Air Forces Analysis Artificial Intelligence Defense Industry UAV / UCAV

Europe’s Loyal Wingman Programmes: Who Is Building CCAs

Europe has at least nine loyal wingman programmes in play in autumn 2026, and none of them is operational. Germany is running a three-way contest between Airbus (a Kratos Valkyrie with a European mission system), Helsing’s CA-1 Europa and a Boeing-Rheinmetall MQ-28 Ghost Bat, all aimed at a 2029 Luftwaffe delivery. France has tied a Dassault combat drone to the Rafale F5 for 2033. The UK launched Storm Fighter in July 2026 with £300 million. Saab showed a supersonic A3 mock-up in August. Türkiye’s Baykar Kızılelma, already in serial production and firing missiles, is the only NATO uncrewed fighter in Europe that has left the drawing board.

Key facts (as of September 2026)

FCAS’s crewed New Generation Fighter was formally abandoned by Paris and Berlin on the eve of ILA Berlin in June 2026; the remote carrier and combat cloud pillars continue at reduced scale.
Airbus is preparing two Kratos Valkyries (U740) with its MARS mission system at Manching for first flight in 2026 and an “operational and sovereign” delivery to the German Air Force by 2029.
Helsing’s CA-1 Europa (4 tonnes, high subsonic) targets a first flight in early 2027; an electronic attack variant, CA-1EA, was shown at ILA 2026 with a 2031 service target.
The UK’s Storm Fighter CCA programme was announced on 16 July 2026 with £300 million; BAE Systems unveiled its Brontanax bid at Farnborough six days later.
Saab’s A3-001 full-scale mock-up appeared at Malmen on 24 August 2026; a supersonic A1 demonstrator with a GE F414 engine is expected within about 15 months.
Baykar’s Kızılelma S2, a serial-production airframe, fired a Roketsan JET-230 at a target more than 120 km away on 13 July 2026 and released weapons from its internal bay later that month.
Benchmark: the US Air Force awarded FQ-42A Vengeance and FQ-44A Fury production contracts in June 2026 and now plans 500 CCAs by 2032.

Why Europe wants uncrewed wingmen, and why it is late

The case for a collaborative combat aircraft is arithmetic before it is technology. European air forces field small fighter fleets, they cannot regenerate pilots quickly, and Russian ground-based air defences have made the first hours of any campaign expensive. A loyal wingman, an uncrewed jet that flies ahead of or beside a crewed fighter carrying sensors, jammers or missiles, extends a Eurofighter’s or Rafale’s reach without adding a cockpit to the risk. Air Chief Marshal Harv Smyth summed up the British requirement in July 2026 as something “good enough that is cheap enough that can be produced fast enough”, and that sentence could stand for every programme on this page.

The picture is less tidy on the ground. For six years Europe’s answer was supposed to be the Franco-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System, whose Pillar 3 remote carriers, led jointly by Airbus and MBDA, would fly with a New Generation Fighter from around 2040. That fighter is now gone. Negotiations between Airbus and Dassault Aviation halted in early 2026, Phase 1B ended in April without a Phase 2 contract, and on the eve of ILA Berlin in June Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Emmanuel Macron agreed to stop the crewed aircraft while keeping “a drone system and a related data network”. Airbus Defence and Space chief executive Michael Schoellhorn had already called the differences “unbridgeable” while insisting the CCA and combat cloud work would continue.

That collapse explains the shape of the market. Germany, France, the UK and Sweden now run national efforts, industry has answered with mock-ups, converted American airframes and start-up designs, and the United States has gone from prototype to production line in under three years. Europe is chasing that benchmark with far less money.

Programme by programme: who is building what

The table uses the maturity labels DefenceAndTech applies across this cluster. Only one European entry, the RAF’s StormShroud electronic warfare platform, is operational, and it is a propeller-driven Tekever airframe with a Leonardo UK jamming payload rather than a jet wingman. Everything else sits between concept and flight test, with Türkiye’s Kızılelma the exception on the production side.

