alone

The blocker to fire drones isn't the tech. It's a data-protection officer being able to sign it off.

A thermal camera over a street is personal-data processing under UK GDPR. A Fire & Rescue Service can't adopt a flight service — however good the aircraft — until someone can answer, on the record: what is the lawful basis, who authorised this flight, is footage stored, and who can prove it wasn't altered?

Warden answers those questions by construction: a public-task lawful basis, no facial recognition, live-only imagery by default, bounded retention, and a hash-chained ledger a court could re-check. That is what turns your service from impressive into procurable.

You bring Flight capability

A safe, authorised, public-safety-grade BVLOS service that can reach a scene fast, ahead of the appliances.

We settle The governance

The UK-GDPR / DPIA posture, the human-in-command gate and the accountability record that unlock the public-sector buyer.

03 How you plug in

Integration is a data feed, not a redesign.

Your ground station already produces the two streams Warden needs. It taps them through commodity transport and pulls them into the console — no change to your airframe, your autopilot or your C2 link.

WARDEN — where it plugs into the drone Read-only. It taps the feeds the ground station already produces — and never talks back to the aircraft. THE OPERATOR · UNTOUCHED WARDEN · READ-ONLY GOVERNANCE ONE-WAY Sky Mantis 2 EO + thermal cameras · autopilot Helix mesh Ground station pilot flies · holds the CAA OA video + telemetry = IP streams on the LAN passive tap · copy of the feeds ✕ no command ever flows back WARDEN ingest MediaMTX (video) MAVLink → WS bridge Commander’s console a separate screen WHAT “THE OVERLAY” IS drone’s thermal feed — unchanged + DFR // INCIDENT 120m · 87% · AUTO ● LIVE · not recorded NO FR + WARDEN overlay (HUD · governance) The overlay is drawn in Warden’s own viewer, over a copy of the feed — the drone’s view and the pilot’s screen are never touched. EVERY DECISION → THE RECORD Commander decides Edge fn signs it 🔒 append-only ledger Open · authorise · flag · seal — each is hash-chained into a tamper-evident record a court could re-check. One-way: video + telemetry in · no flight command out. The tap runs on a small companion box at the ground station. Illustrative — the exact tap (RTSP vs encoder, MAVLink vs a thin adapter) is confirmed with the operator. Not a partnership with Evolve Dynamics.
Where Warden taps in — and what it never touches.

01 Point the feeds at the bridge

Thermal video over RTSP → WHEP (via MediaMTX); telemetry over a small MAVLink → WebSocket bridge. Both are one-way, read-only taps on feeds you already emit.

02 The commander takes the picture

A named commander signs in to the role-based console and watches the live thermal and telemetry. Only a commander can authorise a flight or seal a record — software recommends, a person decides.

03 Every decision is signed into the record

Open, authorise, flag, purge, seal — each is written server-side into an append-only, HMAC hash-chained ledger. If a flight is ever questioned, the record answers.

04 What it pairs with

Platform-agnostic by design — because Warden never controls the aircraft.

It works with any drone that can hand it two things: a video stream and a telemetry stream. That is the whole compatibility test. How much glue it takes depends only on how open the platform is.

Native Open-stack (MAVLink)

Anything on ArduPilot or PX4 speaks MAVLink — exactly what Warden's telemetry bridge ingests. Point an RTSP / SRT video feed at it and it's near plug-and-play.

Adapter SDK & closed systems

Aircraft with their own SDK or cloud API — or a Drone-in-a-Box — integrate through a thin, per-vendor adapter that maps their video and telemetry onto the same contract.

Worked example A platform like the Sky Mantis 2

A modern British BVLOS thermal platform already does the hard part. On the Sky Mantis 2, published specs describe two video streams (daylight + thermal) plus telemetry and C2 carried over one encrypted mesh link. Warden would tap the thermal feed into its video layer and the telemetry into its bridge — with no change to the aircraft, its autopilot or its C2. The two feeds Warden needs are the two feeds it already produces.

Illustrative, drawn from published specifications. Warden has no partnership with, or endorsement from, Evolve Dynamics; any actual integration would be confirmed with the operator.

05 What's in it for you

You stay the aviation expert. We carry the data-protection burden.

Access Public-sector accounts

The governance moat is exactly what legacy primes can't offer and public bodies can't proceed without — the difference between a demo and a contract.

Cover A shared, defensible record

If a deployment is ever challenged, there's a tamper-evident account of who authorised what, why, and for how long — shared between you and the service.

You'd rather own the flying than the paperwork. Warden is built so the paperwork answers for itself — and so the thing standing between a brilliant aircraft and a signed contract stops being the aircraft.

Who we're looking for

A small number of flight partners whose aircraft and CAA authorisation are already public-safety-grade — and who'd rather own the flying than the governance. If that's you: svn-77mediaofficial@outlook.com.