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Imagine launching a jet from a space smaller than a pickleball court and sending it 2,100 nautical miles to jam, scout, and fight—without a pilot on board. That’s XBat: a VTOL, fighter-powered, AI-driven aircraft that challenges everything we assume about runways, range, and risk.

We walk through why a GE F100 fighter engine is a game-changer in an uncrewed jet: it delivers thrust for high-altitude endurance and supersonic dashes, plus the electrical power to run an embedded electronic warfare suite on par with a two-seat Growler. We unpack how full 3D thrust vectoring enables precise vertical recovery and extreme maneuvering with no worries about G-LOC, and why a protected launch system turns improvised pads and ship decks into instant micro airfields. At 55,000 feet, XBat sips fuel and supercharges missile performance; when it needs to, it accelerates, shoots, and slips back to a low-observable profile.

The autonomy is the quiet revolution. Shield AI’s Hivemind, proven in GPS-denied and comms-degraded combat environments, fuses radar, passive sensors, and EO feeds to plan, adapt, and execute with mission intent. Operating as a swarm, multiple XBats multiply jamming effects, create false signatures, and force adversaries into bad choices. That’s where manned-uncrewed teaming shines: an F-35 can orchestrate from standoff as four or five XBats scout, suppress air defenses, engage fighters, and keep jamming after expending munitions. Internally, XBat carries four AMRAAMs for stealth; externally, it scales to smart bombs, cruise missiles, and anti-ship weapons for missions from SEAD to maritime strike.

This isn’t pilot replacement; it’s pilot amplification. By shifting risk to autonomous jets and dispersing launch sites inside standard shipping containers, airpower becomes mobile, layered, and far harder to kill. If you care about next-gen air combat, distributed basing, and the future of F-35 teaming, this deep dive connects the hardware, autonomy, and tactics that make XBat more than another drone—it’s a blueprint for resilient air dominance.

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