Cascais, Portugal, April 29, 2026 (Lusa) - The president of the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) has said in an interview with Lusa that artificial intelligence (AI) in defence must be approached ethically, which has not yet been done.

Micael Johansson, who is also the CEO of Swedish defence giant Saab, was in Cascais (Lisbon) on Tuesday for the ASD Convention 2026, a gathering that brought together the main European players in the defence, security and aerospace sectors.

When asked how Europe can integrate AI into its systems while adhering to security and ethical standards, given that technology is a reality in the sector, he said that the issue must be addressed, pointing out that Europe currently lacks any AI regulations specifically focused on the defence sector.

The European AI Act does not apply to the defence sector; however, the dispute between the US artificial intelligence firm Anthropic and the Pentagon has sparked a debate about the future of warfare involving this type of technology.

"There is a need to think about this in an ethical way," he said.

"The problem is: will our adversaries think about it the same way?" he added.

"It should be a global perspective on how we actually allow completely autonomous systems to do whatever they want to do involving AI," he said.

"At Saab now, we have a policy, saying that there has to be a person in the loop before you start doing aggressive things," he added.

This "doesn’t mean that everyone pushes the weapons button all the time, but sometimes, if you’re in a conflict, you will send a swarm of drones on a mission, yet there’s still a human decision to do so," he said.

“There needs to be an ethical perspective on this, but we haven’t done that yet," he added.

"This is a very difficult area, because if the opponent doesn’t care about these things, bad things can happen," he said.

“I’m afraid we will see things happening before we start realising that we have to fix this, and I think that is an important area to get under control," he concluded.

ALU/MYAL // AYLS

Lusa