The founder of the miltech startup The Fourth Law, Yaroslav Azhnyuk, first showed numerous videos of the use of the company’s flagship product — the TFL-1 module, which provides drones with autonomy when approaching a target. The Fourth Law also reported attracting funding from Western investors.
The founder of the miltech startup The Fourth Law, Yaroslav Azhnyuk, first showed numerous videos of the use of the company’s flagship product — the TFL-1 module, which provides drones with autonomy when approaching a target. The Fourth Law also reported attracting funding from Western investors.
Kyiv-based defense company The Fourth Law (TFL) has announced that it has raised funding from a group of venture capital funds and angel investors from the EU, the US, and Canada, according to a press release obtained by dev.ua.
The company’s first products, the TFL-1 autonomy module, and the Lupinis-10-TFL-1 UAV (day and night) — significantly increase the success rate of FPV drone missions, while increasing their cost by only 10-20%. This is made possible by transferring control of the drone during the last 500 meters of the flight to an on-board computer that works with artificial intelligence algorithms. This allows you to overcome electronic warfare, radio horizon interference, and improve pilot efficiency.
TFL claims that they have managed to develop a unique multi-level artificial intelligence system that is able to determine the type of stationary or moving target and fly precisely to the center, despite dozens of different obstacles encountered in real missions.
«Massively scalable drone autonomy is perhaps the most important defense technology of this decade. No one in the world understands this better than the Ukrainian Defense Forces. We are doing the most important work of our lives, and the funding we attract from investors is a critical catalyst for strengthening the defense capabilities of the Free World,» said Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder and CEO of the company.
According to the commander of the 58th Special Forces Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel Ruslan Shevchuk, his pilots have been using drones with the TFL-1 module since March 2025. «The system helps to overcome electronic warfare suppression, capture and hit a target in difficult conditions. It most qualitatively demonstrates its advantages during special missions. From our experience of use, it is a system that really works,» he said.
The Fourth Law notes that the TFL-1 is designed to be produced in volumes of hundreds of thousands of units per month, and the price allows it to be installed on every FPV drone. In addition to the modules themselves, The Fourth Law also supplies the Lupinis-10-TFL-1 — both a UAV (standalone drone) and an UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle complex), consisting of one hundred 10-inch FPV drones with TFL-1 autonomy, a ground control station, and auxiliary equipment.
These drones are capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 30 kilometers, carrying a payload of 1 kg, and at shorter distances — up to 3.5 kg. In addition to the Lupynis platform, the TFL-1 is integrated into drones of more than a dozen major FPV manufacturers. The company supplies the Lupynis-10-TFL-1 UAV to the Defense Forces and government customers, and the TFL-1 modules and licenses themselves can be integrated and ordered by other UAV manufacturers. It is noteworthy that TFL products have undergone the codification procedure and are used by dozens of units in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
TFL’s vision for full and scalable autonomy for defense FPV drones envisions five stages of autonomy:
«After achieving these milestones, second-order products for modern defense needs become possible and viable, including drone swarms and nests, drone carriers, and fully autonomous interceptors of enemy drones of various types — from fiber-optic FPV to shaheeds and cruise missiles,» the startup says.
The software stack that provides autonomy includes simulation for modeling and analysis, computer vision, navigation and other functions, a fleet management system, all of this independently of access to satellite navigation systems via GNSS.
This allows for relatively easy integration across platforms; the company already plans to port the system’s capabilities from quadcopters to fixed-wing aircraft, and in the future these features could be integrated into missiles, land-based and sea-based drones. The Fourth Law says that over time this experience could be transferred to civilian areas of use outside of defense, such as logistics, manufacturing, construction and others.
