Shield AI’s novel vertical take-off and landing V-BAT drone is growing in stature, with steadily increasing orders, a new variant, and most notably with a recent series of successful missions flown over Ukraine. While in that war zone the drones were able to deliver reliable effects despite operating in the most dense electronic warfare combat environment in the world.
V-BATs were initially tested in Ukraine in June 2024 to evaluate how they performed in the face of just this kind of enemy interference. According to a Ukrainian report the V-BATs were able to operate unhindered, even when they flew very close to Ukrainian jamming systems. A follow-up battlefield experiment in Ukraine in August saw V-BATs locate Russian surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries before relaying targeting data back to Ukrainian forces so that M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HiMARS, could attack and destroy the SAM sites.
The Ukraine experiments clearly demonstrated how V-BAT is able to operate in a highly complex modern battlespace, with its embedded artificial intelligence working hand-in-hand with its suite of onboard sensors. As a package, the V-BAT offers a relatively low-cost unmanned aerial system (UAS) capability with significant endurance that can take off and land nearly anywhere and can operate in cooperative swarms to tackle complex missions. These include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and targeting tasks in higher-threat environments.
Armor Harris is Shield AI’s vice president of aircraft engineering, where he leads the development of V-BAT. Harris came to Shield AI from SpaceX, where he was the responsible engineer for developing the propulsive landing capability on Falcon 9 and was also head engineer for the Starlink satellite constellation.
“In Ukraine, there has been a massive emphasis on a fourth-generation fighter capability in the form of the F-16, yet F-16s can’t get anywhere close to the front-line because of the surface-to air-missile [SAM] systems that are prevalent here,” Harris says.
“V-BAT is able to operate without GPS in a hostile communications-jamming environment. It can fly into an area, locate and identify targets, and fly missions way out ahead of fighter aircraft. Historically, the suppression of enemy air defense [SEAD] mission has been considered to be a role for fighter aircraft, but now we’ve proved in Ukraine that a V-BAT in the danger zone can team with a stand-off weapon such as HiMARS to execute the mission, which is a very effective strategy.”
The V-BAT’s ability to persist in areas where GPS isn’t reliable is a key part of its effectiveness, according to Harris. “Part of being able to fly without GPS is about knowing where you are without GPS. If you’re able to do that, you just need to refine that position estimate enough to generate target quality grids and tracks, and then pass that data back. V-BAT has a navigation system that doesn’t require GPS, and a communications system that’s able to operate in that highly jammed environment. We’ve put it up against the best jammers that Russia has, and it’s been able to take those head-on.”
“We see a lot of small, one-way attack drones in Ukraine, but what makes V-BAT unique is that there’s nothing else in the theater that is comparable in its size category, that can be driven around in a truck, can launch vertically from pretty much anywhere, and carry sensors that are comparable with those carried on much larger aircraft.”
The small drone with big missions
Technological advances mean that mission payloads are shrinking in size. What 40 years ago may have required a U-2 Dragon Lady, or 20 years ago may have needed a large UAS to carry them, can today be accommodated by a drone as small as the 9-feet-long V-BAT. “From a sensor standpoint, there’s a wide variety of electro-optical and infrared sensors that are carried in the nose of the V-BAT,” explains Harris. “We can carry a couple of different models of Synthetic Aperture Radar [SAR] on the belly of the aircraft and a SIGINT [signals intelligence] payload that can be carried with antennas distributed across the aircraft. We also carry a wide area visual camera search system known as Visual Detection and Ranging, or ViDAR.” You can read more about Shield AI’s ViDAR system here.
Shield AI has also developed a sensor payload known as Sentient Tracker, which combines artificial intelligence with Shield AI’s (formerly Sentient Vision Systems) moving target indicator. Its AI-enabled tracking allows operators to automatically detect moving objects within electro-optical (EO) or infrared (IR) full-motion video.
“During a recent demonstration, the Shield AI team performed a search over an area twice the size of Dallas, in about 90 minutes,” explains Harris. That demonstration enabled us to get an image file of every person and every single vehicle in that entire area. Comparing that to a moving target indicator radar image, for example, where you get loads of little dots on a map, with our system you get an actual image.”
The camera array on the V-BAT feeds raw data into a processing algorithm that’s running onboard. “The AI software sifts that data and downloads pertinent information to the ground station, along with the coordinates,” says Harris. This means there’s no requirement to transmit five different feeds of 8K video that would blow your bandwidth, you’re just sending the things you really need to see. For example, you might see a vehicle driving down a street and with this system you have the resolution to decide if it’s weaponized or not.”
“While the V-BAT carries a smaller camera than some of the bigger platforms, and therefore it can’t see as far, V-BAT is a one-million-dollar-class aircraft, so you can afford to procure and operate many more of them. Now you have a swarming team of four V-BATs monitoring that same area, which is a very powerful tool.”
The V-BAT’s weapons capabilities elevate it from a versatile uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) to a powerful tactical asset. For example, in May 2023 during the U.S. Army Futures Command’s EDGE exercise, V-BAT successfully delivered a live glide munition known as Hatchet, a miniature precision strike weapon with GPS and laser guidance. This showcased its potential to deliver kinetic payloads with precision and efficiency. Configured with a “belly bay” for payload delivery, and with a new generation of V-BAT being equipped with wing hardpoints for external payload carriage, the V-BAT offers the flexibility to serve as a long-range, reusable loitering munition capability, further enhancing its battlefield utility.