Programme	Country	Lead companies	Role	Status	Latest milestone
FCAS Remote Carriers (NGWS Pillar 3)	FR, DE, ES	Airbus, MBDA, SATNUS	Remote carrier	DEMONSTRATOR	Mar 2026: fourth flight campaign, up to three real remote carriers (INTA-CEDEA, Spain)
Airbus U740 Valkyrie	DE	Airbus, Kratos	Adjunct / CCA	PROTOTYPE	Mar 2026: two airframes fitted with MARS at Manching; first flight due 2026; delivery 2029
Airbus U760 Ravenstorm	DE	Airbus	Adjunct / UCAV	CONCEPT	10 Jun 2026: unveiled at ILA Berlin; early 2030s
Helsing CA-1 Europa	DE	Helsing, Grob Aircraft, HENSOLDT	Adjunct / UCAV	PROTOTYPE (mock-up)	10 Jun 2026: CA-1EA variant shown; first flight early 2027
MQ-28 Ghost Bat (German team)	DE / AU	Boeing, Rheinmetall, Diehl, Rohde & Schwarz	Adjunct / CCA	FLIGHT TEST (in Australia)	10 Jun 2026: German industry team expanded; offer for 2029
Rafale F5 combat drone (UCAS)	FR	Dassault Aviation, Safran, Thales	UCAV / wingman	CONCEPT (nEUROn heritage)	10 Sep 2026: DGA F5 contracts incl. inter-vehicle datalink; full drone programme not yet launched
Storm Fighter	UK	TBD; BAE Systems Brontanax bid	Adjunct / CCA	CONCEPT	16 Jul 2026: launched with £300m; BAE bid 22 Jul
StormShroud (ACP)	UK	Tekever, Leonardo UK	EW adjunct	OPERATIONAL	May 2025: fielded by 216 Squadron
Saab A1 / A2 / A3	SE	Saab, GE Aerospace (F414)	Adjunct / CCA	CONCEPT (A3 mock-up)	24 Aug 2026: A3-001 shown at Malmen; A1 demonstrator in ~15 months
Bayraktar Kızılelma	TR	Baykar, Roketsan, ASELSAN	UCAV / wingman	SERIAL PRODUCTION	13 Jul 2026: S2 fires JET-230 at 120 km+; internal bay releases 25-28 Jul
TUSAŞ ANKA-3	TR	TUSAŞ	UCAV / CCA	PROTOTYPE	Feb 2026: two prototypes flying; revised design entering production
Netherlands CCA partnership	NL / US	USAF, GA-ASI, Anduril	Adjunct (F-35)	PROCUREMENT (prototypes)	24 Apr 2026: partnership formalised
US CCA Increment 1 (benchmark)	US	Anduril, General Atomics	Adjunct / CCA	SERIAL PRODUCTION	Jun 2026 production awards; 500 by 2032
MQ-28A Ghost Bat (benchmark)	AU	Boeing Defence Australia	Adjunct / CCA	PROCUREMENT	9 Dec 2025: seven more ordered, A$754m; ten operational by 2028

Germany: three contenders for one 2029 slot

Berlin is the most contested market because it has the clearest date and no chosen airframe. Airbus set the pace in March 2026 when it said two Kratos XQ-58A Valkyries, designated U740, were being fitted at Manching with its MARS mission system for a maiden flight later in 2026 and an “operational and sovereign” aircraft for the Luftwaffe by 2029, commanded from a Eurofighter. At ILA in June, Airbus Defence and Space unveiled the U760 Ravenstorm, a 13 metre, 10 metre span in-house design for the early 2030s pitched for strike, air defence with Meteor-class missiles and electronic warfare. It replaces the larger tailless Wingman mock-up that Chancellor Olaf Scholz inspected at ILA 2024.

