China targets US runways, prompts new American AI fighter jet

From Fox News, October 25:

America’s ‘BAT’ man unveils tech built to outsmart a Chinese first strike
Shield AI's X-BAT designed to counter China's strategy of destroying American aircraft before they leave the ground 

Analysts say China has developed a chilling strategy for fighting a war with the United States: destroy America’s fighter jets before they ever leave the ground.

In nearly every modern conflict, disabling enemy aircraft on the ground has been the first move. When Israel struck Iranian nuclear sites earlier this year, it began by destroying Iranian runways — grounding Tehran’s air force before it could take off. Russia and Ukraine have done the same throughout their ongoing war, targeting airfields to cripple enemy aircraft. And when India clashed with Pakistan, the opening salvos hit Pakistani air bases.

Beijing has taken that lesson to heart. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has spent years building an arsenal of long-range precision missiles — including "carrier killers" like the DF-21D and DF-26 — capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers and striking American airfields across the Pacific. The goal: keep U.S. air power out of range before it can even launch.

Now, a U.S. defense technology firm says it has built a way to fight back. Shield AI, based in San Diego, has unveiled a new AI-piloted fighter jet designed to operate without runways, without GPS, and without constant communication links — an aircraft that can think, fly and fight on its own.

Shield AI says the jet, called X-BAT, can take off vertically, reach 50,000 feet, fly more than 2,000 nautical miles, and execute strike or air defense missions using an onboard autonomy system known as Hivemind. It’s designed to operate from ships, small islands or improvised sites — places where traditional jets can’t. The aircraft’s dash speed remains classified.

"China has built this anti-access aerial denial bubble that holds our runways at risk," said Armor Harris, Shield AI’s senior vice president of aircraft engineering, in an interview with Fox News. "They’ve basically said, ‘We’re not going to compete stealth-on-stealth in the air — we’ll target your aircraft before they even get off the ground.’"

The jet launches vertically, and three X-BATs can fit in the space of one legacy fighter or helicopter.

According to Harris, the U.S. has spent decades perfecting stealth and survivability in the air while leaving its forces vulnerable on the ground. "The way to solve that problem is mobility," he said. "You’re always moving around. This is the only VTOL fighter being built today."

X-BAT’s Hivemind autonomy allows it to operate in denied or jammed environments, where traditional aircraft would be blind. The system uses onboard sensors to interpret its surroundings, reroute around threats and identify targets in real time. "It’s reading and reacting to the situation around it," Harris said. "It’s not flying a pre-programmed route. If new threats appear, it can reroute itself or identify targets and then ask a human for permission to engage."

That human element, he emphasized, remains essential. "It’s very important to us that a human is always involved in making the use of lethal force decision," Harris said. "That doesn’t mean the person has to be in the cockpit — it could be remote or delegated through tasking — but there will always be a human decision-maker."....

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It is not just American bases overseas. From the New York Post, June 20, 2024:

Map shows Chinese-owned farmland next to 19 US military bases in ‘alarming’ threat to national security: experts 

China has been buying up strategically placed farmland next to military installations across the US, raising national security fears over potential espionage or even sabotage.

The Post has identified 19 bases across the US from Florida to Hawaii which are in close proximity to land bought up by Chinese entities and could be exploited by spies working for the communist nation.

They include some of the military’s most strategically important bases: Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg) in Fayetteville, North Carolina; Fort Cavazos (formerly Fort Hood) in Killeen, Texas; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, and MacDill air force base in Tampa, Florida.

Robert S. Spalding III, a retired United States Air Force brigadier general whose work focuses US-China relations told The Post: “It is concerning due to the proximity to strategic locations....

 

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If interested see also November 2019's "Omniviolence Is Coming and the World Isn’t Ready":

...The political scientist Daniel Deudney has a word for what can result: “omniviolence.” The ratio of killers to killed, or “K/K ratio,” is falling. For example, computer scientist Stuart Russell has vividly described how a small group of malicious agents might engage in omniviolence: “A very, very small quadcopter, one inch in diameter can carry a one-or two-gram shaped charge,” he says. 

 “You can order them from a drone manufacturer in China. You can program the code to say: ‘Here are thousands of photographs of the kinds of things I want to target.’ A one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel, so presumably you can also punch a hole in someone’s head. You can fit about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York City. They don’t have to be very effective, only 5 or 10% of them have to find the target.” Manufacturers will be producing millions of these drones, available for purchase just as with guns now, Russell points out, “except millions of guns don’t matter unless you have a million soldiers. You need only three guys to write the program and launch.” In this scenario, the K/K ratio could be perhaps 3/1,000,000, assuming a 10-percent accuracy and only a single one-gram shaped charge per drone.... 

Or Mossad in Iran or Ukraine in Russia.

Shipping containers as state of the art weaponry.