Category: F-35

What if a combat aircraft no longer needed a runway?

Not a shortened one.
Not a damaged one.
None at all.

The X-Bat is an unmanned, jet-powered combat aircraft designed to launch and recover vertically, operate from dispersed locations, and fight alongside manned fighters in the most contested airspace on Earth. And while it’s often labeled as “just another drone,” that description misses the point entirely.

X-Bat isn’t disposable.
It isn’t limited.
And it isn’t built around yesterday’s assumptions about airpower.

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Range That Redefines Reach

Vertical launch usually comes with a tradeoff: short legs.
X-Bat breaks that rule.

With a 2,100-nautical-mile combat radius carrying a mission payload, X-Bat has the reach to project power across an entire theater. That means it can launch from a concealed, improvised site, climb to altitude, and remain on station long before manned aircraft arrive.

This kind of range transforms vertical launch from a novelty into a strategic advantage. X-Bat doesn’t just survive in contested environments—it shapes them.

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Weapons: A Fighter-Class Payload Without a Cockpit

In terms of payload, X-Bat sits in the same league as an F/A-18 Hornet or an F-35 Lightning II.

Internally, it can carry four AMRAAMs, allowing it to operate in stealthy air-to-air roles while minimizing radar exposure. When stealth is less critical, external hardpoints allow the X-Bat to carry a wide range of modern air-launched weapons, including:

• Precision-guided munitions like JDAMs
• Cruise missiles
• Anti-ship weapons
• LASRams and other smart munitions

This flexibility makes X-Bat a true multi-role aircraft, capable of air-to-air combat, strike missions, anti-ship operations, electronic warfare, and reconnaissance—sometimes within the same sortie.

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A Proven Engine in a World of Unproven Drones

Most collaborative combat aircraft concepts rely on business-jet engines. X-Bat does not.

Instead, it uses the General Electric F100, the same engine family that powers the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon.

That engine family has accumulated an estimated 30–40 million flight hours, making it one of the most combat-proven high-performance turbofans ever built.

This matters for two reasons:

1. Afterburner performance — there are moments in combat when extra thrust is the difference between survival and loss.
2. Electrical power generation — X-Bat isn’t just flying; it’s running sensors, AI processing, and electronic warfare systems that demand serious onboard power.

X-Bat’s electronic warfare capability is so robust that it can perform missions traditionally flown by a two-seat F/A-18 Growler. And even after it expends its weapons, X-Bat can remain airborne as a jammer and reconnaissance platform, protecting friendly aircraft as they pass through contested airspace.

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Thrust Vectoring, Vertical Recovery, and No Human Limits

X-Bat goes even further by incorporating multi-plane, three-dimensional thrust vectoring—a capability currently unmatched in U.S. service aircraft. While the F-22’s two-dimensional thrust vectoring is impressive, X-Bat takes it a step further.

Because there’s no pilot onboard:

• No G-induced loss of consciousness
• No blackout limits
• No need to trade maneuverability for human survival

X-Bat can pull harder turns for longer durations than any manned fighter could tolerate.

That same thrust vectoring enables vertical landing, drawing inspiration from SpaceX rocket recovery techniques. One of the principal designers of the Falcon 9 now works on X-Bat, and the influence is clear.

To protect launch and recovery surfaces, X-Bat employs a blast-shielded vertical launch system—an evolution informed by lessons learned from the F-35B, whose vertical operations can damage conventional runways.

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From VBAT to Hivemind: The AI Behind the Aircraft

X-Bat didn’t appear out of nowhere.

Its lineage traces back to the smaller VBAT drone, which has been operated for years by the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. VBAT proved that vertical takeoff, forward flight, and tail-first recovery were not only possible—but reliable.

The real breakthrough, however, wasn’t the airframe.

It was autonomy.

Shield AI’s Hivemind AI pilot has flown real missions in GPS-denied and communications-degraded environments, making decisions onboard without constant human input. Tested across thousands of simulation hours and real-world flights, Hivemind isn’t reactive—it’s adaptive.

That same AI now scales up to X-Bat.

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X-Bat and the F-35: A New Way to Fight

X-Bat isn’t here to replace pilots.

It’s here to change how they fight.

Imagine an F-35 operating with four or five X-Bats ahead of it. The X-Bats scout at altitude, detect threats, suppress air defenses, neutralize enemy fighters, and jam hostile sensors. The F-35 pilot remains at a safer distance, building the battlespace picture and executing the final strike or assessment.

When the mission ends, the F-35 returns to a runway or carrier deck.
The X-Bats recover vertically—anywhere a suitable platform exists.

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The Bigger Picture

X-Bat represents a shift toward distributed, resilient airpower.

Fewer fixed runways.
Fewer predictable launch points.
More options for commanders.
More survivability for pilots.

This isn’t airpower becoming automated—it’s airpower becoming smarter.

And that’s why X-Bat matters.

The Jet That Wasn’t Supposed to Win

The sky doesn’t forgive mistakes.

In the age of fifth-generation fighters, a few seconds of hesitation can mean the difference between total dominance… and total disappearance. The F-35 Lightning II was built to make sure the United States and its allies never fall behind again — but it didn’t start out as the unstoppable force we know today.

On paper, it was an impossible promise:
One jet to replace the F-16, A-10, AV-8B, and even the F/A-18.
One design to satisfy the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, plus a growing list of allied nations.
All of that, wrapped in stealth technology and powered by some of the most complex software ever put into an aircraft.

For years, critics called it a disaster. The program ran over budget, behind schedule, and under fire in the media.

And yet today, more than 1,000 F-35s fly with over a dozen nations. The aircraft has quietly become the backbone of NATO airpower and a central player in the future of air combat.

So how did we get from “failed project” to “dominant fighter”?

Let’s walk through the story.

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From Peace Dividend to Problem Statement: The 1990s

The 1990s were supposed to be the decade of peace.

The Cold War had ended, defense budgets were shrinking, and the U.S. military was trying to do more with less. Meanwhile, frontline fighters like the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 were aging, and their replacements weren’t going to be cheap.

Instead of funding three or four separate new aircraft programs, the Pentagon took a massive gamble:
Create one aircraft family that could be adapted for:

• The U.S. Air Force (conventional fighter with long range and internal gun)
• The U.S. Navy (carrier-capable with big wings and strong landing gear)
• The U.S. Marine Corps (short takeoff and vertical landing capability)

This became the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program — a single solution to a very complicated problem.

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X-32 vs X-35: The Showdown for the Future

To win the JSF contract, two aerospace giants stepped into the arena:

• Boeing X-32 – unconventional, with a gaping intake and a “different” look, built around simplicity and cost savings.
• Lockheed Martin X-35 – sleeker, more conventional in appearance, but hiding a radical technological trick: a shaft-driven lift fan for STOVL operations.

Both prototypes had to prove they could handle the core missions. But the make-or-break moment was the Marine Corps’ requirement: a short takeoff, a supersonic dash, and a vertical landing in a single mission.

Boeing’s direct-lift approach struggled with heat and balance.

Lockheed’s X-35B, on the other hand, pulled off a flawless demonstration:
short takeoff → supersonic flight → vertical landing.

That feat changed everything. On October 26, 2001, the Pentagon declared Lockheed Martin the winner. The X-35 would become the F-35 Lightning II, named in honor of the legendary P-38 Lightning and the earlier Saab J 35 Draken.

But winning the contract was the easy part. The real fight was just beginning.

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Concurrency and Chaos: A Program Under Fire

The F-35 program tried something bold — and painful.

Instead of fully finishing the design before building aircraft, the Pentagon pursued “concurrency”: testing and production at the same time. Jets were rolling off the line while engineers were still discovering issues in flight tests.

Each variant had its own unique requirements:

• F-35A: Air Force version, internal gun, optimized for conventional runways.
• F-35B: Marine STOVL version, with the lift fan and swiveling exhaust nozzle.
• F-35C: Navy carrier version, larger wings, tougher landing gear, tailhook.

Every change to one variant rippled through the others.
At the same time, engineers were wrestling with over eight million lines of code — far more than the F-22 Raptor — to power sensor fusion, flight controls, weapons systems, and stealth management.

The result?
Delays, cost overruns, and headlines.

By the early 2010s, the F-35 was regularly labeled a “trillion-dollar boondoggle.” Articles claimed it couldn’t dogfight, couldn’t fly reliably, and would never meet its goals.

But that wasn’t the whole story.

Behind the scenes, test pilots and engineers were flying long nights, finding bugs, fixing issues, and gradually turning the early prototypes into something far more capable than the public realized.

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Inside the Jet: Why the F-35 Is Different

What makes the F-35 truly unique isn’t just its stealthy shape — it’s the way it sees the world.

