I have a premonition that my demise will come when I am drinking in a pub called the Gunmaker's Arms and an AI drone decides it must be a legitimate target.
Shield AI shows off not-at-all-terrifying autonomous VTOL combat drone
US defense technology biz Shield AI claims it can build a jet-powered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) autonomous fighter drone that doesn't need a runway to operate. The California-based biz this week unveiled a mock-up of its X-BAT aircraft at an event held in Washington DC for an audience of military leaders, elected …
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Friday 24th October 2025 12:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: AI-written PR slop?
Thinking a cutdown Harrier retrofitted with the autonomous software might be a cheaper option for the shorter range European sphere.
You would also have the freed up crew weight to play with. Converting obsolete military aircraft for one way missions might be an option too.
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Friday 24th October 2025 14:19 GMT Like a badger
Re: AI-written PR slop?
"Converting obsolete military aircraft for one way missions might be an option too."
There aren't enough previously manned aircraft still available to usefully do that in Europe (can't speak for the US).
Of course, back in the original days of MAD and detente, manned aircraft were expected to be launched on one way missions, because the odds of fighter cover surviving in a heavily fought and outnumbered European theatre were nil, but the fighters were only there to prevent or limit pre-emptive bomber strikes on our airfields, if we then needed to use aircraft carried tactical nukes there was little expectation of the aircraft returning, and even less expectation of them finding a single intact airfield to land on. At that point it didn't matter because either the Russians were suing for peace after we'd nuked their army and half of West Germany, or they'd escalated again and the various navies were unleashing end of the world weaponry. It was all designed this way precisely to ensure there was a feasible escalation path to armageddon (which is what detente was), because if there isn't then the strategic nuclear weapons are not a deterrent.
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Sunday 26th October 2025 12:52 GMT SCP
Re: AI-written PR slop?
The usual mode of using F35/Harrier/V22 is STOVL/SRVL. The rolling take-off (which includes assistance from vectored thrust) allows greater payload and reduced fuel consumption (cf pure vertical take-off) during take-off. SRVL is very helpful in allowing a heavier landing weight, meaning unused stores and fuel do not need to be jettisoned. It is also easier to execute.
Tail-sitters can have their uses, but they also have constraints that need to be considered.
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Sunday 26th October 2025 13:04 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: AI-written PR slop?
Right, but in the meantime, rotors with electric motors give you most of those options without the complexity: you can do most manoeuvring by adjusting the relative speeds of the rotors. Give things a jet and go faster stripes if they need than the rotors will let you. I think Sikorsky has something along those lines.
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Friday 24th October 2025 09:26 GMT SVD_NL
Re: AI-written PR slop?
I'm also wondering about the accelleration of this thing when it's fully loaded up. You generally want to be going very fast by the time you're in range of enemy radar/anti air, and if you're doing a vertical climb from a standstill that moment comes very soon. Considering they are advertising this for what is essentially front-line deployment, I'm a little sceptical.
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Monday 27th October 2025 07:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: AI-written PR slop?
Very hard to hit. Saw a video of the world champion clay shooter and even he didn't get them all. He was using an auto and taking multiple shots per drone. Shooting clays on a competition level setup is an art and they aren't even intelligently controlled. With drones if you miss just one it could be the last miss. So, you need a lot of guns on them. Maybe as guns have become lighter squaddies can carry 2 guns; one a shotgun. But shotgun ammo is heavy.
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Friday 24th October 2025 14:11 GMT The Man Who Fell To Earth
Re: AI-written PR slop?
Especially when it has crap like "Vertical landing on a launch pad is simpler in CGI than reality, though SpaceX proved it's possible."
Just a few examples of spacecraft successfully vertically landing on ground by rocket engine, many before Elon was even born.
Luna 9 (1966)
Luna 13 (1966)
Luna 16 (1970)
Luna 17 (1970)
Luna 20 (1972)
Luna 21 (1973)
Luna 24 (1976)
Surveyor 1-7 (1966-1968)
Apollo 11-17 (1969-1972)
Viking 1 (1976)
Viking 2 (1976)
Mars Pathfinder (1996)
Spirit (2003)
Opportunity (2003)
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Saturday 25th October 2025 11:59 GMT nobody who matters
Re: AI-written PR slop?
