US presents the latest in World Defence the X-BAT.

Oct 2025 : Shield AI has unveiled X-BAT, a stealthy jet-powered ‘autonomous fighter’ designed to take off vertically and land the same way, tail first, after completing its mission. The company is best known for its Hivemind autonomy software and its much less complex, but combat-proven V-BAT vertical takeoff and landing drone.

Now it wants to have a very disruptive impact on the growing marketplace for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) type drones with a design that aims to offer a totally different level of mission flexibility from launch and recovery points on land or at sea.

Ahead of today’s reveal, Shield AI had a candid and in-depth conversation about the vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) X-BAT, its genesis, features, benefits, and the potential roadblocks to making it a reality, with Shield AI’s Armor Harris, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company’s aircraft division.

The fully runway-independent X-BAT, with its ‘cranked kite’ planform, is 26 feet long, have a wingspan of 39 feet, and 4.7 feet tall. The drone, powered by a single afterburning jet engine, will have a maximum range of 2,000 nautical miles and a service ceiling of around 50,000 feet. It has a highly modular design with a focus on open mission system architecture to make it easier to integrate new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line.

Armor Harris asserted, “we’ve been approaching trying to solve the biggest problem that the United States has today, which is how do we counter the rise of our peer adversaries, i.e., China, and their ability to outspend and out-produce us in the military technology of the 21st Century? And the way to do that is with America’s fundamental advantage, which is innovation. Hence, we’ve developed an innovative aircraft, that is not just an aircraft, but is a weapon system that fundamentally changes the balance of power in the Pacific”.

X-BAT is a reminiscence of the capability of something like an F-35 or a comparable fifth-gen [fighter], with features like vertical takeoff and landing package, at a tenth of the cost, life-cycle wise of a fifth generation. Hence, breaking the cost curve, It enables to counter China’s fifth and sixth generation aircraft with something that comes at a fraction of the price.

Three things are fundamental:

First, is it’s vertical takeoff and landing. And the reason why vertical takeoff and landing is so important is that in all of the wargames, more aircraft are lost on the ground than in the air. And over the last 20 or 30 years, the United States has spent several billion dollars in making aircraft incredibly survivable in the air. More and more low observable, more and more advanced technologies, to be survivable in the air. China while moving several steps ahead has taken their ones all out on the ground before they even because tactical aircraft are heavily dependent on tankers, to cover the ranges in the Pacific. China has prevented US from commissioning a base in proximity, which means US is bound to rely on the tankers, and China has formulated mechanisms to hold those tankers at risk that US can’t even get them into the conflict arena.

VTOL mitigates both of those challenges because it enables survivability on the ground. Hence if ground survival is reinforced in addition to being survivable in the air, then it prevents them from being targeted on the ground by just cratering the runways. And then it enables in getting closer enough that eliminates the need for a tanker support.

Second, is that the aircraft is multi-rolled. So, it’s capable of performing air-to-air, air-to-surface, air-to-ground, and electronic warfare missions, in addition to ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance]. And fundamentally, the Department of War and the United States can only have so much money. It’s an outdated concept in continuing to invest in bespoke capabilities for specific mission sets. US have delved into fighting terrorists in the Middle East, to counterfeiting the rise of China in the Pacific and, the way they are also dealing with adversarial Russia in Eastern Europe, which are basically three different problem sets. All these days US was fighting to solve that with single -mission weapon systems, which is pretty challenging.

Third, it’s really the first weapon system that is being reinforced and designed around autonomy in the air. Defence industry, is broadly familiar with the US Air Force’s Increment 1 CCAs. Those are fundamentally tied to the manned ‘quarterback’ to be not only a C2 [command and control] node, but also to do some other things. X-BAT is designed to have the size, weight, and power needed to carry all the sensors and gear needed to be truly standalone, and also leveraging the autonomy that shield has built for the big jet programs that can’t be said about too much due to classifications. It can be collaborative with other assets in the event it needs to be collaborative with other assets, but it’s the world’s first true standalone autonomous fighter jet.

X-BAT’s vertical takeoff; it goes into reheat which is also termed as afterburner, and lifts off like a rocket. Is that fully unassisted, there’s no boosters, there’s enough thrust-to-weight ratio in that design with a payload to get that off the cradle and up into forward horizontal flight with just the engine. The fundamental constituent of this defence marvel is that other VTOL systems, like the F-35B, need a complicated like lift fan system, Osprey needs the tiltrotors. But X-BAT is a straight-up tail sitter, simple F-16 propulsion train, single engine down the middle, afterburning engine, and the afterburner gives a thrust-to-weight needed to take off.

Many fighter jets today actually have a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than one anyway, in many configurations. And the way that the VTOL control is achieved is with a thrust vectoring nozzle that was originally developed for an F-15 program in the late ‘90s. It was called ACTIVE [Advanced Control Technology for Integrated Vehicles].

X-BAT’s vertical landing; it comes in and does a cobra manoeuvre to go from horizontal to vertical, and then it translates down. The inlet is highly engineered to be able to accommodate that transition, and then also work well in vertical orientation, additional to the horizontal orientation. But the trajectory is shaped to ensure that it never like ‘blanking the inlet’ [where the engine suffocates due to airflow blocked by the airframe], allowing unintermittent airflow.

The Cobra Manoeuvre, also known as Pugachev’s Cobra or Pugachev Cobra, is a spectacular, dramatic, and demanding aerobatics manoeuvre in which an aircraft flown at a moderate speed suddenly raises its nose to the vertical position—and beyond—before dropping the nose back to horizontal flight. The aircraft reaches a 90–120° angle of attack during the Cobra. The Cobra manoeuvre is named after the Soviet test pilot Viktor Pugachyov, who first performed the Cobra manoeuvre publicly in 1989 at the Paris Le Bourget air show, and shocked the Western spectators who couldn’t believe it. The Soviet Union still existed at this time. However, the Cobra was first executed by Sukhoi test-pilot Igor Volk in a test flight (in the Soviet Union). The classic Cobra was done using only standard aerodynamic controls. Today, it is easier to do with Vector Thrust.

Suvro Sanyal – Team Maverick