Helsing has unveiled the CA-1 Europa, an autonomous uncrewed combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) that the company says could be operational within the next four years.
The full-scale design study was presented at Grob Aircraft, the German light-aircraft manufacturer that Helsing acquired in June 2025. Development and testing of the platform will take place at Grob’s facilities with support from European partners across the aerospace ecosystem.
Helsing’s move into combat aviation follows its acquisition of Grob Aircraft, a long-standing producer of trainers and reconnaissance aircraft. The deal provided Helsing with an established manufacturing base, enabling it to pair its autonomy and software focus with an indigenous European airframe producer.
A native AI combat jet
The CA-1 Europa is designed in the three-to-five-ton class and optimized for high subsonic speeds. Helsing describes it as a mass-producible jet with modular integration of sensors, effectors, and self-protection systems.
The platform is natively controllable by Helsing’s Centaur AI pilot, an autonomy stack demonstrated in June 2025 on the Saab Gripen E in real-world BVR flight trials. CA-1 is intended to operate as a single aircraft or within a swarm, with potential missions ranging from ISR and air defense to deep precision strikes. Helsing also plans to deliver a command-and-control system for mission planning and asset coordination.
Europe’s competitive landscape
Helsing’s announcement arrives at a time when the European industry is pursuing multiple paths to autonomous combat aviation.
The announcement comes as Europe weighs multiple paths into uncrewed combat aviation. Several US-developed platforms are moving across the Atlantic through industrial partnerships. General Atomics is adapting its YFQ-42A collaborative combat aircraft for Europe with assembly in Germany. Rheinmetall and Anduril are working together to offer a European version of the YFQ-44 Fury, while Airbus has teamed with Kratos to bring the XQ-58A Valkyrie into German service from 2029. All three are designed to provide NATO with affordable, networked combat drones before sixth-generation fighters arrive.
Europe’s primes are not absent from the field. Dassault Aviation remains Europe’s most experienced UCAV developer, having flown the nEUROn demonstrator in 2012 and later conducted weapons-bay trials. Lessons from that program are now feeding into a French UCAS designed to accompany the Rafale F5 standard in the early 2030s.
