This New Weapon May Be Able to Neutralize an Enemy's First Strike

Red State ^ | October 27, 2025 | Ward Clark

[Red Badger]

Late in World War 2, in the European theater, the Germans hit the Allied air forces with something new: Jet fighters. Chief among them was the Messerschmitt Me-262, a big, brutal twin-engine beast packing four 30-mm cannons. It was considerably faster than the American P-51 Mustang, generally considered the best piston-engine fighter in the air at the time. It was near-impossible to defeat in the air, but it was slow and cumbersome on taxi, vulnerable during takeoff and landing, and required a long runway.

So we went after them when they were on the ground, destroying aircraft and bases alike. It worked.

It's a good way to go after a foe with air superiority, or at least, better aircraft. Take them out on the ground. Take out their bases. And now, with long-range, accurate cruise missiles, that's easier to do, even when the air base may be an aircraft carrier. But one company, Shield AI, has come up with a new AI-powered fighter that may be able to counter any such move.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has spent years building an arsenal of long-range precision missiles — including "carrier killers" like the DF-21D and DF-26 — capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers and striking American airfields across the Pacific. The goal: keep U.S. air power out of range before it can even launch.

Now, a U.S. defense technology firm says it has built a way to fight back. Shield AI, based in San Diego, has unveiled a new AI-piloted fighter jet designed to operate without runways, without GPS, and without constant communication links — an aircraft that can think, fly and fight on its own.

This new system, if it works as advertised, could bring about a whole new iteration of that great old American military truism: "Do unto others, first."

Shield AI says the jet, called X-BAT, can take off vertically, reach 50,000 feet, fly more than 2,000 nautical miles, and execute strike or air defense missions using an onboard autonomy system known as Hivemind. It’s designed to operate from ships, small islands or improvised sites — places where traditional jets can’t. The aircraft’s dash speed remains classified.

"China has built this anti-access aerial denial bubble that holds our runways at risk," said Armor Harris, Shield AI’s senior vice president of aircraft engineering, in an interview with Fox News. "They’ve basically said, ‘We’re not going to compete stealth-on-stealth in the air — we’ll target your aircraft before they even get off the ground.’"

China has advanced fighters, or at least, they claim to; everything that issues forth from the Chinese People's Liberation Army should be taken with a huge truckload of salt. But quantity has a quality all its own, and China does have the capacity to build an awful lot of second-rate aircraft.

This new American system could have an answer:

X-BAT’s Hivemind autonomy allows it to operate in denied or jammed environments, where traditional aircraft would be blind. The system uses onboard sensors to interpret its surroundings, reroute around threats and identify targets in real time. "It’s reading and reacting to the situation around it," Harris said. "It’s not flying a pre-programmed route. If new threats appear, it can reroute itself or identify targets and then ask a human for permission to engage."

Of course, giving the keys to a robot would require making sure that its target-identification protocols were dialed all the way in. You wouldn't want one shooting down a friendly - or an airliner.

The axiom, "We solve today's problems with tomorrow's technology," would seem to apply here as well. If the X-BAT is adopted, it could be in service as soon as 2029. It would allow the American armed forces to produce a capable aircraft at a fraction of the cost of an F-22 or F-35, and allow us to launch them from almost anywhere, flooding the skies with a bunch of smart drones with weapons.

This is a system that's bound to give Chinese and Russian war planners some headaches, and any Chinese or Russian pilots who go up against a smart-bot swarm would no doubt come out of it feeling maladjusted - if this system works as advertised. And that, yes, is the big "if."

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TOPICS: Computers/Internet; History; Military/Veterans; UFO's
KEYWORDS: ai; aviation; ccp; china; enjoythecollapse; usisbankrupt; wunderwaffe

[Red Badger]

AVIATION PING!.................

[Red Badger]

[Red Badger]

[Getready]

Those AI mockups don’t look like they have a 2,000 mile range.
Good idea though. Prefer a MOAB++ on a missile above every airfield, missile launch sites, and weapons factory, and naval shipyard for starters. Clean up the aircraft that gets through with human remotely operated smart drones. Both could be operated from same type of area as the x-bat.

Non nuclear MAD can work also.

[doorgunner69]

Uh huh.....

[Steely Tom]

Me-262 had minimal effect of military value. It took an incredible share of German War Ministry resources, consumed vast amounts of scarce, synthetically-manufactured fuel, and had a very high ratio of maintenance hours to flight hours.

Hitler and Goering were fixated on the idea that German technology would neutralize American industrial productivity.

The Me-262 did have a psychological effect on American pilots who saw it in action, but little else.

[Red Badger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMG1WCVff0I

[Verse 1: Eric Bloom]
(Göring’s on the phone from Freiburg)
Says: “Willie’s done quite a job”
(Hitler’s on the phone from Berlin)
Says: “I’m gonna make you a star”
My Captain Von Ondine here’s your next patrol
A flight of English bombers across the canal
After twelve they’ll all be here
(I think you know the job!)

[Chorus: Eric Bloom]
They hung there dependent from the sky
Like some heavy metal fruit
These bombers are ripe and ready to tilt
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
Must they live that I might die!

[Verse 2: Eric Bloom]
(In a G-load disaster from the rate of climb)
Sometimes I’d faint and be lost to our side
(But there’s no reward for failure), but death
So watch me in mirrors keep me on a glide path
Get me through these radars, no, I cannot fail
While my great silver slugs are eager to feed
I can’t fail, no, not now
(When twenty-five bombers wait ripe!)

[Red Badger]

[Chorus: Eric Bloom]
They hung there dependant from the sky
Like some heavy metal fruit
These bombers are ripe and ready to tilt
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
Must they live that I might die!

[Verse 3: Eric Bloom]
(ME-262 prince of turbojet)
Junkers Jumo 004
(Blasts from clustered R4/M quartets in my snout)
And see these English planes go burn
Well, you be my witness, how red were the skies
When the fortresses flew for the very last time
It was dark over Westphalia
(In April of ‘45!)

[Instrumental Bridge]

[Chorus: Eric Bloom]
They hung there dependant from the sky
Like some heavy metal fruit
These bombers are ripe and ready to tilt
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
Must they live that I might die!

[Outro: Eric Bloom]
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
(Junkers Jumo 004)
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
(Junkers Jumo 004)
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
(Junkers Jumo 004)
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
(Junkers Jumo 004)
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
(Junkers Jumo 004)
Must these Englishmen live that I might die
(Junkers Jumo 004)
(Bombers at 12 o’clock high)

[Widget Jr]

"X-BAT, can take off vertically, reach 50,000 feet, fly more than 2,000 nautical miles" and fit on the back of a military trailer.

This looks like it is less than half the size of a RQ-4 Global Hawk while outperforming it. A mockup, a few CGI pictures, and a sales pitch is not a deliverable product.

Color me skeptical, this looks like vaporware.

[Brian Griffin]

I don’t see any pictures of one in the air.

I don’t see any vectored thrust arrangement. How would it be controlled when first taking off?

[Lazamataz]

Sexy

[GingisK]

Same with the V-2. It killed more in German factories than enemies in England.