One airframe and a common gimbal mount let operators reconfigure the aircraft’s sensor package to match the mission, from 30x day identification to a flagship 100x hybrid zoom payload with onboard AI compute
KLM Defense has introduced XROSSBAT, a multi-payload tactical ISR platform built around a single airframe that accepts four interchangeable sensor gimbals on a common mount. Where the company’s Vantrel Series is sized for the single operator and Sentinel is built for persistent high-altitude overwatch, XROSSBAT is positioned for units that need one aircraft to cover several mission profiles without maintaining several aircraft.
The premise is straightforward: instead of fielding a separate airframe for daylight identification, thermal search, precision laser ranging, and AI-assisted target tracking, XROSSBAT keeps the aircraft constant and swaps the eyes on it. Four sensor gimbals are available on the same mount — Sniper30, Spectra384, UC65 Pro, and the flagship Vigilon 100 — and a unit can move between them without retraining crews or requalifying a new platform.
Every configuration shares the same airframe specification: a 10 km encrypted radio range, Level 1 electronic countermeasures, a 21,000 ft launch altitude and 27,000 ft service ceiling, a 90 km/h top speed, 55–59 minutes of endurance depending on payload, and wind resilience up to 60 km/h. Navigation draws on GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS, and all-up weight starts at 3,300 g, varying with the gimbal fitted.
That commonality is the point. The common gimbal mount at the heart of XROSSBAT is a proprietary architecture, conceived and manufactured in-house by KLM Defense to carry four distinct sensor payloads on a single certified airframe. The result is one spares inventory, one ground-control workflow, one flight-qualified crew, and a sensor decision made at mission planning rather than locked in at procurement.
That accessibility is where the economics change the calculus. An airframe rated to hold station for close to an hour — 55 to 59 minutes, depending on payload — has historically carried a price tag that put real endurance out of reach for smaller units and tighter budgets. Call it the one-hour club: a small set of platforms with genuine hour-long on-station time, priced for units that could justify the acquisition cost. XROSSBAT’s Sniper30 configuration starts at just INR 4.99 Lacs, opening membership to units that would otherwise have had to choose between endurance and affordability. For force planners, that combination isn’t an incremental spec improvement — it’s a force multiplier for units running serious ISR operations on real-world budgets, extending genuine on-station coverage to teams that couldn’t previously justify the acquisition cost.
“An aircraft that can hold station for close to an hour used to come with a price tag that put it out of reach for a lot of the units that needed it most,” said Mr. Nagesh Sharma, Co-Founder of KLM Defense. “At an INR 4.99 Lacs starting price, XROSSBAT changes that equation entirely. This isn’t a marginal upgrade — it’s a force multiplier, full stop. Units that have had to make do with shorter-endurance platforms, or go without, can now field close to an hour of genuine ISR coverage without stretching the budget to do it.”
The flagship Vigilon 100 payload sits at the top of the line: an 8MP sensor shooting 4K stills and 4K30 video, up to 100x hybrid zoom, and a 3-axis mechanically stabilised gimbal with electronic image stabilisation. It carries 4 TOPS of onboard AI compute for identification and tracking directly on the gimbal, a 640×512 thermal imager at 30Hz with super-resolution up to 1280×1024, a dual stitched day+thermal feed with up to nine colour palettes, and a laser range finder rated to 1200 m — giving true oblique distance to target rather than a visual estimate.
The UC65 Pro occupies the mid-tier: a 5MP/2K day sensor with 30x hybrid zoom, the same 640×512 30Hz thermal imager and stitched day+thermal feed, gyro-stabilised across three axes, and a laser range finder to 1000 m — Level 1 ECM carried across every configuration. For units that don’t need onboard AI compute or the full 100x reach, it delivers most of the same day/thermal fusion capability at a lower entry point.
Sniper30 and Spectra384 round out the line as lighter, lower-cost configurations for units prioritising standoff daylight ID or basic day+thermal fusion over the top-tier optics — the same gimbal family already fielded on the Vantrel Series, now available on XROSSBAT’s larger, longer-range airframe.
“We didn’t want units choosing their sensor package at the procurement stage and living with that choice for the aircraft’s whole service life,” he said. “XROSSBAT moves that decision to the mission brief. The same airframe that flew a daylight ID sortie this morning can carry a 100x AI-assisted thermal payload this evening — without a different crew, a different case, or a different spares line.”
“The common gimbal mount was the hard engineering problem here, not any single payload,” he added. “Once we had a mount that could take Sniper30 through Vigilon 100 without touching the airframe, the rest was a question of which sensors were worth building — not how many aircraft we’d need to build them onto.”
XROSSBAT is available now, with the Sniper30 configuration starting at INR 4.99 Lacs (part number KLMPXB0001), Spectra384 starting at INR 5.5 Lacs, and UC65 Pro starting at INR 6.99 Lacs. Full specifications, payload comparisons, and ordering details are available at www.klmdefense.com.
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