Leonardo's M-346 flies Baykar's Kizilelma drone by command in first K-SWARM trial

An Italian jet trainer took control of an armed Turkish stealth drone in flight, Europe's first hardware step into the loyal-wingman race the US is already producing.

Leonardo said Monday that an Italian M-346 jet trainer took control of a Baykar Kizilelma drone in flight during the first live trial of their K-SWARM crewed-uncrewed teaming program. The flights ran in May at Baykar's Çorlu test center in Turkey, Defense News detailed, with a Leonardo-owned M-346 Fighter Attack jet running the mission and an Italian Air Force T-346A flying chase.

The Kizilelma taxied, took off, and rejoined the M-346's formation on its own, using Baykar's Smart Fleet Autonomy software, the company said. The M-346 crew then took full control. From the cockpit, the pilots commanded position changes, separations, and rejoins, which the drone executed through a dedicated crewed/uncrewed computing system. A radio-frequency datalink, shielded by Leonardo's GCC cyber-defense platform, synchronized data between the two aircraft.

The drone under command is no trainer. Baykar built the Kizilelma as an armed, jet-powered stealth aircraft, the heavier successor to the Bayraktar TB2 that flew over Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh. K-SWARM makes Leonardo's M-346, a trainer already exported to Singapore, Poland, and Israel, the controller for it. The work followed a 2025 deal to build Baykar drones in Italy with Leonardo systems aboard, The War Zone noted.

The US is further along the same path. The Air Force has moved its Collaborative Combat Aircraft, Anduril's Fury and General Atomics' Dark Merlin, into production, with Shield AI's Hivemind autonomy in the running. Europe's flagship answer, the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS, lost its next-generation fighter component in June after Berlin and Paris could not agree who builds what, according to Defense News.

Leonardo called the trial a milestone and said the autonomy will shift from remote piloting toward independent operation in stages, with harder tests in the coming months. No weapons were involved, and no production or export has been decided. Leonardo also holds a seat on the rival GCAP fighter program with Britain and Japan, where loyal wingmen are built into the design. Whether Çorlu's formation flights yield a Kizilelma-class drone a European air force can buy, or stay a lab result while Washington ships airframes, is what the next K-SWARM tests will start to answer.