Sensor Fusion: Turning Data Into Dominance

Traditional fighters bombard the pilot with raw information: radar scopes, infrared sensors, warning lights, separate screens for each system. The pilot has to interpret it all in real time.

The F-35 does something very different.

It fuses data from:

• An AESA radar
• The Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS)
• Six Distributed Aperture System (DAS) infrared cameras
• An advanced electronic warfare suite

All of that is merged into a single, coherent picture of the battlespace. Instead of staring at multiple displays, the pilot sees a clean overlay: threats, targets, friendlies, and terrain all annotated and prioritized.

The Helmet: Seeing Through the Jet

Then there’s the helmet — a technological marvel in its own right.

The F-35’s helmet-mounted display doesn’t just show symbology; it uses the DAS cameras to let the pilot effectively “see through” the aircraft. Look down between your knees, and you see the world outside. Look over your shoulder, and you see behind the jet with night-vision clarity.

Targets can be designated simply by looking at them. Information from offboard sensors — other aircraft, ships, or ground units — can appear in the pilot’s field of view as if the F-35 discovered them itself.

The result is a kind of information advantage that no fourth-generation jet can match.

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Networked Warfare: The F-35 as a Force Multiplier

The F-35 isn’t just a fighter — it’s a flying sensor node.

Each Lightning II can share what it sees with other F-35s, legacy fighters like the F-15 and F-16, ground stations, and surface ships. In some scenarios, the F-35 doesn’t even need to fire a shot to be decisive; it can simply pass targeting data to other aircraft and let them launch weapons without ever turning on their own radars.

That’s more than stealth.
That’s invisible teamwork.

This is a major reason why allies around the world — from the UK and Italy to Japan, Norway, and Australia — have bought into the F-35 program. The aircraft doesn’t just defend their airspace; it ties them into a shared digital battlespace.

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Trial by Fire: Red Flag and Real Combat

A fighter’s reputation isn’t made in PowerPoint or press releases. It’s made in the sky.

At the Red Flag exercises over Nevada, the F-35 got its first chance to prove itself against high-end simulated threats. The results were eye-opening: reports of kill ratios as high as 20-to-1 against fourth-generation opponents.

Aggressor pilots talked about “dying without ever seeing the jet that killed them.”
Stealth played a role, but so did the sensor fusion and information-sharing.

Then came real combat.

In 2018, Israeli F-35I “Adir” jets became the first in the world to use the F-35 in actual combat operations. They slipped into heavily defended airspace, struck targets, and returned without being detected in time to stop them.

Since then, F-35s have flown deterrence missions over Europe, patrolled the Arctic, and operated in the Indo-Pacific as part of a broader effort to offset rising threats.

The learning curve hasn’t been perfect. Maintenance is still demanding, and software upgrades are critical to keeping the jet ahead of evolving threats. But with each year, the F-35 fleet gets more capable.

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Block 4, Tech Refresh 3, and the Future of Airpower

One of the biggest advantages of a software-driven aircraft is that its capabilities don’t stay frozen in time.

The F-35 is continuously upgraded through:

• Tech Refresh 3 (TR-3) – a new core computing system that massively boosts processing power and memory.
• Block 4 upgrades – improved sensors, expanded weapons options, better electronic warfare, and enhanced networking.

As these updates roll out, the F-35 becomes more than just a fifth-generation fighter. It becomes a central node in a sixth-generation ecosystem — working alongside unmanned loyal wingmen, advanced satellites, and next-generation fighters like the U.S. NGAD and multinational programs such as GCAP.

The F-35 may one day be joined — or even overshadowed — by newer designs. But its role as the bridge between the old world of analog air combat and the new world of digital, networked warfare is already secure.

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From Punchline to Pillar of Airpower

The F-35 Lightning II’s story is one of extremes.

It began as an ambitious idea that many believed was doomed from the start. It endured years of bad press, technical setbacks, and intense scrutiny. But through those struggles, it evolved into something far more powerful than a traditional fighter jet.

Today, the F-35 is:

• A stealth platform
• A sensor fusion hub
• A networked force multiplier
• And the backbone of allied airpower across the globe

From “failure” to “dominance,” the Lightning II has lived up to its name — striking fast, hard, and often before anyone even knows it’s there.

If you’d like to see this story brought to life with visuals, animations, and mission footage, you can watch the full video here: