A Saab Gripen E has flown beyond-visual-range combat scenarios with an artificial intelligence in control. Not a partner’s AI this time, but software Saab wrote, trained and tested entirely by itself.

On Tuesday 3 November 2026, Saab lifted the lid on a family of in-house artificial intelligence agents for future fighter systems. According to the company’s press release, one of these agents autonomously controlled a Gripen E during beyond-visual-range (BVR) combat scenarios in flight trials. Saab says it has now taken its own air-combat AI all the way from concept to an operational fighter.

Built in Linköping, not bought in

The agents come from the Advanced Programs business unit of Saab Aeronautics. Saab says they use “various AI techniques” to master tactical decision-making, and that they can either support the pilot in the cockpit or operate alongside pilots aboard their own uncrewed aircraft.

The point Saab stresses most is ownership. The agents, the training environments and the development tools were all built in-house, which the company says gives it full control over how the agents behave, how they are verified and how they evolve. For a European fighter maker, that independence is the headline.

The Saab AI agents have been flown, but Saab has said little about the flights themselves. As AeroTime noted, the company has not disclosed when they took place, how many sorties were flown or what the AI was flying against. What it does say is that BVR combat, the long-range missile fight that dominates modern air warfare, has now been “validated under real flight conditions.”

The AI Fighter Pilot Academy

The engine room of the project is what Saab calls the AI Fighter Pilot Academy. Inside it, agents are trained in simulation across multiple air-combat tasks, building up millions of simulated flight hours. Their actions are scored against defined objectives, so they adapt and improve, exploring tactics and decision paths far beyond what any human pilot could live through in a career.

Training at that scale needs enormous computing power. Saab is a founding partner in Sferical AI, a Swedish sovereign AI initiative. According to AIN, the facility in Linköping is part-owned by Saab, Ericsson and AstraZeneca and runs on 1,152 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs. AIN reports that it lets Saab run a one-hour flight test a billion times in the time a CPU-based setup managed about 1,200.

Peter Nilsson, head of Advanced Programs at Saab Aeronautics, told Breaking Defense that without Sferical the alternative would be paying Google or Amazon for computing, and perhaps not having full control of the data. For a defence company, that sovereignty argument is the whole point.

Why the Gripen E makes it easy

Saab credits the Gripen E’s software-defined architecture. New AI software can be integrated and flown on an operational fighter, even in civilian airspace, without a dedicated experimental aircraft. AIN reports that the open architecture separates mission software from flight-critical functions, which is what lets the agents be loaded and tested so quickly.

Nilsson told journalists at a briefing on 30 October, according to AIN, that the agents are ready for operational deployment and that the limit is how fast the customer, Sweden’s defence materiel administration FMV and the Swedish Air Force, can absorb them. He put the timescale at “months, or single digits of years.” Saab itself says it will keep expanding the agents’ capabilities and fly them in a broader range of scenarios.

Saab’s own film on human-machine collaboration in the Gripen E cockpit, the foundation its new AI agents build on (Saab, 2023).

From Centaur to a home-grown pilot

This is not the first time AI has flown a Gripen E. In 2025, under Project Beyond, Saab flew Helsing’s Centaur agent on a Gripen E, starting on 28 May 2025, and it demonstrated BVR engagements. The difference now is that the agent is Saab’s own. AIN reports that the two companies still work together on Centaur, and that Saab wants to integrate third-party agents alongside its own.

The bigger target is the next fighter. In September, FMV gave Saab a SEK 2.9 billion contract to study crewed and uncrewed concepts for Sweden’s future fighter system, as Afterburner reported. Breaking Defense notes that Saab is developing a trio of uncrewed aircraft, the A1, A2 and A3, and AIN says agents built for Gripen E will be adapted for autonomous collaborative platforms and even the GlobalEye early-warning aircraft.

Across the Atlantic, the US has been flying AI on its X-62A VISTA test jet. Sweden’s answer is quieter and very Swedish: build the whole stack at home, test it on a fighter already in service, and keep the keys. Le pilote, for now, still sits in the cockpit. But the wingman may soon be an algorithm.

Sources: Saab press release (3 November 2026), AIN, Breaking Defense, AeroTime, Shephard, Defence Industry Europe