X-Bat: Shield AI joins the CCA field, will its pedigree hold true?

Sources indicate that the Shield AI V-Bat is one of the few reconnaissance drones that can reliably operate in the face of Russia’s extensive jamming and GPS interference in Ukraine. Now the company has entered the bustling market place for collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) with X-Bat, an AI-piloted vertical take-off and launch fighter aircraft. Will it be able to leverage that pedigree to succeed? 

X-Bat was launched on October 22, with the company stating at the time that it is designed for “expeditionary and maritime operations in contested environments.” The first flight of the platform is expected in 2026, with production to follow in 2029, Shield AI stated in a post on x.com. The company is positioning the cost and capability of the X-Bat in a stark contrast to 5th generation aircraft like the F-35. 

“What it does is it basically brings the capability of something like an F-35 or a comparable fifth-gen [fighter], puts it in a vertical takeoff and landing package, and then delivers it at a tenth of the cost, life-cycle[-wise] of a fifth-gen. So, breaking the cost curve. It enables us to counter China’s fifth and sixth-gen aircraft with something that comes at a fraction of the price,” Armor Harris, the X-Bat’s designer, told The War Zone. 

Quite the claim, especially for a notoriously difficult segment and user requirement set. The F-35 is clearly the reference model, although the coming F-47 will likely lead to a whole new set of costs for comparison. But, in the case of Lockheed’s fighter, the total programme is expected to cost more than $2 trillion over its life-span, according to 2024 reporting from the US Government Accountability Office. That’s about £1.52 trillion or €1.7 trillion.

This may be possible with uncrewed platforms, they offer a lot of benefits over crewed ones in terms of flight costs and operational expenses. However, the issue of capability is slightly less convincing. An F-35 is genuinely a very capable aircraft because of its sensor suite and low observability. It is designed to counter a hostile and extensive air defence network supported by aggressive fighter aircraft formations. It is widely reported to be very well-designed and able to perform this role, evidenced to some extent by Israel’s recent strikes on Iran. It is not clear that the X-Bat would have access to the same level of capability, or that the USAF and other users would be willing to integrate them onto an autonomous platform. 

The X-Bat’s USP: The take-off, not the sensors

That said, however, the X-Bat appears to be built to be runway independent. This is critical. Russian thinkers around the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons appear to hold the belief that conventional missiles have little value in the offensive counter-air or suppression of enemy air defence (SEAD) role. Instead, they suggest that nuclear weapons should be used in tandem with conventional missiles, which would quickly eliminate prepared air bases in all likelihood. 

X-Bat’s ability to deploy vertically and from a trailer would set it apart from other CCAs like the YFQ-44A and YFQ-42A from Anduril and General Atomics respectively. “Airpower without runways is the holy grail of deterrence. It gives our forces persistence, reach, and survivability, and it buys diplomacy another day,” Brandon Tseng, Shield AI co-founder said during the aircraft’s launch. 

Often, when a company says ‘this is the threat, and the only counter is the solution we happen to sell,’ all elements of those claims need to be treated with some caution. 

However, Russia’s doctrine is highly likely to focus extensively on NATO airpower in Europe at the start of a war. It is reasonable to assume that China would assume a similar approach, although with a greater focus on US carrier strike groups. It follows that being reliant upon runways in either scenario hands the West’s adversaries a more compact shortlist of initial targets and a potential advantage. 

• The growing collaborative combat aircraft marketplace – Calibre Defence 
• Typhon missile launcher conducts first overseas live-fire exercise 

X-Bat is designed to be runway independent and carrier-launched if required. There would be some element of logistics required to support its mass deployment from the road, which might be difficult to orchestrate. But the launch capability is combined with the X-Bat’s range, which is 2,000 nautical miles – that’s around 3,700 km. This would enable it to deploy from a variety of locations in the Indo-Pacific, gather into a formation, and still reach operationally relevant areas like the coast of Taiwan. It’s an important and smart design choice and dovetails neatly with the emerging plans across the US forces to operate dispersed and from difficult to predict locations with long-range strike and reconnaissance assets. 

Autonomous maturity

As has already been said in a number of articles on Calibre Defence, the key differentiator between the CCA market appears to be the maturity of the autonomy stacks involved. X-Bat employs Shield AI’s Hivemind, which “enables X-BAT to autonomously penetrate contested battlespace, dynamically team with manned aircraft, and execute collaborative tactics without constant communications,” according to Shield AI. 

This is supported to some extent by various reports from Ukraine, which hold that the V-Bat is one of the few reconnaissance platforms able to reliably fly in the face of Russian jamming. Of course, many other manufacturers also assert that their UAS are equally capable. But the very experience of flying in that war should help inform the design of Hivemind and the capabilities of the X-Bat. It is not clear that any of the other CCAs will benefit from the same operational development. 

• Vectis: Lockheed Martin launches internally funded CCA – Calibre Defence 

That is not to say that the others are less mature. The YFQ-42A has had a lot of training data made available for its autonomy stack, and the MQ-28 Ghost Bat has conducted regular flight tests for some time now. Lockheed has tested the ability of human pilots to command AI pilots in real-life flight and during simulated air-to-air engagements. This suggests that there are many autonomy stacks available to the US customer and others, hopefully there will be some form of competitive process to assess their performance relative to each other. 

Calibre comment: Boutique autonomous systems and strategic stability

A while ago, I wrote a paper with colleagues at RUSI on the proliferation risks of lethal autonomous weapon systems. One of the concepts that emerged from that paper is the difference in risk between a tactical autonomous weapon like Russia’s V2 drone, and a boutique system like the X-Bat. A tactical system might cause a strategic shock through an assassination or something similar, but it is very difficult to turn them into a strategic weapon on the battlefield. This means that they may have relatively little impact on strategic stability. Systems like the X-Bat, Vectis, and YFQ-44A, however, are specifically designed to counter the exact capabilities built by adversaries as a strategic deterrent. This may mean that they destabilise the international order, especially if the US starts fielding them at a faster rate than China. 

• The Russian Aerospace Forces and deterrence – Calibre Defence 
• No Spear 3 for British F-35B before 2030 – Calibre Defence

China and Russia view their integrated air and missile defence networks as a part of their extended deterrence. They have nuclear missiles that can be launched from land, air, and sea, of course. And those are certainly the crux of their deterrent posture. But they also place a lot of faith in their ability to repel or at least survive a massed airstrike. With more and more systems entering service or being developed that are designed to target that network, it will likely lead to some form of response, be that in their posture, doctrine, or technological development. 

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on November 3, 2025. The lead image shows a concept image of several X-Bats deployed from their trailers. Credit: Shield AI.