A lethal uncrewed combat aircraft with an AI targeting core. Designed and built in Portugal.
Obsidian, the aircraft, and ObsidianOS, the AI mission and targeting layer that flies it and fights with it. The software is built first, so operators can break it years before the airframe flies.
Spine and fins
Leading edge
Exhaust
One programme. Two tracks. One gate.
Both tracks meet at one programme gate, and nothing passes it on ambition.
Obsidian
A fighter-profile uncrewed combat aircraft with an internal weapons bay, built to carry and employ weapons, for the Atlantic and European theatre from Portuguese bases, mainland and islands.
Onboard AI finds, tracks, prioritises and engages inside rules of engagement a human has set. The human supervises and holds the abort.
In design; sub-scale demonstrator H1 2027
ObsidianOS
The AI mission and targeting layer: one operator, many aircraft, autonomous engagement inside human-set rules of engagement, every engagement on the record.
A simulation and software-in-the-loop demonstrator at TRL 3 to 4, verified and replayable, with a working bridge to real autopilot software. The targeting pipeline runs against simulated sensors and effectors.
TRL 3 to 4
Five rules that do not move
Lethal by design
The aircraft carries weapons and the command layer targets. Never disguised.
Human on the loop
Rules of engagement are set by people, execution is supervised, abort is always available and always honoured.
Evidence is the spine
Every detection, decision and engagement is an event: append-only, hash-linked, replayable.
Aircraft-agnostic core
New platforms enter by capability descriptor; platform behaviour never leaks into the core.
Sovereign supply chain
Designed and built in Portugal, on an EU supply chain, free of foreign export control on the core.
Configuration as drawn
- Twin canted vertical fins, low-RCS coatings.
- Two side inlets, high-subsonic single turbofan.
- Ventral weapons bay: two dispenser stacks plus conventional stores.
- Carbon-epoxy skins, honeycomb cores, printed brackets and ducts.
- Tricycle gear; runway, arrestment and recovery under study.
- EO/IR and maritime sensors feeding the onboard targeting core.
No span, mass or performance figure is claimed until the independent review returns them as modelled values.
What exists today
Airframe
In design. A sub-scale physical demonstrator is planned for H1 2027, flying with inert stores.
ObsidianOS
A simulation and software-in-the-loop demonstrator at TRL 3 to 4, verified and replayable; the targeting pipeline runs against simulated sensors and simulated effectors.
Autopilot bridge
The MAVLink adapter has driven ArduPilot SITL, real autopilot software in the loop, under the same command layer.
Weapons
No live weapon has been integrated or fired. That is the purpose of the programme, not its current state.
The command layer exists as a simulation and software-in-the-loop demonstrator at TRL 3 to 4. The targeting and engagement pipeline runs against simulated sensors and simulated effectors. The aircraft is in design. A sub-scale physical demonstrator is planned for H1 2027. No live weapons have been integrated or fired.
The Portuguese pathway
Independent technical review of the command layer by a national research institute, weapons policy checked before each approach. Experimentation through the Armed Forces' own channels. Data shapes aligned to NATO interoperability standards at the boundaries; alignment, never compliance. A lethal system is export-controlled from the first foreign conversation, and licensing counsel is engaged before any detail leaves the EU. Institutions are named as conversations and requests; no endorsement is implied.
Built at home, or it is not sovereign
Obsidian is designed for production in Portugal from the first drawing: composite primary structure, additive manufacturing for brackets, ducts and fairings, and an integration and assembly line that grows with evidence rather than ahead of it. The path runs from an integration cell to a pilot line to series production, each phase gated on the evidence of the one before. Site selection is open. The integration cell goes to the municipality that brings the site, the airfield access and the training partnership first.
Who is building it
ObsidianOS is built by Alea Applied AI, the division of Alea Industries that builds and runs AI systems inside professional service firms: the same engineers, the same rules, criteria written first and every decision on the record. The company is founder-led. The airframe team is being assembled in Portugal, and three roles are open now.
Who we are looking for
A senior autonomy and targeting engineer, an aerospace or propulsion engineer, and uncrewed-systems operators who will write the rules of engagement with us and tell us where the system is naive. Portugal.
Contact
The programme, the review pathway, the site, or the demonstrator itself.
The programme was renamed Obsidian in September 2026.