Shield AI names Kansas and Washington sites for X-Bat jet work

Shield AI has selected two new locations for its X-Bat, an AI-piloted combat aircraft designed to lift off and land vertically. The company said on 30 September that flight testing and sustainment will be based at Newton City-County airport in Kansas, a site it calls X-Forge 2, while manufacturing will be handled at X-Forge 3 in Des Moines, south of Seattle in Washington.

The air vehicle has no tail and is intended to operate from a mobile rail launcher, which the company says removes the need for fixed airfields.

Production is scheduled to start in 2029 and reach full rate in the early 2030s. The two sites join an existing prototyping operation, X-Forge 1 in Texas, where Shield AI says it will keep building, flying and hiring.

Shield AI expects the new locations to support roughly 9,800 jobs by the early 2030s. It puts the combined economic contribution to the Newton and Seattle areas at about $78 billion. The Washington site is projected to be the larger of the two, with a workforce of 27,000 and an economic boost of $73 billion by 2046, while Kansas is expected to have 2,900 employees and a $5 billion expansion by the same year.

Armor Harris, senior vice president of aircraft at Shield AI, cited the two regions' aviation backgrounds, skilled labour and infrastructure as reasons for the choice. He said Wichita has more than a century of aircraft manufacturing behind it and accounts for more than a third of American general aviation aircraft built, while Puget Sound has been producing aircraft at rate for seventy years. According to Harris, the X-Bat will be built in Washington and fly in Kansas before delivery to a customer, with Kansas keeping the fleet flying for decades.

The US Navy and the Defence Innovation Unit have provided $50 million toward development of the X-Bat.