Abstract: Flight vehicle lightweighting technology is a crucial approach to enhancing the overall performance of aerospace equipment. According to implementation methods, flight vehicle lightweighting technology can be categorized into material lightweighting, structural lightweighting, and manufacturing process lightweighting. In the development of next-generation flight vehicles, complex engineering constraints and high-dimensional design variables give rise to several bottlenecks for conventional lightweighting technologies, including high trial-and-error costs in material development, lengthy iteration cycles in structural optimization, and insufficient manufacturing accuracy for complex configurations. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has effectively advanced the level of flight vehicle lightweighting by leveraging its core capabilities in deep feature extraction, high-dimensional nonlinear mapping, and multi-source information perception. By enabling accurate prediction of material properties, substantially shortening design cycles, and intelligently matching process parameters, AI has established a novel research paradigm for this field. Accordingly, this paper systematically reviews the key research advances in AI-enabled flight vehicle lightweighting technologies. First, data-driven lightweighting research on metallic materials, composite materials, and novel materials is summarized. Second, deep-learning-assisted iterative structural optimization and generative-model-assisted end-to-end structural lightweighting are elaborated. Subsequently, cutting-edge research on flight vehicle manufacturing process lightweighting oriented toward intelligent subtractive, additive, and hybrid manufacturing is further explored. Finally, the current state of AI-enabled flight vehicle lightweighting technologies is summarized, and future research directions are outlined, with the aim of providing a systematic academic reference for the lightweighting of next-generation flight vehicles.

Key words: Artificial intelligence, Flight vehicle design, Material lightweighting, Structural lightweighting, Manufacturing process lightweighting