Shield AI

Headlines · 4

1. 11h
   Airbus demos MQ-72C unmanned helicopter to US Army with Shield AI autonomy

   Airbus flew a self-funded demonstration of its MQ-72C unmanned helicopter for the U.S. Army near Huntsville, Alabama, completing five flights that included complex hovering and standard takeoff and landing patterns. During one test, the aircraft autonomously decided how to reroute around a no-fly zone that appeared mid-flight, with the onboard safety pilot never taking control. The MQ-72C is based on the UH-72B Lakota and was developed with L3Harris, Shield AI and Parry Labs, carrying forward and rear-facing LiDAR plus a nose electro-optical camera, with Shield AI's Hivemind autonomy software interpreting the data and making decisions. Airbus said that since this summer the aircraft has been commanded via a Parry Labs ground control station over Starlink, giving it beyond-line-of-sight control at ranges up to about 70 miles (roughly 113 km).

   科技新报 · 🔥 7
2. 1d
   Shield AI's X-BAT combat drone nears full-scale prototype as Navy funding hits $200M

   Shield AI expects its first full-scale X-BAT prototype within weeks, with flight testing planned for the end of this year. The U.S. Navy has committed an additional $150 million on top of an initial $50 million, bringing external funding to $200 million under a milestone-linked development agreement that Shield AI must match with its own spending. The tail-sitting, vertical-takeoff aircraft pairs a General Electric F110 engine with an axisymmetric vectoring exhaust, and Shield AI projects a 2,000-nautical-mile range, a 50,000-foot ceiling and a combat radius of roughly 1,000–1,340 nautical miles — about twice that of the F-35 — though vertical flight has not yet been demonstrated.

   TechRadar · 🔥 4
3. 4d
   Shield AI delivers first V-BAT drone to Taiwan's Coast Guard, 12 more to follow

   US defense technology company Shield AI said it and partner Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) have delivered the first V-BAT vertical-takeoff-and-landing surveillance drone to Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration (CGA), with the remaining units of a 12-drone order expected over the coming months. V-BAT won the coast guard's shipborne drone tender in July 2026, and the first aircraft was shown at Taipei Port on October 7 to CGA officials, with Shield AI engineers demonstrating setup in minutes. The Group 3 unmanned system uses a ducted-fan design and heavy-fuel engine, flies for more than 12 hours and is built for contested electromagnetic environments, taking off and landing from ship decks without a runway for maritime domain awareness, surveillance, patrol and law-enforcement missions. Shield AI will train CGA operators and maintainers and build local support with AIDC. President Brandon Tseng said V-BAT has flown for the US Coast Guard and helped intercept more than 100,000 pounds of drugs last year, and that extending that capability to Taiwan supports Taiwan Strait security; those performance claims come from the company.

   科技新报 · 🔥 0
4. 5d
   US Army's 10-day desert exercise exposes drone and AI warfare gaps

   The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Army held a roughly 10-day exercise at Fort Irwin in California's Mojave Desert in July, deploying about 9,700 soldiers in a simulation of combat with Chinese forces to test drones from multiple vendors, AI command systems and next-generation communications gear. Temperatures near 43°C caused servers to overheat, batteries to drain and some equipment to fail to charge, forcing Anduril-built drones to land; some drones needed about 10 minutes to take off after charging, versus under a minute for comparable Ukrainian drones, and flight time was cut to half of maximum endurance. The report added that some drones still relied heavily on manual operation rather than autonomous flight and could not coordinate with traditional equipment — in one simulated attack a five-drone formation turned back because three Black Hawk helicopters entered the same airspace — while the new NGC2 command-and-control system, using satellite communications and real-time data sharing, reportedly cut mission-planning time by about two-thirds.

   科技新报 · 🔥 0

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