Shield AI MQ-35 V-BAT

A helicopter can climb to intercept altitude, close the distance, and get multiple engagement opportunities instead of one brief window as the target crosses a fixed point.

It's the same principle we talked about with VBAT drones a couple of episodes back.

Push the sensor and the shooter to wherever gives you the best geometry against the target rather than waiting for the target to come to a fixed position.

Who's actually funding and fielding this? This doesn't sound like a formal defense ministry program.

They were way ahead of their time.

The reason why they went into the VBAT and XBAT and Hivemind as their primary lines of business is that they were, with Nova, they were just ahead of their time.

But we're getting to the point where now the ability of a small drone to do

CQB.