The second contender is Helsing’s CA-1 Europa, a roughly 4 tonne, 11 metre high-subsonic jet built with Grob Aircraft in Bavaria and flown by the company’s Centaur autonomy agent. Helsing showed the full-scale model in September 2025, signed a sensor and electronic warfare partnership with HENSOLDT on 12 February 2026, and at ILA 2026 added an escort-jamming CA-1EA with a 2031 service target; the strike version is due to fly in early 2027. The third is American in origin. On 27 March 2026 Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said in Australia that Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat was “under consideration”, and by 10 June Boeing had a German team with Rheinmetall as integrator, Diehl Defence for weapons and Rohde & Schwarz for communications, promising the Luftwaffe an aircraft by 2029. Rheinmetall also holds a June 2025 agreement with Anduril on a European Fury, so it has a foot in two camps. The wider cast is mapped in Europe’s Defence AI Companies: Who Is Building What in 2026, and the Helsing story is told in Helsing Explained: Europe’s Defence AI Firm, Drones, Funding.

France: Rafale F5 plus a Dassault combat drone

France never wanted a cheap attritable wingman. Its programme, announced by then armed forces minister Sébastien Lecornu on 8 October 2024, is a stealthy uncrewed combat air system with an internal bay, drawing on the nEUROn demonstrator that first flew in 2012 and was brought out of storage at Istres to fly again. Dassault chief executive Éric Trappier has described a drone of more than ten tonnes that will “contribute to the technological and operational superiority of the French wings from 2033” alongside the Rafale F5. Dassault received an initial contract in October 2024, but as of the summer of 2026 no full development programme had been launched and the company was still looking for partners.

Here the money tells the story. After the FCAS fighter died, Paris pulled the F5 forward: on 10 September 2026 the DGA confirmed contracts to Dassault, Thales, Safran Aircraft Engines and MBDA covering navigation, an inter-vehicle datalink, the RBE2-XG radar, the SPECTRA F5 electronic warfare suite and preliminary design of the M88 T-REX engine, with formal launch of the F5 due at the end of 2026 and at least 47 F5 aircraft by 2035. That “inter-vehicle datalink” is the wingman connection. Dassault also led a $200 million Series B in Harmattan AI on 12 January 2026 to embed combat autonomy in the F5 and the future drone, a direct bet by a prime on a two-year-old start-up. September’s surge in searches for “Rafale loyal wingman programme” tracks these announcements.

United Kingdom: Storm Fighter after Mosquito

Britain cancelled its first attempt, Project Mosquito, in 2022 and then built a different kind of adjunct. StormShroud, a Tekever AR3 carrying Leonardo UK’s BriteStorm jammer, was fielded by 216 Squadron in May 2025, about a year from approval, and an Autonomous Collaborative Platforms Tranche 2 competition worth about £20 million followed in August 2025. The jet-class requirement returned on 16 July 2026 when ministers named the CCA effort Storm Fighter, funded its launch with £300 million inside the Defence Investment Plan and described “guardian angel” and “attack dog” roles alongside Typhoon, F-35B and, later, the GCAP fighter. Smyth wants a demonstrator flying with Typhoon as soon as 2027, although the plan itself speaks of at least 2030.

Industry moved within the week. BAE Systems’ FalconWorks unveiled its Brontanax bid at Farnborough on 22 July, Boeing’s Ghost Bat and General Atomics are in the frame, and no contractor has been selected. GCAP, which targets 2035 for the crewed aircraft, includes uncrewed adjuncts in its architecture, but those remain national decisions for London, Rome and Tokyo rather than a trinational drone.

Sweden, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands

Saab’s answer explains the other search spike of the month. At the Swedish Air Force centenary show at Malmen on 24 August 2026 the company rolled out A3-001, a full-scale mock-up of a supersonic, internally armed wingman powered by the same GE F414 as the Gripen E. Saab plans an A1 supersonic demonstrator within about 15 months, an A2 with a weapons bay within four years and an A3 product within ten, and says the A3 should cost roughly half a Gripen E to buy and a third to operate. Defence minister Pål Jonson called a wingman “a natural further development of the Gripen system”; the Riksdag is not expected to decide before 2028 to 2030.

Italy has chosen partnership over a national airframe: Leonardo and Baykar’s 50/50 LBA Systems, headquartered in Italy, declared full operational readiness at Farnborough on 21 July 2026 with Kızılelma in its catalogue and a first delivery to an Italian end user due by the end of 2026. Spain’s SIRTAP is a tactical ISR drone, not a wingman; Madrid’s collaborative work sits inside the FCAS remote carrier pillar, where the SATNUS consortium flew a fourth campaign with up to three real remote carriers in March 2026. The Netherlands became the first European force inside the US CCA programme, formalising a prototype partnership on 24 April 2026 to team drones with its F-35s. Poland has no programme yet; Anduril used MSPO in September 2026 to pitch Fury for Poland’s 32 F-35s.

