France Plans State-Owned AI for Rafale Wingmen, With a Fighter-Drone Trial in 2028

By owning the AI architecture itself, France aims to swap suppliers and push new mission software to its fighters and combat drones as fast as threats change.

France plans a government-owned AI architecture for its fighters and combat drones, with a first full-scale fighter-drone trial in 2028, Col. Cedric said at an Oct. 1 briefing in Paris. He heads the Air Force's capability-development office; the ministry identifies officers by first name only.

"Our goal is to move away from proprietary systems that lock down sensors and weaponry," Cedric told reporters of the program, called Hypairion. The drone flying in 2028 will be a test platform and may not be the wingman eventually adopted for the Rafale F5, he added. The trials will help select one later in the decade.

The state will keep the overall architecture and bring in the most capable startups or industrial companies, according to Col. Thibault, deputy director for AI applications at the Ministerial Agency for Defence AI (AMIAD). Firms can join and leave while Hypairion keeps its capabilities in-house. AMIAD will supply AI for command and control and for mission autonomy, which assists pilots with planning, in-flight decisions and post-mission analysis.

Two Mirage 2000 fighters at Mont-de-Marsan are getting a new computer for AI trials starting by year-end, per Cedric. Use cases under consideration include optimizing flight paths and tactical decisions such as when to employ air-to-air or air-to-ground weapons. The decision to fire stays human because AI can make mistakes, he noted.

The DGA's June request for information seeks multirole uncrewed aircraft carrying up to 500 kilograms, with a combat radius beyond 1,000 kilometers and speeds above Mach 0.8, Aviation Week reported.

The first concrete application is an algorithm for Thales' Talios targeting pod, due in 2027, that detects and recognizes ground targets and designates vehicles it judges to be threats or priority objectives, said Sebastien, the DGA's Rafale program director. He put the first Rafale F5 version at 2033.

The Armed Forces Ministry ties Hypairion to fast-moving threats in Ukraine and the Middle East, citing Russia's Geran drone, already in its fifth version, as the case for architectures that evolve at the threat's pace. Cedric sketched a crew that flies a morning mission, identifies a fix for an enemy countermeasure, and takes off that afternoon with updated software.

AI trials on the Mirages start by year-end. The Talios algorithm follows in 2027, and the first fighter-drone trial in 2028.