Dassault Aviation has flight-tested two new sovereign artificial intelligence algorithms aboard the Rafale fighter jet, one developed in-house and the other with Thales’ cortAIx unit, in a move that points to future upgrades for the French combat aircraft. The trials, disclosed from Saint-Cloud, place controlled AI support in the cockpit of a frontline European fighter while keeping the human crew in command.
The work fits Dassault’s push to develop AI within a sovereign French and European defence framework, with the systems designed for supervised use rather than autonomous control. The company did not identify the algorithms’ specific functions or the Rafale standard that could eventually incorporate them.
Reuters and Aviation Week independently confirmed the same tests on the same day. The announcement comes as defence manufacturers increasingly explore AI-enabled cockpit support and broader combat-aircraft modernisation, but Dassault has not set out an operational timeline for the technology.