Image: GE Aerospace and Shield AI
Shield AI and GE Aerospace on Monday said they have completed integration of an advanced vectoring exhaust nozzle, including actuation and engine light-off testing, into the engine that will power the venture-backed company’s future drone fighter jet, X-BAT.
The Axisymmetric Vectoring Exhaust Nozzle (AVEN) integrated into GE’s F110-GE-129E engine will enable X-BAT to take-off and land vertically and enhances maneuverability during horizontal flight.
“X-BAT is designed to take off and land vertically from anywhere—no airbase, no runway—and that capability lives or dies with propulsion,” Armor Harris, Shield’s senior vice president of aircraft engineering, said in a statement. “The AVEN is what makes vertical flight possible on a platform this size and this capable. We’re applying it differently than it was ever used before. Vertical flight requires fast gimbaling to maintain attitude control, a demand the original program never had to meet.”
Harris said that next steps include “iterating on our propulsion approach to make future versions faster, lighter and more capable.”
The F110-GE-129 powers the F-16 Block 50 and F-15E/X fighter aircraft.
GE developed AVEN, which was used in the 1990s for flight testing on the F-16. The advanced nozzle is in ground testing ahead of flight testing on the X-BAT prototype.
A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.
