A prototype of Shield AI’s X-Bat AI fighter jet, which will be built in the Seattle area. (Photo via Shield AI)
Defense technology startup Shield AI has completed its first full-scale prototype of the X-BAT autonomous fighter jet as the company prepares its manufacturing and engineering hub south of Seattle.
Constructed in 12 months at a facility in Frisco, Texas, the prototype is currently en route to the company’s flight-test center at Newton City-County Airport in Kansas.
The milestone keeps Shield AI on track for its major manufacturing push in the Seattle area, one that it says will could employ 4,000 workers in the region by the early 2030s.
In late September, the company announced a 420,000-square-foot facility dubbed “X-Forge 3” at the Des Moines Creek Business Park, which is scheduled to open in spring 2027. The company has already posted dozens of Seattle-area job openings across avionics, mechanical design, software engineering and aircraft manufacturing.
The unveiling of the X-BAT prototype keeps the company on schedule for its planned regional buildout in Des Moines, a spokesperson tells GeekWire.
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“This milestone represents a year of sustained effort and discipline from a team that committed to an ambitious design and build schedule and delivered,” Armor Harris, senior vice president of aircraft engineering at Shield AI, said in a blog post . “That is no small feat.”
San Diego-based Shield AI expects the first X-BAT aircraft to roll off the line in Des Moines in 2028, with full production ramping up to about 150 aircraft per year by the early 2030s, Harris told GeekWire in an interview in September.
It’s an extremely ambitious timeline, but one the company says is necessary given the changing dynamics of warfare.
“The team is laser focused on keeping pace because we know a capability is only useful if it arrives in time to matter,” Harris said. “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.”
Unveiled last year, the X-BAT is an AI-piloted strike fighter that takes off and lands vertically, carries up to 2,000-pound class weapons in internal bays, and is designed for a 1,000-nautical-mile combat radius — which, when it takes flight, would top the estimated 590 nautical mile combat radius of the Lockheed Martin F-35A.
One of its key tactical advantages is the ability to take off and land without concrete runways — hence the tagline for the X-BAT: “Earth is our Runway.”
The X-BAT launches from and returns to a mobile, trailer-mounted Launch and Recovery Vehicle, which allows the AI-piloted jet to deploy from cargo ships, naval destroyers or remote areas where it’s too costly or dangerous to build traditional runways.
“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,” Harris notes in the blog post. “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.”
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Last month, the U.S. Navy awarded Shield AI a $150 million contract modification through the Pentagon’s Defense Exportability Features program, matched dollar-for-dollar by $150 million in private Shield AI funds. Alongside a prior $100 million joint Navy and Defense Innovation Unit award in August, total program backing stands at approximately $400 million.
Co-founded by former Navy SEAL Brandon Tseng, Shiled AI raised a $2 billion venture capital round at a $12.7 billion valuation earlier this year.
With the prototype built, Shield AI’s engineering team is focusing on proving out its vertical-takeoff-and-landing mechanics in Kansas ahead of initial flight trials later this year.
Harris detailed a multi-phase testing campaign ahead:
Horizontal and Vertical Engine Runs: Running the GE Aerospace F110-GE-129E engine while the aircraft lies horizontal on its mobile launch and recovery trailer, then tilting the vehicle upright to test the engine and systems vertically.
Tethered Crane Testing: Suspending the jet from a crane purely as a safety mechanism, ensuring that if an engine stalls or an issue occurs, the prototype won’t crash.
Untethered Flight: Removing the tether to conduct free-flight trials and widen the aircraft’s launch-and-recovery envelope.
“We’ve built the first aircraft,” Harris wrote. “Now it’s time to go prove what it can do.”
Here’s a closer look at the prototype:
