Autonomous fighter jets, here we come. This week, Germany-based artificial intelligence company Helsing announced that their AI agent Centaur successfully took control of a Swedish Saab Gripen-E combat jet in flight tests over the Baltic Sea.
According to the company, Centaur took over long-range flight controls from a human pilot, pulled off some complex flight maneuvers, and recommended targets in a combat scenario with another Gripen aircraft. Executives said the three flight tests—in May and earlier this month—were the first time an AI application was in charge of real-world maneuvering.
“These test flights mark a pioneering step in autonomous air combat and a turning point for the future of European defence,” Stephanie Lingemann, senior director for the air domain at Helsing, said in a statement.
The two companies say that the Centaur integration went from concept to flight tests in less than six months.
Look ma, no hands: The Baltic Sea flight tests were primarily designed to test Centaur’s Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air combat capabilities—essentially, the agent’s ability to maneuver and target stuff that is far away.
- Centaur is trained using “self-play reinforcement learning,” where it essentially gets smarter by playing against different versions of itself. To train for the flight tests, Centaur fought against itself in a Gripen simulator environment.
- According to Helsing, Centaur was trained at its RL-Factory and gained “decades of virtual air combat experience in as little as 24 hours.”
- The agent proved able to avoid maneuvers that would be risky in a dogfight and effectively target its fake enemy.
“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,” Antoine Bordes, VP for AI at Helsing, said.
The Gripen has a unique architecture, separating hardware and software, meaning that third-party capabilities like Centaur are pretty easy and quick to integrate. Saab says that the Centaur-enabled Gripen E is “market ready,” but requires more testing and development to mature.
Turbulence: Things at Helsing have been, well, a bit bumpy lately. The German-born defense darling is valued at a sky-high €5B, or $5.71B, and has won major contracts all over the European continent.
But then, back in April, Bloomberg reported that the company’s drones were maybe not as effective as advertised in Ukraine, and that its software could be glitchy. Investors, apparently, were getting a bit antsy.
The company, however, seems to be pressing on. Last week, they announced the acquisition of German aircraft company Grob, and say that they’ll continue to work with Saab to “continue to advance the capabilities to more complex collaborative scenarios ensuring value for future Gripen progression.”