Shield AI X-BAT: Naval Capabilities & 2026 First Flight Timeline Revealed

[00:00:00]Hi, we're at Eurosatory 2026 in Paris, France, and we are now standing in front of that very impressive scale model cuz that's not a full-scale model. It's a 45% scale model of the new Aeralis CCA or UAV by Shield AI, and we're going to find out more about it with Geeki, director of Aeralis for European markets.

[00:00:39]>> [music] >> Geeki, good morning. Great to meet you.

[00:00:44]>> Yeah, thanks. Nice to meet you, too.

[00:00:46]>> That's quite an impressive display you you you got here. So, Aeralis is the latest product from Shield AI.

[00:00:54]What can you tell us about it? Is it CCA? Is it just a jet-powered V-bat?

[00:01:00]What is it exactly?

[00:01:01]>> Sure. So, Aeralis is the world's first AI piloted vertical takeoff and landing combat aircraft. So, it's really in the class of a full combat capability as you would expect from a Rafale F5, a Typhoon, or an F-35. That's really where we're trying to go. But, we're able to carry the same payload as an F-35, but at twice the combat range or twice the combat radius. Therefore, we feel we can really take the fight much further out and extend the capability of Rafales and Typhoons behind.

[00:01:31]>> Why did you go for vertical takeoff and landing cuz that's very unusual?

[00:01:39]>> It is, and and I think it's an important part of the architecture we've designed.

[00:01:42]We've seen from a recent operational imperatives that aircraft are particularly survivable in the air, but we hadn't given much thought to survivability on the ground. And so, we have to be able to survive on the ground as well as survive airborne to be able to operate.

[00:01:59]Even with the might of the Middle East and with the coalition from the United States, we saw that strategic assets were being struck on the ground in the recent conflict with Iran. And so, the vertical takeoff and landing architecture allows us to constantly reposition. And so, we provide a constant targeting threat and problem for the enemy to try and strike us on the ground.

[00:02:19]>> From a navy or sailor end-user perspective, what are the the applications? Cuz I remember seeing renderings of X-Bat several X-Bats on a big deck and fibs or on the helicopter pad of DDGs.

[00:02:35]>> Yeah, sure. So, one of the other advantages of the vertical takeoff and landing architecture is that we can reposition an X-Bat and the launch and recovery vehicle onto actually non-traditional air power sea-based vessels. And so, anything that you can fit a reasonably large helicopter, an NH90 or a EH101 type class landing vehicle pad would be sufficient for us to operate an X-Bat off of. Clearly, if you want to go larger and look at an aircraft carrier like the Queen Elizabeth class or the Charles de Gaulle, we can continue to operate from those, but it just allows us to keep adding diversity and air power to non-traditional kind of maritime combatants. So, we can add more force and be more survivable.

[00:03:15]>> Uh so, as a CCA can carry weapons.

[00:03:20]So, I guess that's not really up to you, but up to the end user. But what kind of weapons can it carry and deploy?

[00:03:28]>> Yeah, so it definitely is dependent on what the end user wants to do with the platform. As we said, the platform is capable of carrying everything that would fit internally on an F-35A. And so, we're able to carry a mix of air-to-air, air-to-ground, strike weapons. We also have two external hard points for larger class weapons. And so, we can really carry deep and tactical strike weapons in that. So, think in the range of a joint strike missile or if we think around a Storm Shadow Scalp type class of weapon. Uh for American inventories, that would be kind of JASSM JSAW type class of weapons. And so, really we want to give as much tactical flexibility to the users as we can. So, anything that's in the magazine, you want to be able to fit it into the X-Wing and then go and prosecute targets.

[00:04:11]>> What is the current status? Are you working on a prototype?

[00:04:16]Have you decided on a conducting your first flight?

[00:04:20]>> Sure. So, it's really exciting at the moment, and the program is moving at a pretty rapid pace. So, we are targeting to fly the first full-scale X-Wing at the end of this year.

[00:04:29]And that will prove vertical takeoff and landing. We're doing it in Kansas in the United States. And what we really want to show with that is not a subscale facsimile. We're going to go for the full-scale size aircraft and prove vertical takeoff and landing in this architecture. It will be fully autonomous from day one because the platform needs to be fully autonomous.

[00:04:50]And so, it's really exciting development program.

[00:04:54]>> I'm sure you're pursuing um US Air Force, US Navy CCA programs, but what about international? In the UK, you have a project Vanguard. In France, recently, like literally 2 weeks ago, issued a RFI for CCA. Are you tracking all this?

[00:05:11]>> Oh, we are. It's really exciting in the CCA market at the moment. I'm sure you're tracking that Shield was successfully awarded a follow-on contract as part of the US Air Force autonomy provider in the under increment one. So, we continue to expand and develop our HiveMind offering, and we're very excited about that. We certainly we're at an international show here at Eurosatory. We've had a lot of international interest, and we are tracking all the various different interests across Europe.

[00:05:35]>> All right, Giga. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

[00:05:38]>> Thank you.