Helsing AI agent successfully completes Saab Gripen E test flight

Helsing, the leading European defence technology company, and Swedish defence and security prime Saab, today announced the successful integration and flight testing of Centaur, Helsing’s AI agent for autonomous air combat.

The flights, which took place on May 28th and June 3rd, saw a Gripen E fighter jet give control to Centaur above the Baltic Sea and focused on testing Centaur’s Beyond-Visual-Range (BVR) air combat capabilities. A safety pilot was available to take back control from Centaur at all times. A second, human-controlled, Gripen was airborne to represent Centaur’s opponent.

Saab and Helsing achieved this major milestone in less than six months from conception to live flights, a testament to the Gripen E’s modern architecture, allowing the rapid integration of even the most advanced neural network algorithms.

Once switched on by the Gripen’s pilot, Centaur is entrusted with full machine control to conduct combat manoeuvres in a beyond visual range air-to-air combat scenario. It continuously processes native inputs from Gripen onboard sensors to plan and manoeuvre, and ultimately engages adversaries as well as evades threats.

Stephanie Lingemann, Senior Director Air Domain at Helsing, said: “These test flights mark a pioneering step in autonomous air combat and a turning point for the future of European defence. We are proud to achieve this milestone with our strategic partner Saab – fusing advanced AI capabilities with Gripen’s state-of-the-art software architecture in record time. This really highlights the fast capability gain that modern, software-defined defence can provide.”

“Helsing’s Centaur technology brings reinforcement learning to air combat for unprecedented performance and unlocks a new era for human-machine collaboration.”, said Antoine Bordes, Vice President Artificial Intelligence at Helsing. “Trained at massive scale in Helsing’s RL-Factory, Centaur acquires decades of virtual air combat experience in as little as 24 hours - creating mission-ready AI systems that can handle the real-world dynamics of warfare, as proven by its integration on Saab’s Gripen E. At the current stage of development, Centaur already offers human-level capabilities to control aircraft during high complexity missions and will critically support human pilots to protect our skies against peer adversaries.”

Marcus Wandt, Chief Innovation Officer and test-pilot at Saab, who himself took Centaur to the skies in a Gripen E, said: “This is the future of air combat happening right now, in Europe. It took us less than half a year to go from defining the operational scenario, through configuring software interfaces and training, integrating, testing the agent, to lift off and test flight. This is a clear testament to the Gripen’s unique software architecture, the technical maturity of Centaur, as well as the close collaboration and proficiency of Saab and Helsing engineers.”

The Gripen E-series is Saab’s latest fighter aircraft system developed to counter and defeat advanced future threats. With its unique software architecture, Gripen E allows for rapid software deployment and is thus the ideal platform to host Centaur. In the coming months, Helsing and Saab will continue to advance the capabilities to more complex collaborative scenarios ensuring value for future Gripen progression.

This Helsing / Saab collaboration is part of the Swedish Future Fighter Concept Studies under a contract from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV).