Advancing Adaptive Strike: Knightwerx Selected in xTech Competition and Demonstrates at Fort Irwin
Advancing Adaptive Strike: Knightwerx Selected in xTech Competition and Demonstrates at Fort Irwin
Knightwerx is proud to have been selected, with its partner Beyond Energy Innovation (BEI), as a first-round award recipient in the xTech Adaptive Strike competition, a program focused on accelerating technologies that can improve operational capability for the warfighter.
BEI is an advanced battery company developing ultra-lightweight lithium-metal battery technology for unmanned aircraft, robotics, aerospace, and defense applications.
For our team, the award represents more than recognition. It provides support for a critical area of development: advanced battery technology that can significantly improve Sandman’s range, endurance, and performance in harsh environmental conditions.
Energy is one of the defining constraints in small unmanned aircraft. Every operator wants more range, more time on station, more payload flexibility, and better performance in the field. But batteries face real-world limits, especially in extreme heat and cold.
Through the xTech Adaptive Strike effort, Knightwerx and BEI are working to develop and field advanced battery technology intended to increase range and improve performance across demanding environments. After all, military users don’t get to choose the conditions in which they operate … but they still need mission success.
As part of the program, the Knightwerx team traveled to Fort Irwin, California, from May 30 through June 19, 2026, to demonstrate the system and support evaluation activities. Fort Irwin is a uniquely relevant venue for this kind of work because it provides a demanding training environment where emerging capabilities can be assessed against operational realities, not just controlled test conditions.
Our team is focused on practical capability: systems that can be carried, launched, recovered, re-tasked, and adapted by frontline operators. Battery performance is not a back-office engineering problem. It is a battlefield performance issue.