X-BAT aims to deliver fighter capability without runways

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:51:34

   Yeah, I'm happy to talk about the expat now. Yeah, now that we're talking about it. All right. So expat, just some background. Shield AI, when we think about hardware, like we want to build hardware's, you know, really effing hard to build. It is because you're stuck with the design choices that you make for a long time. Software, you can quickly like iterate on the design choices that you make. There's certainly like there are challenges in architecting a good software system, but like same in hardware, it's just like harder to change things once you're bending steel and metal.

2. 1:52:12

   So you have to get it right out of the gate. And then hardware is just like when you're dealing in the real physical world, everything's harder. Sensors fail, right? Computers have challenges, right? Sensors will fail for milliseconds on like average. And like there's just so many hard things about building hardware. So Shield AI is very deliberate about the hardware that we build, has to be absolutely transformative. For VBAT, VBAT was, hey, we're going to transform ISR and targeting, right? We need more intelligence. McChrystal, very famous for saying intelligence drives operations. Like if we can transform ISR and targeting with VBAT, like that's why we decide to buy VBAT and go with it.

3. 1:52:55

   but we're not looking to build 26 different hardware products out there. Like we are an AI and autonomy company. We build amazing aircraft and we have these great assets. We have a software engineering asset that's world-class. We have a hardware engineering asset that's world-class. And so we had to ask ourselves, okay, we've done VBAT. What's next? What's the next piece of hardware that we want to build? Do we want to build a one-way attack drone? Do we want to build a usv a maritime platform do we want to build a hypersonic missile and so after great deliberation and great credit to our head of aircraft uh of head of our aircraft business armor harris came from spacex came up with this thing uh called the expat um and so what is expat expat is a first It's kind, vertical takeoff, launch and land, multi-role, combat, strike, jet, you know, platform that is AI piloted. It is the first airplane in the history of airplanes that has both, or it doesn't require runway and doesn't require a human pilot. It's AI piloted and it doesn't, and it's vertical takeoff, launch and land.

4. 1:54:19

   And from that, there are a massive number of benefits to the platform. One of the big benefits, right, if I talk to the geographic combatant commanders, right, these are the four stars, admirals and generals running Indo-PACOM, running UCOM that are posed with the strategic problem. how do you deter our adversaries and if necessary fight to defeat our adversaries they would tell you like the value of expat comes from the ability to create a massive number of dilemmas by having geographically distributed long-range fires that can be launched from anywhere on the battlefield and so now where you know an adversary like china has to worry about these fixed runways and a couple air you know the united states has 11 aircraft carriers we have to worry about you know a couple fixed runways um and uh and these aircraft carriers now all of a sudden they have

5. 1:55:20

   to worry about every you know 20 foot by 20 foot spot of earth on the planet um and that is you know why does that matter now it makes basically forces them to redefine their invasion calculus Uh, if you don't know where America's assets are, um, our, especially our aerial assets, which are our number one conventional strategic deterrent, um, it's going to force you to, yeah, rethink, uh, your war plans. It buys diplomacy another day.

6. 1:55:51

   Um, on the, like, other side of the coin of what I would, you know, tell you about, like, expat, um, and this is like, again, I want to be super clear, like, expat is going to augment, uh, you know, fighter pilots. for you know quite some time um but like when i look at something like the joint strike fighter um it is an incredible capability like if you actually like dig into like what that capability offers the usa it's amazing um but it requires runways it requires hardened bunkers um it requires a 10 million dollar pilot just to get like to be you know certified on flying it right Not even making them like an expert at that system, right?

7. 1:56:36

   It's like, I could put, you know, when we became Navy SEALs, we weren't expert Navy SEALs on day one, right? $10 million to make you, you know, base, you know, just dangerous enough with the aircraft. It is limited range. I want to say it's around like 550 nautical mile combat radius. And so, if you want to employ Joint Strike Fighter in the Pacific, where there are 1,000 nautical mile ranges, you have to have refueling tankers.

8. 1:57:03

   And because of the threat environment, we've built autonomous refueling tankers, right, which is another, like, expensive capability. You have built the refueling tankers? No, no, no, we did. Like, the USA has built refueling tankers for these Joint Strike Fighters. And then the platform itself is $100 million. So when you look at the all-in total cost of capability for the Joint Strike Fighter, again, amazing capability.

9. 1:57:29

   It's wildly expensive. It's estimated $200 million to $250 million per aircraft when you look at all these add-on capabilities, not to mention the total lifecycle cost of it, the hourly cost of operating at $35,000 an hour. Expat, vertical takeoff, launch, and land, no run. It is, you know, AI pilot, so no human pilot. It has a 2,100 nautical mile range with mission payload. And so you have, you know, massive range.

10. 1:58:06

    We're targeting $27.5 million per pop on it with a $6,000 per hour operating cost for the aircraft. And so you're getting fifth, sixth gen capability um at a fraction of uh the cost and that's something that no one else is is doing or