Shield AI announces new test flight and production sites for X-Bat jet
X-Bat production is slated for 2029 and will reach full rate in the early 2030s.
Shield AI has announced two new sites that will build and test the X-Bat, its AI-piloted fighter jet, built to take off and land vertically. The combat drone is tailless and meant to launch and recover from a mobile rail system, eliminating reliance on fixed airfields.
Announced on 30 September, the flight test and sustainment home of the aircraft will be in Newton City-County airport in Kansas, named X-Forge 2. Production will take place in X-Forge 3 in Des Moines, just south of Seattle in Washington.
The two new locations will allow Shield AI to begin a complete production line of the X-Bat, including the prototyping site X-Forge 1 in Texas, where the company says they will continue to build, operate and hire.
Shield AI projects that the new sites will support around 9800 jobs by the early 2030s and add approximately $78 billion to the Newton and Seattle economies. The company says the Seattle site will be the largest, with a projected workforce of 27000 and an economic boost of $73 billion by 2046. Kansas should have 2900 employees and a $5 billion expansion by the same date.
The choice of location for the two sites seems to be based upon aviation heritage, access to a skilled workforce and physical infrastructure.
“Wichita’s track record speaks for itself, with more than a hundred years of aircraft manufacturing and more than a third of all American general aviation airplanes built there,” says Armor Harris, senior vice president of aircraft at Shield AI. “Puget Sound has been producing aircraft at rate for seventy years and has the engineers, technicians and suppliers that it takes. X-BAT will be built in Washington and fly in Kansas before it goes to a customer, and Kansas will keep this fleet in the air for decades.”
Shield AI secured a $50 million investment from the US Navy and the Defence Innovation Unit to support development of the X-BAT combat drone in August 2026. The defence technology company says each X-Bat will offer a range beyond 2,000nm (3,700km) and operate at altitudes of 50,000ft without any pilot inputs, controlled instead by Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomy software.
A single GE Aerospace F110 turbofan will power each X-Bat.
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