Dassault Aviation has flight-tested two new sovereign AI algorithms aboard the Rafale fighter jet, the company announced on 22 September. The first was developed by Dassault’s own engineers, and the second in collaboration with Thales’s AI unit, cortAIx. Both form part of a broader effort to integrate controlled, supervised AI into the cockpit in service of the human crew, and Dassault says both functions have now reached a level of maturity that makes them eligible for future Rafale upgrades. The company describes the in-flight testing as a further demonstration of its expertise integrating AI into combat systems, a capability it says depends on ensuring the availability and quality of operational data, whether real or simulated, drawing together domain expertise, and optimising resource efficiency on an embedded platform subject to strict constraints, challenges it frames as central to its decades of experience as an industrial architect and integrator of complex systems.

THE CORTAIX PARTNERSHIP BEHIND THIS WORK

The Thales-developed function builds on a strategic partnership Dassault Aviation and Thales’s cortAIx signed in November 2025, under which the two companies agreed to develop trusted, sovereign and controlled AI for defence aeronautics. That partnership, announced by Dassault at the time, covers AI functions for both manned and uncrewed aircraft spanning observation, situation analysis, decision-making, planning and control during military operations, and was framed by Dassault as part of research and innovation programmes dedicated to the collaborative air combat of the future, developed within a global ecosystem while complying with European regulation including the AI Act. Dassault Aviation, which has delivered more than 10,000 military and civil aircraft, including 2,800 Falcon business jets, to customers in over 90 countries across 110 years, reported 2025 revenues of 7.4 billion euros and employed about 15,000 people.