Airbus Drops Wingman for Ravenstorm: Germany’s 2032 CCA Goal Speeds Up Europe’s Loyal-Wingman Race
Airbus Defence and Space has shelved development of its Wingman loyal-wingman drone and pivoted to a new platform, the U760 Ravenstorm, to match Germany’s accelerated timeline for fielding uncrewed combat aircraft. The shift was announced on November 3 at the International Fighter Conference in Munich.
Airbus spokesperson Laurent Le Quément framed the decision bluntly: customers asked the company to bring the in-service date forward, and Airbus revised its roadmap accordingly. The German Air Force wants an uncrewed wingman capability fielded sooner than originally planned, and Wingman’s long-dated schedule no longer fit that demand signal.
Wingman was unveiled at ILA Berlin in 2024, when then-CEO Michael Schoellhorn pegged its in-service date near 2040 and its target cost at roughly a third of a manned fighter. That horizon made sense as a long-term bet, but it left Airbus without a credible near-term offer once Berlin signaled urgency.
Ravenstorm, by contrast, leans on proven hardware. The aircraft cruises at high subsonic speed and carries a 500-kilogram internal weapons bay, built on the design lineage of Airbus’s Barracuda demonstrator, which has logged six flight-test campaigns since work began in 2003. Instead of the bespoke engine Wingman would have needed, Ravenstorm uses a business-jet engine, trimming both development risk and cost.
Ravenstorm is the second of three collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) Airbus is developing. The first, the Kratos-derived U740 Valkyrie, is positioned as a bridge solution for Germany’s 2029 requirement and is slated for a joint manned-unmanned flight demonstration with a Eurofighter Typhoon in 2027. The third system remains unnamed. Ravenstorm’s own in-service target is 2032.
Germany’s 2029 CCA requirement itself grew murkier after reports in October 2026 that Berlin is reconsidering a purchase of Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat. That uncertainty keeps rivals such as Airbus, which offers Valkyrie as an interim option, in contention rather than being squeezed out by an early decision. Airbus’s Marco Mehling said that if the requirement slips to 2032, it would work in the company’s favor, though Airbus still wants to be ready for the original date.
The six flight-test campaigns behind Barracuda matter because they give Ravenstorm a maturity level Wingman never had on paper. Building on a flown demonstrator rather than a clean-sheet concept lets Airbus offer a more predictable certification path, a signal that Europe’s CCA race is shifting away from paper concepts toward platforms backed by actual flight data.
The business-jet engine choice reflects the same pragmatism. A bespoke military engine would have driven up both cost and schedule risk; leaning on a civil-certified supply chain makes Ravenstorm’s production scaling more tractable and keeps the 2032 target realistic.
Competing German bids from Boeing, Helsing and General Atomics turn Berlin’s eventual choice into a multidimensional industrial-policy decision, not just a technical one. Picking Ravenstorm would keep design authority inside German-European industry, while an off-the-shelf platform could arrive faster but with less sovereign control — a tension that will shape CCA decisions elsewhere in Europe too.
For Türkiye’s own loyal-wingman efforts, the European race offers a useful point of comparison. Baykar’s KIZILELMA and the ANKA-3-based manned-unmanned teaming concept being developed for KAAN under the TUSAŞ-ASELSAN partnership face similar pressure to compress in-service timelines. Airbus’s pragmatic reliance on a flown demonstrator rather than a clean-sheet design is a model Turkish industry is already following in its own cost- and schedule-driven approach to CCA development.
Germany’s final CCA decision should become clearer over the coming months. Valkyrie’s planned 2027 joint flight with a Typhoon and Ravenstorm’s 2032 target point to a possible two-track roadmap for Berlin: a ready interim solution now, and a fully in-house platform further out.
Sources
- Breaking Defense, “Wingman out, Ravenstorm in: Airbus changes tact to meet Germany’s accelerated operations timeline”, November 3, 2026 (https://breakingdefense.com/2026/11/airbus-ends-wingman-drone-to-meet-germanys-accelerated-operations-timeline/) — primary source for the Munich announcement, official quotes and program timeline.
- The Aviationist, “Airbus Unveils U760 Ravenstorm UCCA”, June 2026 (https://theaviationist.com/2026/06/10/airbus-unveils-u760-ravenstorm-ucca/) — verification of Ravenstorm’s ILA Berlin debut and technical background.
