Why MAVLink-M

MAVLink-M is one open interface for military payloads and platforms. It is a dialect of MAVLink 2, the protocol PX4 and QGroundControl already speak, and it adds a public message set for safety and arming, targeting and engagement, remote weapon systems, and shared tracks. It is MIT licensed and hosted by the Dronecode Foundation, so any vendor or nation can adopt it without negotiating terms.

The problem

Every pairing of a platform and a payload is its own integration project. Three platforms and three payloads take nine integrations, and each one rebuilds arming, ignition and fault logic for that pair. The requirements are converging, but vendors fill the gaps with private MAVLink extensions that drift apart, or bypass MAVLink altogether.

flowchart LR
  subgraph Platforms
    A[Vendor A<br/>multirotor]
    B[Vendor B<br/>fixed wing]
    C[Vendor C<br/>VTOL]
  end
  subgraph Payloads
    D[Vendor D<br/>payload]
    E[Vendor E<br/>payload]
    F[Vendor F<br/>payload]
  end
  A --- D & E & F
  B --- D & E & F
  C --- D & E & F

That duplicated work doesn't scale, and interoperability is becoming a procurement requirement, not a nice-to-have.

One interface instead

With one shared interface, each platform and each payload implements it once: six implementations instead of nine. A new payload works with every platform that already speaks MAVLink-M, and the saving grows with the fleet: ten platforms and ten payloads take 20 implementations instead of 100 integrations.

flowchart LR
  subgraph Platforms
    A[Vendor A<br/>multirotor]
    B[Vendor B<br/>fixed wing]
    C[Vendor C<br/>VTOL]
  end
  M((MAVLink-M))
  subgraph Payloads
    D[Vendor D<br/>payload]
    E[Vendor E<br/>payload]
    F[Vendor F<br/>payload]
  end
  A & B & C --- M
  M --- D & E & F

Why a dialect, not a fork

A MAVLink dialect is an XML message set layered on the core messages. military.xml includes common.xml and adds its own messages in the 53000-53999 range, so it changes no core message and collides with no other dialect.

• Systems that don't speak MAVLink-M ignore its messages and keep working with each other on the core set.
• Every improvement to core MAVLink carries over, with nothing to merge.
• The model is proven: dialects have extended MAVLink for over a decade, and vendors ship them for gimbals, ADS-B and companion devices.

Forks diverge. Dialects ride along.

Why open

Today	With MAVLink-M
A custom integration for every platform and payload pair	One shared interface
Locked into one vendor's stack	Components you can swap
Black-box interfaces	Every message and field publicly defined
Private forks that drift	One upstream standard everyone builds on

The dialect is MIT licensed, so any vendor, program or nation can use it without a license negotiation. It is developed in the open by a working group hosted by the Dronecode Foundation, the Linux Foundation project that is also home to PX4, MAVLink and QGroundControl.

Get involved

MAVLink-M is a public draft, and feedback closes when the standard freezes in November 2026 (see Status and Roadmap). Join the working group on the MAVLink-M mailing list, or open an issue or a pull request on GitHub. See Contributing for how changes are proposed and reviewed.