Airbus unveils Ravenstorm combat drone

Airbus has unveiled a new uncrewed combat aircraft designed to fly alongside crewed fighter jets, the U760 Ravenstorm, presenting it as the centrepiece of a sweeping uncrewed aircraft portfolio at the ILA Berlin air show, the company has said.

The Ravenstorm is what the industry calls an Uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft, a drone built to operate as a wingman to a crewed fighter, and Airbus is displaying a full-scale model at the show with a wingspan of 10 metres and a length of 13 metres. According to the company, the aircraft is optimised for multi-domain missions, with capabilities spanning air-to-surface strikes using precision-guided munitions, air-to-air defence with long and medium-range anti-aircraft missiles, and electronic warfare to suppress enemy air defences and jam hostile systems. Airbus says Ravenstorm will be available in the early 2030s.

The aircraft sits within a phased Airbus plan to field collaborative combat drones, building on two decades of work that began with the Barracuda demonstrator that first flew twenty years ago. Ahead of Ravenstorm comes the U740 Valkyrie, developed in cooperation with the American firm Kratos and aimed at delivering an operational sovereign uncrewed combat aircraft to the German Air Force by 2029, enabling early air-to-ground capability and the teaming of the drone with the Eurofighter.

The chief executive of Airbus Defence and Space, Mike Schoellhorn, described the launch as evidence of the breadth of the company’s offering. “Whatever uncrewed or ‘drone’ capability our customers need to strengthen sovereign air power, we deliver,” he said, describing a portfolio that runs from rapid-response drone interceptors and tactical drones through autonomous cargo helicopters to uncrewed fighters operating cooperatively with crewed jets. All the systems, he said, come with open architectures and a European mission system compatible with the wider European and international defence ecosystem.

The portfolio on display reflects a wholesale rebranding of Airbus uncrewed systems under a new “U” prefix, mirroring the “A” the company uses for fixed-wing aircraft and the “H” for helicopters. Among the systems shown is the U145, an uncrewed version of the proven H145 helicopter aimed primarily at high-volume cargo supply but adaptable to roles including surveillance, firefighting, armed scouting and acting as a mothership for air-launched effects, alongside a range of light tactical drones in the U010 Aliaca, U030 Flexrotor and U050 Capa-X.

Airbus also showcased the U680 Bird of Prey, an uncrewed interceptor designed to counter massed aerial threats by engaging and neutralising multiple mid-sized one-way attack drones per mission. The company says the system flew for the first time in March, just nine months after the project began, and that it fundamentally rebalances the cost of air defence, the central problem facing every Western military trying to shoot down cheap attack drones without spending vastly more on each interceptor than the drone costs to build.

Tying much of the portfolio together is what Airbus calls MARS, its sovereign mission system, which integrates an AI-supported software core to enable platform autonomy and is designed to scale across the range, powering Ravenstorm, Valkyrie and Bird of Prey, with the company intending to install it on the U950 Eurodrone as well. The Eurodrone, Europe’s first strategic large long-endurance remotely piloted aircraft, remains on track for a first flight in 2029 and is designed to provide independent strategic surveillance, early warning and anti-submarine warfare.