{"id":100617,"title":"Ornadyne - Robot Birds for Reconnaissance","tagline":"Autonomous bird-like drones for military reconnaissance.","body":"**TL;DR:** Ornadyne is building robot birds for surveillance: drones with cameras for the military that look, fly, and sound like real birds**🦅**\n\n### The Problem(s):\n\nTraditional drones have two main problems:\n\n1. Propellers are **loud**\n2. They don’t blend in; they’re **visually obvious**\n\nThis makes traditional fixed-wing and quadcopter drones extremely detectable, and inadvertently easy to shoot down and run away from.\n\n\u003chttps://youtu.be/ByrhebaiNGw\u003e\n\n---\n\nThis isn’t new. The U.S. used to lead flapping-wing flight, but **today, Europe and China are far ahead. Ornadyne is bringing the U.S. back into the lead.**\n\nWe're building autonomous ornithopters with hour-class flight times, low acoustic signatures, and natural bird-like flight. This makes Ornadyne's drones harder for humans and counter-UAS systems to detect, classify, and target.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=100617\u0026key=user_uploads/1504179/a361939c-74a4-427b-a2ef-a96f6cdc2884)\n\n---\n\n### The Founders:\n\n**Geourg’s** Master's thesis is built on 2+ years of research and development in flapping-wing drones. His work has received multiple awards through AIAA and IEEE conference publications. He is ex- NASA JPL, and ex-Astrolab, where he worked on Mars and lunar missions.\n\n**Armen** engineered Starship components at SpaceX and previously led machining at USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, helping the team set the amateur rocketry altitude world record at 144 km.\n\nBoth founders have been best friends since middle school.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=100617\u0026key=user_uploads/1504179/60143f25-5da7-45dd-93a0-0be77f9c5b45)\n\n### Ask:\n\nIf you work in defense tech or are building in the space, we’d love to connect. Introductions to anyone who might be interested in working with us would be much appreciated.","slug":"QAr-ornadyne-robot-birds-for-reconnaissance","created_at":"2026-05-01T00:54:15.289Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T01:51:54.927Z","total_vote_count":28,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/QAr-ornadyne-robot-birds-for-reconnaissance","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":31486,"name":"Ornadyne","slug":"ornadyne","url":"https://ornadyne.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/a1b22be817e9ad2d1f4b3a606e7b94d10bc6a8d6.png","batch":"Spring 2026","industry":"Industrials","tags":["Hard Tech","Robotics","Drones","Aerospace"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/31486"}}