US Navy commits additional $150m to fund X-Bat development
Shield AI is designing the VTOL-capable tactical jet that will operate autonomously without need of a runway.
US autonomy start-up Shield AI has received an additional $150 million in funding commitments from the US Navy to support development of the company’s vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) X-Bat autonomous tactical jet.
The funds will come in the form of an upward modification to an existing Other Transaction (OT) agreement between the navy and Shield AI. OTs are flexible contracting structures exempt from typical US government procurement laws, designed to speed up research, development and prototyping.
Shield AI says it has now secured $400 million in funding commitments for the X-Bat effort, including an earlier $50 million award under the Defense Innovation Unit’s Runway Independent Maritime Expeditionary Strike (RIMES) programme, and privately raised capital.
The additional investment from the navy comes just after the Pentagon announced that Boeing will develop the navy’s next manned fighter – a carrier-capable sixth-generation jet known as F/A-XX. The stealthy strike aircraft could someday fly alongside the uncrewed X-Bat.
Shield AI says it will begin flight testing its tailless, blended-wing-body design this year under the RIMES project. In September the company revealed that X-Bat flight testing and sustainment will be based at Newton City-County airport in Kansas, while production will be in Des Moines, Washington, just south of Seattle.
Prototyping work is being conducted at a site in Frisco, Texas dubbed X-Forge 1.
Engine test work is separately being carried out at a GE Aerospace site in Peebles, Ohio. The X-Bat will be powered by a single GE F110 turbofan modified with the Axisymmetric Vectoring Exhaust Nozzle thrust-vectoring system.
“[A] full-scale aircraft is in the last stages of production, and the next one’s right behind it,” Shield AI co-founder Ryan Tseng tells FlightGlobal.
X-Bat’s AVEN thrust-vectoring system was developed in the 1990s originally for the F-16. Source: Shield AI
Tseng says the company aims for the X-Bat to have an initial price of around $30 million, with a total lifecycle cost equal to roughly 10% of that for a Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter.
An F-35 acquisition report released by the Pentagon earlier this year estimated Washington will spend just over $1.9 trillion to buy and operate its projected fleet of nearly 2,500 F-35s across three variants. That works out to approximately $785 million in lifecycle expenses per aircraft, including development, acquisition, operation and sustainment costs.
The flyaway price of a conventional take-off and landing F-35A is around $80 million, while the short take-off and vertical landing F-35B is $110 million.
X-Bat stands to cost more than other uncrewed fighters, such as Anduril Industries’ FQ-44 and General Atomics’ FQ-42. In September, Anduril told FlightGlobal its single-engined jet will cost “much less than $20 million”.
However, Tseng says Shield AI is thinking about the math differently, aiming to deliver a higher-performance and more-survivable aircraft, versus the FQ-42 and FQ-44, for which the US Air Force emphasised ultra-low cost at the expense of survivability.
“If you get more survivability, if you can get off more shots, and the aircraft gets used more because it’s coming home more,” Tseng says. “Then, even if you’re paying a little bit more up front, you’re still delivering a lot more combat effectiveness per dollar.”
Shield AI says the X-Bat will be capable of launching from the decks of non-carrier ships, such as the US Navy’s Expeditionary Sea Base vessels (pictured). Source: Shield AI
Veteran fighter designer Lockheed Martin is taking a similar approach with its Vectis uncrewed fighter design, emphasising stealthy features and flight performance attributes the company says are intended to pair with the F-35.
“X-Bat is designed in a unique way where it’s got that bigger engine, which provides it the power and payload capacity to carry its own mission systems,” Tseng adds. “That allows it to carry heavier and more weapons that make it suitable not just for strike, but air-to-air. It can do all sorts of additional missions, including possibly even [airborne moving target indicator] missions, because it’s got the power to run those sorts of arrays.”
Shield AI plans to begin initial X-Bat production in 2029, ramping to full rate in the early 2030s.
Using a mobile rail system to both launch and land vertically, the jet will be able to operate from ship decks, islands and remote or austere sites lacking fixed runways.
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