Greek Sustainment Base for X-BAT Targeted in New Shield AI MoU

Shield AI and GEK TERNA signed a strategic agreement in Athens on October 8, 2026 to jointly pursue parts production, aircraft integration and long-term sustainment for the X-BAT aircraft in Greece, Shield AI announced. GEK TERNA is described in the announcement as Greece’s largest investor in critical infrastructure assets.

The instrument is a memorandum of understanding. Roles, workshare and facilities under the partnership will be set in definitive agreements, which the companies are now negotiating.

Under the MoU, Shield AI would lead the X-BAT program and supply the aircraft’s autonomy software and mission systems. GEK TERNA would act as Shield AI’s strategic partner in Greece, managing and enhancing a Greek supplier base that includes small and medium-sized enterprises expected to take part in the program, while also running a local X-BAT program office.

Local industrial participation is expected to include parts manufacturing and assembly, ground equipment, operating bases and launch sites, training centers, maintenance and repair, and research with Greek universities aimed beyond Greece at the wider region. The companies will also look at Greece as a regional hub for X-BAT training, logistics and maintenance serving Cyprus, the Balkans and Southeastern Europe.

“Greece already flies our aircraft over the Aegean and Greek engineers are already building on our software, so X-BAT is the next step in that relationship,” said James Lythgoe, Shield AI’s regional director for Eastern and Southeast Europe. Lythgoe said an aircraft that does not need a runway fits a country that defends hundreds of inhabited islands, and said Shield AI wants GEK TERNA’s capability in structuring, delivering and operating technologically complex projects applied to building the launch sites, training centers, MROs and sustainment centres, as well as the industrial base, that keep X-BAT flying in Greece and across the Eastern Mediterranean.

George Kouladis, investments monitoring head of GEK TERNA, said the group has developed, built and operated critical infrastructure in Greece for more than fifty years, from national motorways and power plants to airports, water and digital infrastructure, with dual-use infrastructure now at the forefront of that work. “With Shield AI, we want Greek companies to assemble, integrate and support X-BAT here, aiming for Greece to become the place where operators in the region train and maintain it,” Kouladis said, adding that the partnership is aimed at long-term local highly skilled engineering jobs, a strong Greek supplier base and an aircraft the Hellenic Armed Forces can sustain at home.

X-BAT Design and Flight Test Plans

Shield AI describes X-BAT as a long-range, survivable, AI-piloted strike fighter that takes off and lands vertically, so it can operate from ships, islands or remote sites without a runway. The aircraft will carry weapons up to the 2,000-pound class in internal bays comparable in size to the F-35’s, has an objective combat radius of 1,000 nautical miles and will support power-intensive electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads, according to the company. X-BAT is powered by GE Aerospace’s (GE ) F110 engine and will fly on Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomy software, which enables operations without GPS or communications. Flight testing will begin later in 2026, the company said.

The announcement presented Greece’s geography as the operational setting for the aircraft: a NATO member and long-standing U.S. ally defending hundreds of islands and a long coastline across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, where island airstrips are few and exposed and runways are among the first targets in a conflict.

Shield AI’s 2026 Activity in Greece

The Athens agreement extends Shield AI’s activity in Greece during 2026 across aircraft, software and industry. On June 2, 2026, the Hellenic Army signed a procurement agreement to grow its fleet of V-BAT vertical takeoff and landing uncrewed aircraft systems in support of maritime domain awareness operations across the Aegean Sea, Shield AI announced in June. The June announcement described V-BAT as a NATO Class I VTOL uncrewed aircraft with a ducted-fan design, more than 12 hours of endurance and a heavy-fuel engine, and quoted Lythgoe citing V-BAT’s combat use in Ukraine, including in GPS- and communications-denied environments. Shield AI also said at the time that it would establish an office in Athens to support closer collaboration with customers and industry partners in Greece.

In July, V-BAT flew a live demonstration at the opening of Greece’s Joint UAS Tactics Training Centre in Tripoli. On September 30, 2026, Shield AI separately named its X-BAT flight-test and production homes: X-Forge 2 at Newton City-County Airport in Kansas for flight test and sustainment, and X-Forge 3 in Des Moines, Washington for production, with X-Forge 1 in Frisco, Texas carrying prototyping. X-BAT is planned to begin production in 2029.