We Built the First X-BAT Prototype in One Year. Now We Put it to the Test.

One year ago, we shared our design and vision for X-BAT, the world’s first autonomous vertical take off and launch (VTOL) strike fighter. Today, as I write this, the first-full scale X-BAT prototype is complete and on its way from our development facility in Frisco, Texas, to our flight test facility in Newton, Kansas.

This milestone represents a year of sustained effort and discipline from a team that committed to an ambitious design and build schedule and delivered. That is no small feat.

Shield is building the best team in aviation. This aircraft, and the speed at which we built it, is a testament to that team and the work put in over the last year.

It’s an incredible accomplishment, to be sure. But we still have a long way to go, and we’re not losing sight of that.

Why We’re Moving Fast

The team is laser focused on keeping pace because we know a capability is only useful if it arrives in time to matter. We cannot take decades to develop an aircraft when the need is already here. That urgency has shaped how we approach the engineering work, and how we work with partners in the U.S. government.

From early on, leaders committed to working with us, making subject matter experts available to our technical team day and night. Over the past year, that collaboration has included wind tunnel testing, engine testing, and thermal testing to address major technical risks. Working through those risks together gives us the confidence to build and test the aircraft at the speed America and its allies need.

What We’re Building X-BAT to Do

What makes that pace so important is the range of missions we’re building X-BAT to take on. No one can predict what the future fight is going to look like 10 or 20 years from now. So we’re developing an aircraft for today’s operational needs while giving it the versatility to remain useful as those needs evolve.

That thinking has shaped X-BAT’s design from the beginning. We sized X-BAT to be a true multi-role aircraft: big enough to be able to carry serious strike weapons internally and externally, plus the ability to execute air-to-air, electronic warfare and other mission sets.

Those multirole abilities put X-BAT it in a very different category from Air Force Increment 1 CCAs. Those are much smaller aircraft, focused exclusively on air-to-air. X-BAT is twice the size, has the capacity for air-to-ground strike missions, and carries many more sensors on board. The F110 engine with thrust vectoring also gives X-BAT a much more fighter-like flight envelope than those smaller aircraft with Williams-type engines.

Creating an Asymmetric Threat

Equally important to X-BAT’s capabilities is where it can actually operate and execute. We’re bringing multi-mission capabilities together in an aircraft designed to take off and land vertically, giving commanders more places to operate from and makes the aircraft harder to find and destroy. That optionality makes X-BAT an asymmetric threat.

Our adversaries have invested in long range missiles that put our aircraft at risk when they’re on the ground. Aircraft are hard to shoot down in the air, but easy to destroy when they’re on the ground.

X-BAT is the answer to this threat because it forces the adversary to take all those assets that are overhead looking down at our airbases and makes them try to go and find where the X-BATs are hiding. That could be on a ship somewhere out in the middle of the ocean, or on an island in the first island chain, or any other theater around the world.

That presents a big problem to the adversary because now they’re spending all their time and energy looking for X-BATs, so everything else in America’s arsenal can come in and punch them in the face. Or if the enemy is not looking for X-BATs, the X-BATs will be the thing that can come in and kick down the door. This type of asymmetric capability can tip the balance of power in the Pacific and in theaters everywhere.

Now It’s Time to Test

Now that we’ve completed the first full-scale X-BAT prototype, we’re moving into the next phase of testing and development: proving out the vertical takeoff and landing technology that enables asymmetric operational options.

The test campaign starts with the vehicle horizontal, sitting on the launch and recovery vehicle, running the engine. Then we bring it up vertical and run the engine and the vehicle vertically.

Next, we suspend the aircraft from a crane for testing before moving to untethered flights. The crane is only for testing. It exists purely as a safety mechanism to hang the vehicle from, so if we have an engine stall or other issue, we don’t crash the vehicle.

What we’re doing right now is focused on launch and recovery and making the envelope for that as wide as possible. Then we are aiming to fly the missionized aircraft in 2028 and ultimately get into production in 2029.

We’re going to operationalize this thing. We’re going to get it out in the field. We’ve built the first aircraft. Now it’s time to go prove what it can do.