A top Royal Air Force officer says Britain’s vision of an AI-powered air force is no longer a future goal for the 2030s — it’s here today and needed now.
Air Chief Marshal Harvey Smyth, the head of the British Royal Air Force, said the UK initially thought it was roughly a decade away from becoming what he described as an “AI air force” that operates “robot fighter jets” alongside traditional crewed aircraft.
“We’ve known that that is our future, but maybe two, three years ago, we would have talked about 2035 as the endpoint. I think it’s today,” Smyth, the Chief of the Air Staff, said inside a hangar at an RAF base in the UK, the location of which has been withheld for security reasons.
The Royal Air Force is one of several Western air forces pursuing autonomous, AI-powered drones, which, depending on the country and the developer, are known by names such as “loyal wingmen,” “collaborative combat aircraft,” or “autonomous collaborative platforms.”
These uncrewed systems are designed to fly with or ahead of piloted fighter jets to augment overall airpower; they can also be used to penetrate contested high-threat areas without putting a human pilot at risk.
One example of this new technology is the UK’s StormShroud drone, which can jam enemy radars and clear pathways for British F-35Bs and Typhoon fighter jets that would otherwise be vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles. The uncrewed system entered service in May 2025.
The Royal Air Force launched its Autonomous Collaborative Platform Strategy in 2024, outlining its plan to integrate uncrewed aircraft into the force. A document detailing the strategy says that by 2030, “battle-winning ACP capabilities” will play an “integral part” in the British force structure and routinely operate alongside piloted systems.
“We always knew, in theory, that this was a capability that would be coming,” Smyth said of the advanced uncrewed aircraft. “We expected it to really come to the fore in the next decade. In truth, it’s here today.”
The RAF chief shared that “we’re just about to embark on some work for our air force to relook at our combat air strategy and where those types of capabilities might and could play into that much sooner than we hitherto thought.”
Smyth said that Britain has sped up these integration efforts in part because of the US and Israeli war against Iran, a conflict that has forced militaries to rethink their approach to drone warfare. He said one of the most “interesting” and “exciting” changes for the RAF today is the pivot toward uncrewed aircraft.
The development of loyal wingman-type drones has emerged as a priority initiative for multiple countries. In the US, for instance, two designs from General Atomics and Anduril became the first collaborative combat aircraft concepts to receive drone fighter jet designations.
Leading US defense companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman are developing other new designs, like the Vectis aircraft, the MQ-28 Ghost Bat, and the Talon drone. Outside of this space are related efforts, such as Shield AI’s X-BAT autonomous fighter jet and Boeing’s MQ-25A Stingray refueling drone.
Britain, like the US and other NATO allies, is pushing more broadly to incorporate drones and AI into its force structure as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East show the value of using cheap uncrewed systems for offensive and defensive missions.
In Ukraine, for instance, interceptor drones are being used to down Russian attack drones, ground robots are deployed in place of soldiers along some areas of the front lines, and AI is used to accelerate decision-making and target processing.
However, the use of AI for military purposes has raised concerns about possible battlefield errors and accidental strikes on civilian areas.
Last week, the US Department of Defense said it had signed deals with several major tech companies — including Google, SpaceX, and Microsoft — to use their AI for its classified networks, triggering some backlash within Google.
In a statement, the Pentagon said the agreements will “accelerate the transformation” in making the US military “an AI-first fighting force.”
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