Türkiye: the one wingman that already flies and shoots

Türkiye earns its own section on evidence, not ambition. Baykar’s Bayraktar Kızılelma flew a beyond-visual-range engagement with a Gökdoğan air-to-air missile on 29 November 2025, followed by what the company calls the first autonomous close-formation flight by two uncrewed fighters on 27 December. Then the serial-production airframe S2 took over. On 13 July 2026, flying from Merzifon, it fired two Roketsan JET-230 supersonic missiles at a target more than 120 km away; on 25 and 28 July it released a TEBER-82 and an ASELSAN TOLUN from its internal weapons bay at Çorlu. Baykar says series production has begun and induction into the Turkish Air Force is targeted for 2026, although a formal hand-over had not been publicly confirmed at the time of writing. Indonesia signed for 12 aircraft from 2028, with an option to 48, on 6 May 2026. A technical summary of the airframe is on Envanter Medya.

What makes this European rather than merely Turkish is the Leonardo link. On 22 June 2026 a Kızılelma and a Leonardo M-346 flew joint autonomous formation sorties under the K-SWARM crewed-uncrewed teaming programme that LBA Systems now markets to European customers. TUSAŞ is the second Turkish player: two ANKA-3 flying-wing prototypes are in test, a revised design with more range and lower signature was entering production as of February 2026, and the company markets it as a collaborative combat aircraft for its KAAN fighter, due in early 2029. Caveats apply. The autonomy claims and test results are the manufacturers’ own, and none of this yet amounts to an operational squadron. But no other European or NATO nation can point to a jet-powered uncrewed fighter in serial production that has fired live weapons.

The benchmark Europe is chasing

The United States turned its Collaborative Combat Aircraft idea into hardware fast enough to embarrass everyone else. The Air Force awarded Increment 1 production contracts to Anduril and General Atomics in June 2026, about four months early; Anduril’s first Ohio-built FQ-44A rolled out of its Arsenal-1 plant on 27 July, two weeks after a YFQ-44A completed the first CCA live fire with an AIM-120; and on 14 September Secretary Troy Meink named the types Vengeance and Fury and raised the Increment 1 target to 500 aircraft by 2032 on the way to 1,000. Arsenal-1 is sized for 150 aircraft a year. The wider US-led race, from Skyborg to the Increment 1 production decision, is traced in our Collaborative Combat Aircraft explainer.

Australia’s MQ-28A Ghost Bat is the second reference point, and the one that has physically arrived in Europe. The RAAF ordered seven more aircraft for A$754 million on 9 December 2025, a day after a Ghost Bat fired an AIM-120 at a target drone with an F/A-18F and an E-7A in the loop, and Boeing expects ten operational aircraft by 2028 from a new Toowoomba plant. Both benchmarks share a lesson: the airframe was the easy part, the mission system and the production line were the hard part, and the customer committed money before the design was finished.

Industrial bottlenecks: engines, autonomy, datalinks and politics

That is where the industrial bottleneck starts. Europe has no purpose-built low-cost engine for a 3 to 6 tonne jet drone. Saab has reached for the American F414, the 2024 Airbus Wingman assumed the Eurofighter’s EJ200, Airbus’s near-term offer is an American airframe and Boeing’s is Australian-built. Dassault’s ten-tonne drone will lean on Safran, but a European attritable-class engine does not exist, and Aviation Week reported in June 2026 that the MTU-Safran FCAS engine partnership was poised to wither with the fighter it was built for.

