Leonardo, Baykar share flight footage from recent M-346FA and Kizilelma teaming flight trial in Turkey

In a press briefing held on the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow, Italy’s Leonardo and Turkey’s Baykar shed further light on the recent results of their ongoing joint Crewed/UnCrewed Teaming (CUC-T) programme, known as Project KSWARM.

AGN initially reported on 23 June that the two firms had successfully performed the first ‘live’ collaborative CUC-T – otherwise known as Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) – test flight from Baykar’s Çorlu Test Flight Center in Turkey in May.

The trial involved a Leonardo M-346FA Master light combat aircraft, an Italian Air Force-operated T-346A (which acted as the chase aircraft during the sortie) and one of Baykar’s new, stealthy Kizilelma artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) testbeds.

This ‘live’ test flight marked the culmination of months of preparatory work and testing activities for related hardware/software and other systems that figured during both ground testing and the first ‘live’ trial. During the flight, the Kizilelma taxied, took off and joined the M-346 formation autonomously, before being controlled and commanded by the crew of the M-346FA in several non-tactical formation manoeuvres.

M-346FA commands Kizilelma: Notes from FIA

During the briefing on 20 July, representatives from Leonardo and Baykar shared more details regarding Project KSWARM. Firstly, they elaborated on the project name, stating the ‘K’ stood for ‘Kizilelma’ and ‘SWARM’ being interpreted as the ‘formation between manned/unmanned aircraft.’ This is a departure from what ‘swarm’ or ‘swarming’ typically refers to in the unmanned defence space, as it used to describe dozens of small autonomous drones working together at once.

For Project KSWARM, the two firms followed a build-up validation approach to achieve their first ‘live’ CUC-T flight between the M-346FA and Kizilelma, beginning with simulated trials to reduce risk, assess safety-critical scenarios and outline early operational parameters, such as predefined emergency separation manoeuvres during link-loss scenarios. This helped inform a seamless transition between virtual and live operations.

Prior to the first live M-346FA/Kizilelma flight taking place in May, Leonardo and Baykar completed several virtual-virtual and live-virtual demonstrations. The latter saw a ‘real’ Kizilelma pair up with a virtual version of the Turkish-made UCAV and a manned M-346FA.

For the live-live demonstration in May, Baykar’s SWARM algorithm enabled Kizilelma to autonomously join up with the M-346FA in flight, before control of the UCAV was transferred to the crew of the Master during flight. The Kizilelma autonomously complied with real-time commands that were induced by the M-346FA pilot.

Going forward: M-346FA to Typhoon and fifth/sixth-gen fighters?

While Leonardo is currently marketing its Block 20-standard M-346FA, this recent trial was interestingly conducted with an older baseline Block 10-standard jet. This aircraft was fitted with a next-generation human-machine interface (HMI) that was fully integrated into the cockpit and avionics architecture to provide full command-and-control (C2) of the Kizilelma, along with continuous situational awareness and effective human oversight over autonomous operations, while reducing overall pilot workload.

According to Leonardo/Baykar, the live-live demonstration concluded the first phase of this joint CUC-T trial, with more live flight demonstrations planned for the future. Future trials will begin to explore and expand the tactical formation envelope of the two platforms while operating in close proximity, with the previous live flight having limited the envelope to basic formations.

While the current scope of the KSWARM programme is to develop a CUC-T capability for the M-346FA, Leonardo is aiming to extend this to current fourth-generation platforms, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon, as well as fifth- and future sixth-generation fighters.

Leonardo believes that incorporating CUC-T capabilities onto the M-346FA – which is also used as an advanced jet trainer – also allows for teaming operations to be introduced to student pilots earlier during their training pipeline, enabling them to better familiarise themselves with how to conduct joint operations with both crewed and uncrewed platforms.