Just to be pedant for a moment, but the Apollo command modules in particular (after re-entry) fell to earth under gravity before deploying parachutes to control the rate of descent before crashing into the Pacific Ocean, from where they were recovered to land with the ais of a Sea King helicopter and a ship of the US Navy. I think similar procedures applied to other craft that you have mentioned, but I have neither time nor inclination to look them all up tbh.
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Saturday 25th October 2025 23:01 GMT nobody who matters
Re: AI-written PR slop?
For situations where they were landing in very low gravity situations and where there was little or no atmosphere, yes, certainly. None of those that returned to Earth did so using rocket thrusters to aid landing, which is the important point relating to operational needs of the proposed UAV featured in the article.
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Friday 24th October 2025 17:07 GMT Blazde
Re: AI-written PR slop?
VTOL is a great technology – for rockets
Well it is a rocket, with wings. The line between cruise missile and drone is being blurred. If a light-ish manned fighter-jet can take off from a ramp why not launch an even lighter thing from a light frame pointing skywards, and if the thing has enough small thrusters and control surfaces to manoeuvre back onto that frame in reverse that's a bonus (maybe an idea to test a forward-first emergency crash-landing feature too). They're not taking off and landing actually on the dirt itself, you can create convenient flatness anywhere you like using a truck, or even a quick concrete pour if you're getting really into it.
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Sunday 26th October 2025 13:07 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: AI-written PR slop?
A drone that can't simply take of and land pretty much anywhere really does have limited use and the pitch behind this is "removing the need for runways". Given enough power, take off is possible pretty much anywhere. But landing can be much, much harder: think of the multitude of air currents around mountains and the problems, and crashes, they cause.
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Friday 24th October 2025 11:11 GMT HalfManHalfBrisket
So we already in the wunderwaffe phase ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Triebfl%C3%BCgel
This concept has brainfarted it's way into the ether regularly over the years: VTOL from muddy field! Pop up point defense! Exotic untried tech.
Leaving aside we already have trailer mounted missile launchers that do much of this mission, and that motorways as austere runways have been part of Swedish aviation doctrine for decades, it conveniently forgets that there's a lot more to flying military planes than the flying. Delete the runway by all means, but you still need to fuel it, arm it, store it, repair it, move it about. The personnel, equipment and logistics for all that still requires a sizeable and bombable ground footprint. Temporary dispersal to muddy fields would be possible in extremis but logic and efficiency dictate that you're gonna want to concentrate resources in peacetime, so you've still got a largish airbase with crew quarters, hangers, maintenance shops, fuel and weapon storage etc, everything but the runway.
Want to cut that ? Integrate the fuel and armament in the package and make it single use ... and you've got a missile again.
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Friday 24th October 2025 11:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Vulcan
Very anonymous here as I was looking through a wire fence at a UK military airfield. It was a site where Vulcan Bombers were based. It was an event for Top Brass (the temporary grandstand was full of blue jackets with lots of different colours on the left breast - I was a long way away with binoculars). The runway looked clean (although it was a British summer and so the recent thunderstorm could have cleaned it) and the grass had been recently cut.
A Vulcan 'howled' as it passed overhead. It came back and went vertical, before cutting its engine output and falling vertically. What seemed like 50-60 feet from the ground its engines were turned on fully and it rose again vertically. Absolutely covering the grandstand in dirt and grass!
The Vulcan (Operation Sky Shield), Harrier (Falklands), Lightning (vs U2) and even Concord - all so far ahead of the curve that they would never be built now days and all retired far too early!
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Friday 24th October 2025 15:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Vulcan
Not quite as glamorous as a Vulcan, a former employer who was into flying warbirds and ex-Eastern Bloc jet trainers once arranged for me and his son to have a flight each with a friend of his who owned ex-RAF Jet Provost at an airfield somewhere in Lincolnshire. The JP which he described as being about as powerful as a "Kenwood Chef with wings" was loud enough that when I took off on my flight all the car alarms at the car hire storage depot next to the airfield went off. About 40 minutes later when his son took off on his flight they all went off again.
Regarding the Vulcan, one of the best stories I heard about them was when they took part in one of the Red Flag competitions at Nellis AFB in USA. The US fighters and radar on the defensive team were tracking a single Vulcan coming into the bombing range. As they approached, the Vulcan started turning towards them. At the very last minute, 2 Tornadoes that had been hiding under the Vulcan's wings popped out and completed a perfect score bombing run on the range. The defensive fighters couldn't get to the Tornadoes because the Vulcan turned to block their tragetting view.