Autonomy is the second constraint, and companies rather than programmes are solving it. Airbus’s MARS, Helsing’s Centaur, Harmattan AI’s work for Dassault, Baykar’s fleet algorithms and Leonardo’s K-SWARM are all proprietary stacks, none certified anywhere yet and each claiming to be the sovereign choice. The remote carrier flights in Spain, four campaigns in and still using demonstrators, show how slowly government-owned autonomy matures compared with the Agentic AI in Defence: What European Militaries Are Testing start-ups now writing it. Datalinks are the third: France is paying for an inter-vehicle datalink in the F5 contracts, Airbus is teaching a targeting pod to talk to a drone, and the RAF’s Storm family needs a common link across Typhoon, F-35B and GCAP. None is interoperable with the others.

Budget and politics finish the list. The UK’s £300 million and Sweden’s undecided Riksdag are small next to a US programme buying 500 airframes, and Germany’s 2029 date is a ministerial ambition without a published contract or quantity. The Dassault-Airbus dispute that killed the fighter over workshare, Dassault seeking 80 per cent against an equal split, has left the remote carrier pillar without a fighter to serve, and the same two companies are still at odds on Eurodrone. Swarm behaviour, the next layer up, is discussed in Drone Swarms in Europe: Countries, Companies and Programmes.

What Europe’s air forces actually want

Strip away the mock-ups and the requirements are consistent. The Luftwaffe wants something flying with its Eurofighters by 2029 with a German-controlled mission system; Pistorius has said which aircraft is under consideration but not how many. The RAF wants mass at a price and has described roles rather than specifications. France wants a stealthy penetrating drone that behaves like a second Rafale, not an attritable escort, and has funded the fighter end of the pairing first. Sweden’s air staff, in Brigadier General Niclas Magnusson’s words, wants “mixed squadrons with both manned and unmanned” and would accept a ten-year path.

Cost targets are rarer than dates. Saab’s half-a-Gripen-E purchase price and one-third lifecycle cost is the only European figure attached to a specific design; Airbus said in 2024 that its Wingman should cost about a third of a crewed fighter, and neither Helsing nor Dassault has published a price. Numbers are scarcer still: 500 US aircraft by 2032, ten Australian by 2028, 47 French F5 fighters by 2035 that will need drones, 12 Kızılelma for Indonesia, and no published fleet size for Germany, the UK or Sweden. Until those numbers appear in a budget line, Europe’s loyal wingman programmes remain what the table says they are: one operational jammer, one Turkish production line, and a great many demonstrators.

Frequently asked questions

What is a loyal wingman and how does it differ from a UCAV?

A loyal wingman, or collaborative combat aircraft, is an uncrewed jet designed to fly with crewed fighters and take tasking from a pilot, carrying sensors, jammers or weapons. A UCAV such as nEUROn or ANKA-3 can operate more independently on strike missions. In practice the categories overlap: Kızılelma and Dassault’s future drone are marketed as both.

Is the FCAS remote carrier programme still alive after the fighter was cancelled?

Yes, at reduced scale. France and Germany ended the New Generation Fighter in June 2026 but agreed to continue the drone and combat cloud pillars. The Airbus-MBDA remote carrier work, including the SATNUS flight campaigns in Spain, continues, but it no longer has a crewed fighter of its own to accompany and its future customer is unclear.

Which European loyal wingman is closest to service?

Only the RAF’s StormShroud electronic warfare platform is operational, and it is not a jet. Among jet-class designs, Türkiye’s Kızılelma is in serial production and firing live weapons, Airbus’s Valkyrie-based U740 is due to fly in 2026 for a 2029 German delivery, and Helsing’s CA-1 Europa targets first flight in early 2027 and service in 2029.

What is the Rafale loyal wingman programme?

It is a stealthy uncrewed combat air system led by Dassault Aviation to fly with the Rafale F5 from 2033, drawing on the nEUROn demonstrator. France ordered F5 subsystems including an inter-vehicle datalink in September 2026, and the DGA expects to award the drone’s full development contract by the end of 2026. Dassault also invested in Harmattan AI for its autonomy.

What did Saab unveil in August 2026?

At Malmen on 24 August 2026 Saab showed A3-001, a full-scale mock-up of a supersonic loyal wingman powered by a GE F414 engine. It is the third step in a plan that starts with an A1 demonstrator expected within about 15 months and an A2 with a weapons bay within four years. Sweden’s parliament is not expected to decide on a programme before 2028 to 2030.