Saab Shaking Up Gripen Training with Project Skynapse

Saab has revealed its plans to shake up simulator flight training for the Gripen E fighter with the launch of Project Skynapse: a personalized, AI-augmented approach to 'upskill' individual pilots. Speaking at a press briefing in late August, Johan Segertoft, head of business unit Gripen, explained that the new capability is intended to expedite training on the aircraft’s incremental software updates: something Saab says it prides itself on implementing faster than its competitors. 

According to Segertoft, Skynapse could reduce training for pilots flying aircraft with software upgrades from 6 to 12 months to just a couple of days. “We are ‘gamifying’ the entire training experience, and it will not look anything like it looks like today,” he told a press briefing at the recent Swedish air force 100th anniversary air show at Malmen air base near Linköping.

The Skynapse software has been developed with the help of Critical Software from Portugal. Saab said the training aid is already in the hands of “a small select group” of users due to expand over the coming year, with an official product to follow this year or next. The name—currently an internal development moniker—supersedes an initial nickname of ‘Project Top Gun,’ a reference to the original training program borne out of the Vietnam war. 

With current simulator-based learning often at risk of being repetitive, Skynapse deploys AI throughout the entire cycle to help configure, setup, and train alongside a specific pilot: tailoring missions to an individual’s specific weaknesses. A ‘high-score’ table, inkeeping with a spirit of competitiveness, will also feature. Crucially, the system will also “automatically tailor the test missions to the change of the aircraft.” 

The ability to expedite training on Gripen’s ongoing software updates is, perhaps now more than ever, of paramount importance. “Speed becomes a military capability of itself,” suggested Segertoft, who claimed that the four to five year update cycle for rival fighters is, based on lessons learned in Ukraine, is “not the way forward.” 

Deploy In The Morning, Learn By Lunch 

Instead, Gripen E’s open-architecture split-avionics system—separating flight-critical and mission-critical software—allows for expedited tactical modifications. Since the E variant’s first flight in 2017, Saab has made over 300 capability upgrades in the time it believes its peers would typically manage four or five. 

“Our normal pace within the company now is that we are flying a new version every week,” revealed Segertoft, adding that during the past nine years “the amount of software bugs we have discovered during flight are less than you can count on one hand.” 

Accordingly, Gripen has now updated its “code in the morning, fly in the afternoon” mantra to “code in the evening, deploy in the morning, learn by lunch.” 

Saab believes Skynapse will both speedup pilot training while also enriching it. “We need to understand that we need to look at learning differently,” concluded Segertoft. “If you gauge it in the absolute moment, the training will be much faster… but it’s the exponential learning over time that will actually bring something real to the pilot.” 

Gripen E is currently operational in Brazil and Sweden, with Colombia, Thailand and Ukraine also having ordered the type. 

Although Sweden has no current plans to introduce the twin-seat Gripen F variant, the inaugural Brazilian example made its first flight from Saab’s Linköping flight test center on August 28. According to head of Saab Aeronautics Lars Tossman, the F “is designed to accelerate pilot training while enhancing operational performance in advanced combat missions.”