Dassault Aviation and French startup Harmattan AI have successfully conducted an in-flight demonstration of a collaborative combat concept between a Rafale F4 and a drone equipped with a new electronic warfare payload called NAMIB, a development that foreshadows the operational architecture France aims to consolidate for the future F5 standard of its fighter jet.
According to both companies reporting on July 13, during the test an unmanned aerial system equipped with the NAMIB payload detected, identified and precisely geolocated an air defense radar located several tens of kilometers away. The information was transmitted in real time to the Rafale F4, which subsequently simulated an attack against the target.
The demonstration constitutes the first known collaborative flight of this new electronic warfare system, whose development began in January 2026 as part of the strategic partnership between Dassault Aviation and Harmattan AI, aimed at incorporating advanced autonomous capabilities and artificial intelligence into the next generation of French air combat systems.
Distributed electronic warfare
NAMIB is an electronic warfare payload designed to operate from lightweight unmanned platforms, including tactical quadcopters and fixed-wing drones with longer endurance. Its mission is to detect electromagnetic emissions, classify them, and precisely determine their geographic location, particularly those corresponding to air defense radar systems.
In the scenario demonstrated by Dassault, the drone acted as a forward remote sensor, allowing the Rafale to remain at a greater distance from the threat while receiving targeting information generated by the unmanned system. This approach responds to an increasingly marked trend in Western doctrines: shifting part of the ISR and electronic warfare functions toward expendable or low-cost platforms, reducing the exposure of manned aircraft.
Eric Trappier, Chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation, stated that the test demonstrates “the real and concrete multi-domain collaborative combat capabilities of the Rafale,” noting that the F4 standard architecture enables seamless information exchange with a wide variety of actors, including ground systems and unmanned platforms.
He also emphasized that the demonstration constitutes a new validation of the “high-low mix” concept, based on combining high-complexity platforms —such as the Rafale— with expendable autonomous systems capable of extending the reach of its sensors and effectors.
A further step toward the Rafale F5 architecture
The test also represents an early validation of the technological direction chosen by France for the Rafale’s evolution. As the French Ministry of the Armed Forces had already anticipated, the future Rafale F5 will not feature a variant specialized in SEAD/DEAD (Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses) missions. Instead, French strategy bets on a distributed architecture in which the manned fighter will act as a coordinating node for a set of remote sensors and effectors, including stealth drones derived from the nEUROn program, autonomous systems and new electronic warfare payloads.
Within this concept, platforms like NAMIB will enable early detection and location of enemy emitters without directly exposing the manned aircraft, while the information obtained can be used by the Rafale or other systems connected within the tactical network.
France bets on the future combination of Rafale F5 fighters and AI-powered stealth drones. Image: Dassault Aviation.
The F5 standard will incorporate a new computing architecture, greater processing power, second-generation connectivity and substantial improvements to the SPECTRA self-protection system, elements designed precisely to manage this type of collaborative operations.
Harmattan AI partnership accelerates collaborative combat
The demonstration also confirms the rapid progress of the alliance between Dassault Aviation and Harmattan AI, officially announced in January of this year following an investment of approximately USD 200 million led by the Rafale manufacturer. The NAMIB flight thus constitutes one of the first concrete demonstrations of this industrial and technological cooperation, showing how electronic warfare sensors onboard drones can be integrated with combat aircraft to execute coordinated missions in environments with strong anti-air threats.
Beyond the payload itself, the test confirms the direction of French air combat doctrine: the creation of an offensive ecosystem where manned aircraft, autonomous drones, artificial intelligence and distributed sensors act as a single operational architecture, anticipating many of the capabilities that will later converge in both the Rafale F5 and future sixth-generation air combat programs.