Superiority through mass
Intelligent teams of drones are being developed to tackle a range of modern-day missions. A team of V-BATs not only offers a versatile range of mission roles, but also adds a level of survivability.
“There are three basic methods that we consider relevant in terms of survivability in a contested environment,” Harris explains. “The first is to be faster than everybody else, which is what the SR-71 Blackbird did – it could outrun the interceptors. The west has also invested heavily in stealth designs to avoid a platform being targeted by radar, but that has resulted in platforms becoming dramatically more expensive over time. The third way, and part of the rationale behind V-BAT, is to be more numerous than your opponent.”
Harris says if you can beat the cost curve, you can operate greater numbers of platforms, and therefore potentially operate in a denied environment just as effectively as the exquisite platforms. “We’ve seen genuine realization that you can in many instances achieve the mission of a multimillion-dollar-class super exquisite aircraft with a team of much cheaper, more numerous, drones. Sure, some of them might get shot down, but those that survive will be able to complete the mission. There’s also the matter of getting them to where you need to launch them. V-BAT doesn’t require a huge airfield and doesn’t need a complex refueling operation to get to where it needs to be.”
“In the Cold War it was all about mass. Then it evolved to be about exquisite capabilities. Now, the technology has evolved again, and we are right back at mass again, and that’s really been enabled by autonomy. The fundamental limiters were cost and the number of trained pilots, and not wanting to put those highly trained pilots at risk. Today, with the ability to operate autonomous aircraft, it unlocks mass once again.”
V-BAT on the rise
Shield AI has delivered about 250 V-BATs to date, which are in service with a range of operators in the U.S. and around the world. In some cases they have replaced legacy unmanned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms of various sizes, and in others they have been used to establish completely new drone programs for customers.
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the U.S. Marine Corps have now been joined by the U.S. Coast Guard as a third domestic V-BAT operator. “We will start flying with the Coast Guard in 2025,” says Harris. “Operators are realizing that V-BAT is quite unique. It can do much of what an MQ-4 or MQ-9 can do, but they can launch it anywhere and carry it around on the back of a truck or on a ship.”
“During the recent operations in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy has been launching waves of fighter aircraft, burning a lot of gas, operating fully loaded and waiting for Houthi targets to appear. They’ve been bottlenecked by the ability to find, fix, and engage these fleeting targets quickly, because they’re up against a smart adversary. The Houthis are popping up, launching, and quickly going back into hiding. You actually need a persistent, wide area search capability to pinpoint these kinds of targets fast.”
“We see the targeting mission as being extremely critical. If we can target, we can support a stand-off weapon as a far more effective combination.” V-BAT operations are highly automated, and Harris says it’s as simple as touching on a digital map where you want it to operate. “We have settled on four aircraft as a V-BAT team, partly because of what we have seen during operations in the Red Sea. The Houthis have been able to down some of the larger drones, so four V-BATs give us some redundancy while being able to cover the same search area as a single larger Group 5 drone.”
The Batcave
Shield AI manufactures V-BATs at its plant in Dallas, Texas, known affectionately as the “Batcave,” and Harris says the company can easily build one V-BAT per day, and that the facility is capable of supporting a daily production rate of six-to-10, or more.
“We manufacture approximately half of the components in house and the other parts that are supplied to us are mainly machine parts, composites, as well as cast and forged parts. Our new generation of V-BAT that we are launching soon is the first to field a heavy-fuel [JP-5 and Jet-A] engine, where the previous engine ran on gasoline. From a logistics standpoint this will make a huge difference with integration to militaries around the world.”
Harris says the new V-BAT iteration also provides fully autonomous launch and landing, which will be entirely without operator intervention. “The current V-BAT requires a groundcrew to set it up, to stabilize it ready for launch, and to control it for initial take-off and landing. The new version does away with all of that, you can just stand it up on its small launch pad and literally press go.”
“V-BAT has a huge throttle range, which makes the powerplant pretty challenging to get absolutely right, because it’s a big beast to get vertically off the ground, but then once it’s airborne you want maximum endurance, that means burning as little fuel as possible while in the air.”
The priority for V-BAT employment is to stay on station for as long as possible, which can be in excess of 12 hours. “It actually wants to fly very slow, around 50 knots in loiter mode, but it can also dash at a faster speed,” Harris explains. “It will also generally sit up at around 15,000 feet, which is a big advantage as it’s away from a lot of the ground threats.”
“The new variant is slightly bigger, and its take-off weight has increased from 130 pounds to 155 pounds. So, you can carry more fuel, more payload, and it has longer endurance. Having a lot more computer power onboard is also going to open up all kinds of missions that current V-BATs aren’t undertaking today.”
The level of expertise and technological knowhow at Shield AI is a critical enabler of the types of advanced capability that the company is developing. It places huge emphasis on the quality of its engineers, who are working at the bleeding edge of drone and AI technology.
“In the U.S. over the last 20-30 years, too few talented young people in technology and engineering have considered working in defense. With the global situation, even a small percentage of these engineers could make a significant impact.”
“This is technology that drives the outcome of conflicts, making it critical to attract more talent to this space. At Shield AI, the best ideas win, whether they come from an intern or the CEO – it’s the ultimate meritocracy.”
Contact the author: jamie.hunter@teamrecurrent.io