WingXpand unveils swappable brain for drones and rovers

U.S. drone maker WingXpand has unveiled xPAIR, a removable control unit that the company says can be moved between its small fixed-wing aircraft, a ground vehicle and a small boat, letting one set of AI software and sensors run uncrewed systems in the air, on land and on water.

The Schaumburg, Illinois, company introduced the system on Oct. 13 and described it as patent-pending. Operators click the xPAIR module into the xRAI aircraft to watch a wide area from above, into the xTRAIL ground vehicle to get closer without sending a soldier, or into the xSAIL watercraft to reach places accessible only by water. WingXpand calls it the first such system in the world, a claim The Defence Blog could not independently verify.

All three platforms share the same threat-detection AI library, communications and payloads, and are run from one user interface. WingXpand says operators can therefore add vehicle types without buying separate control equipment or retraining for each domain, and that the module can fuse data from different vehicles in real time to give a single picture of the area.

“Our military doesn’t need another autonomous system built for one narrow mission,” said James Barbieri, co-founder and CEO of WingXpand.

The company has not released specifications for the xTRAIL or xSAIL, nor said how long it takes to move the module between vehicles in the field or how much a set costs. It also has not named a military customer for xPAIR itself. A company representative told The Defence Blog the technology is already being adopted by the U.S. Department of War, state governments and Fortune 50 companies, and the release says xPAIR and the company’s other systems have been demonstrated with several U.S. Special Forces teams and at U.S. Army events.

WingXpand is best known for the xRAI, a fixed-wing drone with telescoping wings that packs into a backpack and expands for flight. The company added a vertical takeoff and landing kit in 2024 and has worked with Raytheon under a U.S. Army contract to integrate infrared sensors and AI threat detection into the aircraft. It also won the U.S. Army’s xTechSpecialForces competition and has announced contracts with U.S. Special Operations, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy, as well as approval for use by Montana state agencies. The company has listed prices for its xRAI aircraft starting at $14,900.

WingXpand says xPAIR is built in the United States and compliant with the National Defense Authorization Act, which bars federal buyers from drones and components made by Chinese manufacturers. The company also pitches the shared core as a way to scale production, arguing that building one common module lets it adjust the mix of air, ground and maritime vehicles as customer demand changes.