Cirra

Cirra is an electronic warfare software product developed by Helsing , the Munich-headquartered defence AI firm. Introduced in 2023, it processes radio-frequency signals — radar emissions, communications traffic, jamming attempts — and uses machine learning to detect, classify, and propose countermeasures in real time. Cirra is software rather than hardware: it runs on whichever airborne or ground platform integrates it, and is updated through the same software-deployment cycle Helsing applies across its other product lines.

The system’s technical pitch is that legacy electronic warfare libraries — the curated databases of known emitters that traditional EW suites match incoming signals against — are slow to update and brittle against waveforms they have not seen before. Cirra is trained on large bodies of recorded RF data to recognise the structural signatures of emitters even when the specific waveform has shifted, and to surface unfamiliar signals as anomalies for an operator to inspect. In flight, it cues the platform’s onboard countermeasures and feeds the resulting threat picture back to the pilot. Helsing has described the model as continuously retrainable: when new emitters appear in the field, an updated version can be deployed in days rather than the months a conventional library update would take.

The flagship deployment is on the Eurofighter Typhoon. In 2024 the German government approved the procurement of fifteen Eurofighter EK aircraft — a dedicated electronic-combat variant intended to replace the Panavia Tornado ECR in the SEAD role — and Cirra was selected to provide the AI signal-processing layer alongside Saab’s Arexis jamming pod. The Bundeswehr is the launch customer; the United Kingdom, where Helsing has substantial operations and where the Royal Air Force flies the Typhoon, is the second listed operator.

Cirra sits alongside Helsing’s loitering munition and combat-aircraft autonomy products in a portfolio premised on selling autonomy as software, decoupled from the airframer. The Eurofighter EK programme, scheduled to mature over the second half of the decade, will be the visible test of how that approach lands with a NATO-tier customer.