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Friday 24th October 2025 14:54 GMT Wily Veteran
Re: Vulcan
In 1958 (when I was 9) a Vulcan did a (near) vertical landing about a mile from my childhood home in Detroit. Shook our entire house as it passed over and dug a bloody big hole near the Detroit River. Wasn't good for the crew, though.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120906011546/http://www.hourdetroit.com/Hour-Detroit/July-2008/Mayday/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc
Appropriate icon ==>
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Saturday 25th October 2025 09:06 GMT Giles C
Re: Vulcan
I remember seeing it done the other way, came in at a good altitude nose down engines to idle and then nose up on full power, that was a sight to remember.
They also had one at little gransden air show which came in low and caused the farm next door’s chickens to die of heart attacks - took about 400 out one year…
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Monday 27th October 2025 12:34 GMT DoctorPaul
Re: Vulcan
That brings back some wonderful memories!
When the last flying Vulcan did its farewell trip its flight path took it right over our house in Kent as it did a right turn towards Manston airport after coming along the North Kent coast.
Even better was some years earlier when they were still allowed to go "full chat" with the engines. Utterly impressive as it flew in, then they stood it on its tail and lit the afterburners. My godfathers, those subsonics, even better than a Blue Oyster Cult concert! (Second row, in front of the speaker stack)
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Friday 24th October 2025 13:36 GMT Filippo
Numbers
>at roughly one-third the cost of crewed fighters, or about $30 million
Suppose you take a hobby-quality drone and slap some explosive on it and just enough smarts to remember a mission and coordinate somewhat with its neighbors. That'll probably cost around 10k. How does one xbat compare to three thousand of those?
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Saturday 25th October 2025 15:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Suppose you take ...
I suppose a counterargument will be that you'll probably want/need a mix of systems. A cheap-drone angle will probably not need a long development time; and indeed will be the sort of thing that gets continually modified in response to changing conditions. Whereas the few high tech things you need for more specific contingencies or specialist purposes *will* have a long development lead time, regardless of later design tweaks. In which case, better get started on that sort of thing now, because any actual war might not afford you the time.
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Friday 24th October 2025 18:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Genius-Level Procurement In Whitehall SW1......
Quote: "....the UK's Royal Navy....."
That would be the navy which has commissioned:
- F45 Destroyers which spend ALL their time in dry dock having the gas turbine cooling systems replaced
- Aircraft carriers (at five billion a pop) where the propellers just fall off
- F35 jump jets which fall into the sea....or fail off India....or fail off Japan (yup...half a billion a pop)
Interesting isn't it that Babcocks CHARGE EXTRA for propellers which remain attached!
Interesting isn't it that Babcocks CHARGE EXTRA for destroyers with ACTUAL WORKING cooling systems!!
Interesting isn't it that Lockheed Martin CHARGE EXTRA for F-35 aircraft that ACTUALLY WORK in the tropics!!!
Yup....and now the navy which got all that NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE equipment now wants to buy some more!!
Taxpayers who have already seen ten or twenty billion go down the drain might wonder about the geniuses at Main Building!!!
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Monday 27th October 2025 12:54 GMT Steve K
Re: Genius-Level Procurement In Whitehall SW1......
"half a billion a pop"
I don't think that's the cost of the aircraft on its own - that's the lifetime cost of maintenance/spares etc. along with the airframe/engine (£80-£100 million, I think).
If you drop one in the sea then you don't have to pay the remaining maintenance any more (not that it's a good use of funds to do so...), or you get extra spares for the remaining fleet.
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Wednesday 29th October 2025 05:24 GMT Meph
Re: Genius-Level Procurement In Whitehall SW1......
> that Lockheed Martin CHARGE EXTRA
To be fair, this isn't always the vendor - sometimes this is the buyer nickel-and-dime'ing themselves into failure.
Exhibit A is the Australian military buying the cheaper variant of the Tiger helicopter, when the vendor advises that the up-rated model is required for high-altitude and/or very hot and humid environments. Ironically, the Oz government found out the hard way that the vendor wasn't lying and is now stuck with a bunch of aircraft they can't use.
If you're not honest about your requirements in order to save a few pennies, don't be surprised that you get stung with excessive upgrade costs because your new requirements weren't flagged as "in scope".
(I should stress here, the F-35 was a bad investment from day one, because it's been proven again and again that you don't buy the aircraft for your 500 odd million, you just rent it from the US for as long as you continue to play nice with them.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
