Well, turns out everyone really does want their own unmanned fighter. This morning, on Grob Aircraft’s very rainy airfield just outside of Munich, European defense darling Helsing unveiled their own concept for an autonomous fighter jet—the CA-1 Europa.
In a high-octane presentation (we’re talking strobe lights and smoke machines, people), the neoprime pulled back the curtain on a “design study” for their uncrewed combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), comparable to the collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) developed by Anduril and General Atomics in the US.
While detailed specs remained scant—the aircraft has been in development for about three and a half months—Helsing co-founder and co-CEO Torsten Reil told reporters that the fighter drone would be in the three to five ton class, a “fraction” of the cost of traditional fighters, and able to operate both as part of a swarm and teamed with manned aircraft.
According to a fact sheet given to reporters, the aircraft will be 11 meters long with a wingspan of 10 meters and travel at “high subsonic” speeds. It’ll also be modular, meaning Helsing can integrate everything from sensors to EW capabilities and payloads that go boom.
Super software: In case you weren’t aware, Helsing is kind of a big deal in Europe. The company was founded back in 2021 by Reil, Gundbert Scherf, and Niklas Köhler with a pretty lofty goal—“protecting our democracies.” They started out building AI-powered software specifically for European defense.
In the past few years, the company has turned to hardware, too, similar to the playbooks of certain software-defined defense tech companies across the Atlantic.
Helsing has built (or acquired) several different platforms and systems, including:
- HX-2: A strike drone with a range of up to 100km. The German government ordered 4,000 of these bad boys to send to the Ukrainian frontline, but there have been some reported issues with performance.
- SG-1 (Paired with Lura): Autonomous underwater glider drones capable of swarming that can process acoustic and sonar data.
- Cirra: The company’s AI-powered software to assess electronic warfare (EW) threats.
- Altra: An AI-powered recce-strike mission system. Think of this as Helsing’s network.
- Centaur: Helsing’s AI pilot that has flown Saab’s Gripen fighter. This will also be the software backbone of CA-1 Europa, according to the company.
Big bucks: Helsing has raised a (technical term) shit-ton of money from some pretty high-flying investors. According to Reil, the company has raised a total of €1.36B ($1.6B), most recently a whopping €600M from Spotify and Prima Materia’s Daniel Ek. The company is now valued at $13.66B, according to Pitchbook data.
Some of this money has gone into high-level acquisitions, at least one of which helped Helsing develop this unmanned fighter concept. Back in June, Helsing snapped up Grob Aircraft for an undisclosed amount, bringing the German aircraft manufacturer into their portfolio.
Grob’s expertise in building aircraft, Helsing said, helped them to build the concept for the UCAV very, very quickly. And they expect Grob’s team (combined with Helsing’s software expertise) to enable them to get something in the air by 2027, Reil said. The UCAV will be fully operational within four years, according to the company.
However, scaling up into full production will depend on the kind of interest they get from governments across the continent. “The other big deciding factor will be the signals coming from [the] government to actually invest and embrace these kinds of systems,” Reil said, “That’s basically large contracts.”
Lay of the land: In case you’ve missed an issue or two of Tectonic (no shame), you’ll know that Helsing isn’t the only one in the CCA/unmanned fighter game. Anduril and General Atomics are both building concepts for the DoD’s CCA program. GA’s prototype took flight last month, and Anduril plans to fly a “semi-autonomous” first flight in October, according to company officials.
Back in June, Anduril also inked a partnership with German defense giant Rheinmetall to scale up production of its products in Europe—including Fury, its CCA concept. But Reil said he’s not too worried about the competition—Europa, the company says, is “made in Europe, for Europe.”
“[CA-1] is entirely, end-to-end European,” Reil told Tectonic and other reporters, “We’re developing here. The supply chain is European. The software is being developed in Europe. The offerings that may or may not come over time from other partners tend to be other systems…for example, in [the case of Anduril], it’s an American system.
Let the rat race begin.