Shield AI Moves X-BAT Drone into Testing After Rapid Prototype Construction

Shield AI has finished building its first full-scale prototype X-BAT, a vertical takeoff-and-landing autonomous drone, and is now moving it into a new development and testing phase.

This initial X-BAT is now on its way to Shield AI’s flight test facility in Newton, Kan., following its completion at the company’s Frisco, Texas, development facility, Armor Harris, Shield AI’s senior vice president of aircraft engineering, said in a Nov. 4 blog post.

Harris said the rapid development of X-BAT, which Shield AI publicly announced in October 2025, shows it can quickly design and build advanced aircraft, in time for the military to employ it to counter threats.

“This milestone represents a year of sustained effort and discipline from a team that committed to an ambitious design and build schedule and delivered,” Harris said. “That is no small feat. Shield AI 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.”

Harris said Shield AI’s X-BAT team focused on developing it quickly “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,” Harris said. “That urgency has shaped how we approach the engineering work, and how we work with partners in the U.S. government.”

The Navy made subject matter experts available to Shield AI’s team, and they collaborated on steps to fix technical risks including wind tunnel, engine, and thermal testing.

“Working through those risks together gives us the confidence to build and test the aircraft at the speed America and its allies need,” Harris said.

Shield AI says X-BAT will be stealthy and—unlike other autonomous drones competing for Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs—able to fly at supersonic speed. The aircraft will also have a combat radius of 1,000 nautical miles, and could operate from ships, islands, and austere sites with its vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. Harris said that gives commanders more options on where to operate X-BAT from, and would make it harder for an adversary to find and destroy it, making it an “asymmetric threat.”

“Our adversaries have invested in long-range missiles that put our aircraft at risk when they’re on the ground,” Harris said. “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 thread 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,” such as on board a ship or an island.

“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 and punch them in the face,” Harris continued. “This type of asymmetric capability can tip the balance of power in the Pacific and in theaters everywhere.”

The upcoming test campaign will focus on proving X-BAT’s VTOL technology works, Shield AI said. The first step will have the prototype horizontal, running its engine on the launch and recovery vehicle, before being moved into a vertical position.

In the next step, the prototype X-BAT will be suspended from a crane for safe testing, to ensure it doesn’t crash in case the engine stalls or another problem emerges. Shield AI will then move on to untethered flights of the X-BAT.

Shield AI plans to fly the missionized X-BAT in 2028, and move it into production in 2029.

X-BAT operates using Hivemind, the company’s autonomy software driven by artificial intelligence, and is significantly larger than the company’s V-BAT drone, which has been used by Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Harris said X-BAT was designed to be versatile, and evolve to meet future operational needs. It will be able to carry “serious strike weapons” both internally and externally, and carry out multiple missions including air-to-air strikes, air-to-ground strikes, and electronic warfare operations. The Air Force’s first CCA models—General Atomics’ FQ-42A Vengeance and Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury—were designed for air-to-air missions.

Shield AI said X-BAT is also twice the size of those increment 1 CCAs, and has more sensors than they do, and is powered by General Electric’s F110 engine, which is also used in some F-15 and F-16 fighters.