French Air Force plans loyal wingman flight in 2028 in sovereign AI push

PARIS — France's Air Force, together with the country's Directorate General for Armament (DGA) and the agency for defense artificial intelligence, plans to fly crewed fighter jets in collaboration with combat drones in 2028. The effort is part of a project called Hypairion, which aims to experiment with AI in combat aviation.

Project Overview

The Hypairion project seeks to develop open, modular architecture for combat aircraft and sovereign AI technology that gives the government greater control over the technology, rather than relying on companies for critical systems, said Col. Cédric, head of the Air Force capability-development office, in a press briefing on Thursday.

"What Hypairion is really about is equipping the Air Force and our platforms with architectures that are open, modular and owned by the government," Col. Cédric said. "Our goal is to move away from proprietary systems that lock down sensors and weaponry."

He was identified only by his first name, in line with the Armed Forces Ministry's policy for military staff.

Sovereign AI and Industrial Strategy

The Ministerial Agency for Defence AI (Amiad) will be responsible for providing sovereign AI technology for the project in several areas, particularly:

• Command and control
• Mission autonomy — AI that assists pilots with mission planning, in-flight decisions and post-mission analysis

Col. Thibault, deputy director for AI applications at Amiad, said the agency already uses AI to coordinate different platforms in the French Army's Pendragon robotics project. Amiad proposes to create an industrial hub for Hypairion where both traditional aerospace firms and smaller startups can interact with the project — an approach tested in Pendragon.

"The point of the Hypairion project is for the French state to retain control of the overall architecture and to be able to integrate the most capable startups or industrial companies," Col. Thibault said. He noted that companies might join and leave the project, while Hypairion retains its capabilities in-house.

Test Platforms and Development Timeline

The Air Force is modifying two Mirage 2000 fighters at Mont-de-Marsan airbase to become AI test beds, adding a new computer that will allow testing of "all kinds of use cases" starting by the end of the year, according to Col. Cédric. Mont-de-Marsan in southwest France is home to the Escadron de chasse et d'expérimentation, a dedicated fighter squadron for testing and evaluation.

Development will be incremental. The first stage of Hypairion will not necessarily focus on operational capability but will examine areas such as:

• Energy consumption
• System interfacing

First use cases being considered include using AI to optimize flight paths or tactical decisions, such as when to deploy air-to-air or air-to-ground weapons.

The unmanned aircraft set to fly in 2028 will be a test platform and may not be the future wingman drone planned for France's Rafale jet as part of the fighter's future F5 standard, though the experimentation will help select a suitable platform later in the decade, Col. Cédric said.

Rafale F5 Standard and AI Integration

The DGA has set a target date of 2033 for the first version of the Rafale F5, but will work on collaborative platforms within the framework of the current F4 standard before then, said General Engineer of Armaments Sébastien, in charge of the Rafale program at the directorate.

The goal of integrating AI on the Rafale is to help crews manage the "absolutely phenomenal cognitive load" to maintain future operational superiority, he said. The armaments engineer cited the Talios laser-designation pod from Thales, set to be delivered to the armed forces in 2027, as a concrete application of AI, able to scan an area and provide a fighter crew a list of potential targets.

Col. Cédric described a hypothetical future in which a fighter crew would carry out a mission in the morning, identify an adaptation against an enemy countermeasure between missions, and take off again in the afternoon with updated software. That will require system architectures to evolve, he said.

Architecture and Human Role

The French Air Force officer likened future manned and unmanned platforms to "flying computers" on which the keyboard, screen or software could be changed without compromising security. The goal of the architecture being developed within Hypairion is to separate flight-safety aspects from the ability to carry out missions.

The Air Force does not envisage a future with only unmanned aircraft, for both ethical and operational reasons, according to the colonel, who said the decision to deploy weapons remains a human one, and AI can make mistakes. "Humans can be augmented or supplemented by AI, but the assessment of the operational situation, tactical judgment, and so on, these are still entirely the domain of humans."

Rafale F4 and F5 Standards

As the Air Force prepares the Rafale F5 standard — "a true mid-life overhaul of the aircraft" — focus areas include:

• Adequacy of hardware resources, as the system needs to handle complex calculations
• System openness, meaning "the armed forces must be able to tailor artificial intelligence according to their own needs and so dispose of an open system"

The Rafale's F4 standard already includes an initial level of openness through a tablet connected to the mission system. The F5 standard will seek to:

• Broaden the scope of data available to the tablet
• Give it access to the mission system's computing resources
• Improve the ability to interface with onboard communication systems and data links

"This in particular will make it possible, and without waiting for the deployment of the F5 standard, to control autonomous combat platforms from the Rafale," Sébastien said.

While France relies on Dassault Aviation and other major industrial partners for the Rafale to develop AI in the fighter's major systems, the armed forces want to ensure operational autonomy — meaning having "the ability to tailor the AI to the specific operational needs of the theater," the engineer said.

Road Map and Future Vision

Hypairion will work on a road map covering:

• Usage concepts
• Doctrine
• Scaling up the workforce
• Actual equipment

This will result in a first full-scale trial of collaborative combat drones flying alongside fighter jets in 2028, according to Col. Cédric.

"The challenge for the Air and Space Force is ultimately to determine what a fighter squadron will look like in 2035 or 2040, once all these systems are potentially integrated into the squadron," Col. Cédric said. "Today, it's actually quite rare to come across computer scientists in a fighter squadron. Perhaps tomorrow, that will be a daily occurrence."

About the Author

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.