US: BACKREAD INTERVIEW - Italian pilots praise Turkish engineers after joint aircraft tests.

SHOTLIST LONDON, UK (JULY 21, 2026) 1. UMBERTO ROSSI, CO-LEADER, FUTURE COMBAT AIR PROJECT, LEONARDO SPEAKING TO REPORTER 2. OMMANDER GIACOMO IANNELLI, PROJECT TEST PILOT TRAINER, LEONARDO AIRCRAFT DIVISION SPEAKING TO REPORTERLONDON, UK - JULY 21: Italian defense executives and military pilots have praised Turkish defense firm Baykar, describing its young engineering team as highly qualified and motivated. "I found Baykar, a very fast-developing, very young company. So people were actually really motivated, really young people who actually taught me a lot,” said Commander Giacomo Iannelli, project test pilot trainer at Leonardo's Aircraft Division. Umberto Rossi, co-leader of the Future Combat Air Project at Leonardo, praised Baykar’s unmanned fighter Kizilelma. "It was amazing to work with Kizilelma, a very advanced product of Baykar,” he said. He said the stealth fighter's autonomous operations and capabilities stood out. "We also found very competent engineers. The Turkish engineers were very qualified, very motivated,” he added. “Leonardo is working with European processes, which are usually very slow, but working together with our friends from Türkiye, we were able to move very fast and very quickly," he said. - Flight trial The two companies on Monday shared behind-the-scenes details of successful flight trials in which a crewed aircraft and an uncrewed fighter flew together in autonomous formation. Engineers and pilots presented the findings from the K-SWARM program at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK. The live flight tests were carried out in May at Baykar’s flight and test center in Corlu, Türkiye, to validate crewed-uncrewed teaming (CUC-T) capabilities for future air combat. During the trials, the Bayraktar Kizilelma uncrewed fighter performed an autonomous taxi and takeoff before rejoining a Leonardo M-346 fighter jet in the air. A second aircraft, an Italian Air Force T-346A, acted as a chase plane. Once airborne, the M-346 assumed control of Kizilelma using a newly developed integrated avionics suite and computing system. Pilots aboard the M-346 issued commands that were autonomously carried out by Kizilelma, including position changes and separation maneuvers. The partnership began with a memorandum of understanding signed in Rome in March 2025 and was formalized with the launch of the LBA Systems joint venture at the Paris Air Show in June. The equally owned Italy-based venture focuses on developing unmanned aerial systems, combining Baykar’s expertise in advanced unmanned platforms with Leonardo’s electronic systems, mission payloads and crewed-uncrewed teaming technologies. -Advanced autonomous capability Highlighting the sophistication of Baykar's technology, Rossi said the Turkish combat drone demonstrated advanced autonomous performance during the joint flight trials. "Well, first of all, it was a very successful collaboration between Baykar from Türkiye and Leonardo from Italy, two very advanced technology companies, which represent a high-end level of these products. "The aim of this collaboration was to develop, integrate, and validate the crewed-uncrewed teaming technology, which is a capability to have an aircraft with a pilot on board to fly in formation with several UAVs. “Jointly, we developed this capability, which was demonstrated and validated during some experimental flight runs in Türkiye," he added. Iannelli said the combination of crewed fighters and autonomous drones could multiply combat capability while reducing risks to pilots. "So you have... less safety-critical aircraft that can actually do the operations, the dangerous operations that normally you would not allow a pilot, a crewed aircraft to do. Controlling everything from a single aircraft reduces drastically the risk for the crew that is actually executing the mission." -'High interest for NATO' Regarding global market adoption and NATO's expected interest in this advanced Turkish-Italian technology, Iannelli said: “I think most of the NATO forces will look at it very strongly.” “Actually, it’s for sure one of the first, maybe the most advanced one, especially because we had the aircraft with its own avionics actually flying and controlling a drone,” he said. Rossi said the technology is still under development and will require further work before meeting international certification standards. "We believe that after a very short time, this capability that Leonardo and Baykar are developing is aimed to be presented also to NATO countries. So we believe that this technology will be of very high interest for NATO, for Europe, and for the international market,” he said.